05 Dec A LIGHT BY THE WINDOW

Who doesn’t love Chanukah?
Family gathering around the menorah,
basking in its light, singing together the
age-old melodies of Haneiros Hallalu and
Ma-oz Tzur. Soon after, it’s time to take
seats around the table, enjoy some hot
sizzling latkes, and play a game or two of
dreidel. Memories that warm our hearts and
souls.
Antiochus IV, leader of the Syrian-Greek
empire, wished to spread his power and
influence. His goal was to Hellenize our
nation, making them one with the Greeks.
He brought Greek culture to the Holy Land,
and wanted the people to participate in
Greek entertainment, take on Greek names,
dress in Greek styles, and study Greek
philosophy. To act and even think “Greek”.
Antiochus waged a war against the Jewish
soul. He tried to destroy our connection to
HaShem, crush our spirit, and break down
the Jewish home. To rob us of all things
Jewish, a Holocaust of the Jewish soul.

He enacted edicts forbidding Shabbos,
Rosh Chodesh, Bris Milah, and Torah
study. All of them, mitzvos that solidify
family and home.
Perhaps, for this very reason, while we
light the menorah in shul, the Gemara
(Shabbos 21b) tells us of the requirement to
light “Ner ish u-beiso”, to bring the
Chanukah lights into our homes.
So we kindle the Chanukah lights in our
bayis, our home. We celebrate that it’s over
two thousand years since the miracle of
Chanukah, and the Jewish home still stands
strong.
The Greeks desecrated the Beis HaMikdash,
and left it in shambles. After a major
cleansing, the menorah was lit. Despite the
tyranny of the Greeks, there were people
who never lost their faith, but searched and
searched until they miraculously found a
single sealed cruse of pure olive oil. And
the great Chanukah neis of the small
amount of oil that was sufficient for just
one day, yet burned for eight days.

Within the word Chanukah are
the letters that spell Kohein –
Chof, hei, nun. There is also a
letter ches, whose numerical
value is eight. The Kohein lit the
menorah in the Beis HaMikdash,
a fire that lasted for eight days.
Each year, come Chanukah, we
transform our home into a
mikdash me’at, a sanctuary in
miniature. We have the great
z’chus to be a “kohein” of sorts,
by lighting our personal menorah,
thereby elevating our souls.
The menorah was lit with pure olive oil –
for it is only when the olive is squeezed
with great pressure that pure oil is extracted.
So too, with Am Yisroel, when we are
“squeezed”, when we are challenged, when
we suffer at the hands of our oppressors, we
emerge pure and unadulterated. Like the
light of the menorah, our light shines bright
and strong.
The words shemoneh, ha-shemen and
neshama, are all comprised of the same
Hebrew letters, hei, mem, nun and shin.
This is not random, but there is a
connection between these three words.
The miracle of Chanukah lasted for
shemoneh – eight days. It was a miracle
that came about through ha-shemen – the
oil. And Chanukah celebrates the victory
of the Jewish neshama, the soul within
every Jew, which throughout history
refuses to surrender to the spiritual
oppression and persecution by those who
seek to uproot our emunah and bitachon,
our trust and faith in HaShem.
Antiochus understood the power of our
people. He knew what makes us tick, and
forbade Torah study. But this didn’t stop
many a father and son from hiding in
caves to study Torah. When the Greek
soldiers would approach the caves, the
children would quickly pull out their
dreidels and call out “Only playing”.
The letters on the dreidel, are nun,
gimmel, hey and shin, an acronym for
neis gadol hayah shom, a great miracle
happened there. They are the very same
letters that spell the word Goshna – to
Goshen. The Torah tells us that Yaakov
readied his family to join Yosef in Egypt,
by sending Yehudah ahead to Goshen.
Rashi cites a Midrash that it was to
establish a place of learning. Yaakov
understood that the survival of the Jewish
people lies within Torah learning.
As the dreidel spins and spins, and then

falls, so too is the story of our people. We
too have spun and spun, falling down again
and again, forced to leave one country and
settle in another. But wherever we have
landed, we established places of chinuch,
Torah learning, for that is the key to our
survival.
The word chinuch – education, shares a
common root with the word Chanukah.
How do we survive the golus, the exile? By
taking a lesson from our zeide Yaakov, and
establishing places of learning.
Yaakov himself imparted Torah teachings
to Yosef, a chinuch that served Yosef well.
In this week’s parsha of Vayeishev, Yosef
was sold as a slave, ending up in the house
of Potiphar. When Potipahr’s wife tried to
seduce Yosef, it was the “D’mus d’yukno
shel oviv, The image of his father”, an
image that reminded him of all the Torah
his father taught him. An image that gave
him the inner strength to say no and flee.
Chazal teach that Yosef saw a reflection of
his father in a window. By placing the
menorah by our window, we are also
reminded of our past, the teaching of our
avos and imahos. Additionally, the bright
lights of the menorah shining through our
window sends a powerful message of how
proud we are of our heritage, how lucky we
are to be Jews.
In the brachos preceding the candle
lighting, we say “Bayamin ha-heim, bizman
hazeh” thanking HaShem for miracles past
and present. Recent events in Eretz Yisroel
have inflicted much pain, sorrow and loss
of life, but we must also recognize the
tremendous miracles that have occurred,
sparing many more from death and
destruction. While we are now in a time of
darkness, let us linger by the Chanukah
lights, reciting extra tefillos, beseeching
HaShem to illuminate the lives of our
brothers and sisters in Eretz Yisroel and
Jewry worldwide.
Ah Freilichen Chanukah and Shabbat
Shalom!