Introduction to Sparks of Light

Rabbi Seth Grauer, Rosh Yeshiva & Head of School

Dear BAS Community,

It is that time of year again when we once again send out our Sparks of Light series. For the next eight nights, each of our campus communities will receive short divrei Torah and inspirational messages from faculty and students. These messages are meant to be read immediately following your lighting of the candles as you sit and watch the candles burn.

The story is told of a Jew named Yankel who lived in Crown Heights, owned a bakery, and once related the following story of how he survived the death camps of Poland:

 “‘You know why it is that I’m alive today? I was a kid, just a teenager at the time. We were on the train, in a boxcar, being taken to Auschwitz. Night came, and it was freezing, deathly cold, in that boxcar. The Germans would leave the cars on the side of the tracks overnight, sometimes for days on end, without any food, and of course, no blankets to keep us warm,’ he said. ‘Sitting next to me was an older Jew – this beloved elderly Jew – I recognized from my hometown, but I had never seen him like this. He was shivering from head to toe and looked terrible.

So I wrapped my arms around him and began rubbing him to warm him up. I rubbed his arms, legs, face, and neck. I begged him to hang on. All night long, I kept the man warm this way. I was tired, freezing cold, and my fingers were numb, but I didn’t stop rubbing the heat onto this man’s body. Hours and hours went by this way. Finally, the night passed, morning came, and the sun began to shine. There was some warmth in the cabin, and then I peered around the boxcar to see some of the other Jews in the car. To my horror, all I could see were frozen bodies, and all I could hear was a deathly silence.

Nobody else in that cabin made it through the night – they died from the frost. Only two people survived: the old man and me. The old man survived because somebody kept him warm; I survived because I was warming somebody else.”

Perhaps that is the secret of Judaism, Chanukah and the Jewish home – to light the way for and to warm others.

And when we light the way for others and give them warmth, we, too, become full of light and warmth.

Indeed, one of the reasons we place the Chanukah candles near the door is because an authentic Jewish home warms the children and illuminates the way for them even when they leave it.

And that’s what we aim for here at BAS. 

Even after our students have left the school and built their own homes, we hope the light and warmth they receive in our schools will accompany them throughout their lives.

As Rabbi Sacks zt”l says:

“To defend a country physically, you need an army, but to defend a civilization, you need education, you need educators, and you need schools. Those are the things that kept the Jewish spirit alive and the menorah of Jewish values burning throughout the centuries in an everlasting light. Often what seems at the time to be the headline news, the military victory, is, in the hindsight of history, secondary to the cultural victory of handing your values on to the next generation. If we do that, we will ensure that our children, and theirs, light up the world.”

May the messages in our Sparks of Light series spread light and warmth to your families and the entire Jewish community. 

Chanukah Sameach!