Mr. Jonathan Parker
Assistant Principal and Director of Education
In the Middle Ages, and again more recently, the apocryphal heroine Judith was widely associated with Chanukah. It is from her story of duping and then triumphing over the Syrian-Greek general Holofernes with cheese and wine that we have the popular tradition of eating dairy on the holiday.
When I was in university, English major that I am, I took a course on Old English literature. Almost all of the poetry that we read included an adaptation of a “biblical” narrative into the Anglo-Frisian culture, and Judith was among them. From her eponymous poem we get the following lines (translated into modern English by Dr. Aaron Hostetter of Rutgers University), just before she executes Holofernes:
Then the highest Deemer inspired her at once with courage,
as he does for every single of the mortal dwellers
who seek him out as help with good sense and right faith.
Interestingly, the poem highlights the reflexive nature of Judith’s courage: She sought out God’s support, so God in return gave her the courage that she seemingly already possessed in order to attack Holofernes to begin with. It is not that this courage was brand new; rather, it was awakened by the act of calling out to God.
In this reading, Judith is a mirror of the Maccabees. Their call to action – מי להשם אלי – presupposes that the people calling out to God for strength already possess the strength to call on God to help face their troubles. The Gemara in Shabbat (24a) delineated that we light our Chanukah candles outside “משום פרסוֹמי ניסא”, in order to publicize the miracle, which is our own way of actively engaging in the same model as Judith and the Maccabees: we are publicly demonstrating our faith in God, and anticipate this same call to action will merit God looking favorably on us. Every Chanukah we light literal fires in our windows in order to light metaphorical fires in our souls, and, God-willing, we will merit the same support and guidance given to the Maccabees and to Judith.
Mrs. Sharon Fixler
Assistant Principal
In 1948, shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel, a design competition was held to establish the official “semel Yisrael” (emblem of the State). The winning entry was submitted by brothers Gabriel and Maxim Shamir, Israeli graphic designers originally from Latvia. Their design was the now-iconic Menorah between two olive branches. Why did they choose a Menorah as the central focus of their emblem? As the story goes, the brothers saw the Menorah as a symbol of the central purpose of the Jewish nation to be “a light unto the nations” (Yeshayahu 42:6).
This significant concept of being “a light unto the nations” has a strong connection to the widely accepted minhag of lighting our Chanukah candles according to Beit Hillel. As we learn, there is a dispute in the Talmud between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel whether to increase the number of candles each day from one to eight, or to start with eight and remove a candle each day for eight days (Shabbat, 21b). Although the definitive Halacha rules according to Beit Hillel, who argues that we add a candle each day, Rabbi Mendel Weinbach, zt’l, co-founder and dean of Ohr Somayach in Jerusalem, teaches a profound idea from examining these two differing approaches.
Rav Weinbach teaches that, as we know, darkness is the absence of light, and darkness is generally seen as representative of evil. You can fight evil in the world in two ways: either by fighting whatever is wrong in the world, or, you can create such a tremendous light where you are that the darkness just disappears. Chanukah expresses the victory of light over darkness, but which approach to banishing darkness/evil is most successful; do we use the flame to burn, or to illuminate?
Beit Hillel sees the battle against immorality in the world as a call to raise ourselves spiritually, to become living examples of morality by living according to Torah principles. This way, the entire world would see us and want to imitate us. So, says Beit Hillel, the more successful method of wiping out darkness is to increase the illumination of Torah everywhere. For this reason we increase the number of candles each night to remind ourselves of our responsibility, as Jews, to steadily increase the light of Torah knowledge and understanding in the world.
As Rav Weinbach writes: “The prescription for overcoming ‘darkness’ in our time, is the same as it was in the time of the Hellenistic oppression: by increasing our light. If we increase our learning, and if we increase our holiness, then we will truly be ‘A Light Unto The Nations’.”
In our day, as Israel battles Hamas physically and we battle against antisemitism and the court of world opinion, may all of our mitzvot and the tremendous achdut that we are experiencing help to battle the darkness and bring much needed light into the world.
Happy Chanukah!
Lir Yissar
Student, Grade 12 Ulpanat Orot
On each night of Chanukah, as we kindle the candles, we make the blessing over miracles: she-asah nissim la-avotenu. An intriguing question often asked by commentators is: Given that the oil would have lasted one day, why do we say this blessing every night when, technically, only days 2-8 were miraculous?
Rabbi Sacks answers this question profoundly, highlighting that the true miracle of the first day was the Maccabees’ audacious belief that they could discover the oil at all. Considering the Greeks’ terrible desecration of the temple, it was unlikely that they could find even one jar of oil intact. Yet, the Maccabees did not lose hope and, undeterred, set out to find some oil. Rabbi Sacks explains that “The miracle of the first night was that of faith itself, the faith that something would remain with which to begin again.”
Today, we find ourselves experiencing a similar miracle of faith. Just like the Maccabees had to choose to stay faithful and search for oil, the Jewish community, post-October 7th, was confronted with a similar choice: Embrace faith or succumb to despair? Under the most unimaginable circumstances, we miraculously chose, and continue to choose, to cling to faith. We see faith in the form of soldiers putting their lives on the line to protect the Jewish People and Eretz Yisrael. We see faith in the form of non-kosher restaurants kashering their kitchens to send food to army bases. We see faith in Jewish people across the globe sending letters of encouragement to soldiers and displaced families. We see faith in the rally in Washington, D.C., where around 300,000 Jews gathered to demand for the hostages to come home. Just like the Maccabees had faith that they would find oil, we have faith that our actions will pave the way towards a brighter, hopeful future and that, as a nation, we will rebuild and begin again.
May we soon hear בשורות טובות. Chag sameach.
