19 Dec BE A PROUD, PRACTICING, UNAPOLOGETIC JEW

The Beis Yosef asks
a well-known question
to which hundreds of
answers have been
suggested. If a flask
of oil was found that
had enough for one
night and it lasted seven extra nights for a
total of eight, why is Chanuka, which
seemingly commemorates a seven-day
miracle, celebrated for eight days?
ולילה הראשון שלא היה :writes Meiri The
שם נס השמן מברכין על הגאולה ועל הודאת
The .מציאת הפך ושאר הלילות על נס השמן
answer is simple. We do only mark the
seven nights that were miraculous with
seven days of lighting. The first night,
however, we are marking and celebrating a
different miracle, the miraculous military
victory and redemption. The Pri Chadash,
in his commentary on Shulchan Aruch,
gives a similar answer and writes if there
were no miracle of the flask of oil, there
still would have been a holiday established
filled with Hallel and hoda’ah for the
military victory.
Our eight-day holiday of Chanuka is a
celebration of two reasons to celebrate, two
miracles that we mark in one blended
holiday. Is there a connection between the
two or did they both happen to overlap on
the same days of the calendar, so we
combine them into one holiday? Which is
the main driver of this holiday and which is
secondary?
This week, my fellow BRS rabbis and I
visited Shura once again. It is the base of
the Rabbinate of the IDF, the place all fallen
soldiers (and on October 7, civilians) are
taken to be identified and prepared for

burial. On our visit, the body of 22-year-
old Ben Zussman, the second member of

the greater Bendheim family (who have a
remarkable 46 cousins currently serving) to
be killed in battle, was being taken from the
building into the car that would carry him
to Har Hertzl for his funeral and burial. We
were present for the first Kaddish being
said on his behalf.
Last month when we returned from our
first visit, I told you about the literature,
posters and tefilla cards for soldiers
produced at Shura, how this is the only
army in the world with a division for
spirituality and faith. This time I saw
Chanukah booklets published for soldiers,
including addressing questions like how to
light in Gaza in a tank, if you don’t have a
home and Divrei Torah and motivational
messages connected to Chanukah. In it, the
following explanation of the duality of the

Chanukah miracles is offered: The menorah
of the Beis HaMikdash was lit in the
Heichal and illuminated it all night. The
Kohanim didn’t serve at night, there was no
avodah so why did it need to be lit up? The
type of person who regularly turns the
lights off when nobody is in the room
would go crazy seeing the Beis HaMikdash
lights on with nobody in it all night, every
night. What was the point?
The Gemara in Shabbos (22b) explains
that this was an unusual light; it wasn’t for
illumination or to be able to see more
ו ְכִי לְאֹורָּה הּוא צָרִיְך? ו ַהֲלֹא כׇ ּל אַרְבָּעִים .clearly
שָׁ נָה שֶׁ הָלְכּו בְנֵי י ִשְׂרָאֵל בַּמִּדְבָּר לָא הָלְכּו אֶלָּא
לְאֹורֹו! אֶלָּא עֵדּות הִיא לְבָאֵי עֹולָם שֶׁ הַשְ ּ ׁ כִינָה
ׁשֹורָה בְּי ִשְׂרָאֵל. מַאי עֵדּות? אָמַר רַב: זֹו נֵר
מַעֲרָבִי שֶׁ ּנֹותֵן בָּּה שֶׁ מֶן כְּמִדַּת חַבְרֹותֶיה,ָ ּומִמֶּנָּה
.הָי ָה מַדְלִיק ּובָּה הָי ָה מְסַי ֵּים
The light was a signal, a symbol that
Hashem’s presence was dwelling among
the Jewish people, that we have a special
relationship and an exceptional mission.
The Shem MiShmuel writes that the
miracle happened specifically through the
Menorah because the Menorah is the
symbol of chochma, Jewish wisdom,
values, culture, and knowledge. The
Gemara in Bava Basra (25b) says הרוצה
ידרים להחכים, if you want truth and wisdom
turn south to the Menorah. The Syrian
Greeks wanted to eliminate our unique
Torah vision and values, to have us abandon
our wisdom and culture and subscribe to
theirs. They wanted to erase Judaism and its
influence and impact on the world. The
military victory enabled the rededication of
the Beis HaMikdash and allowed us to light
the Menorah once again. It was really a
victory of our chochma, shinning our light
over their darkness.
The book of Chashmonaim describes that
our enemies didn’t only eliminate the oil,
they took away our Menorah. When we
reconquered our Beis HaMikdash, they
weren’t just missing pure oil, they were
missing the Menorah itself. What did they
do? Megillas Taanis (Perek 9) describes
that the Chashmonaim took sheva shipudim
shel barzel, seven iron rods that were used
as weapons against the Yevanim and turned
them into the Menorah.
When they lit that original first flame, they
weren’t just marking the miracle of the oil,
but they looked at that Menorah made from
their weapons and they were celebrating the
miracle of the victory of the few against the
many, the weak against the mighty, the holy
and pure against the evil and wicked.
The Menorah being crafted from the

weapons of war was not a mere coincidence
or necessary solution to having no
candelabra to light in. It was an expression
of how the light of the Menorah, the
presence of Hashem, the drive to spread His
light in the world, is what drove that small
group of Jews to fight against all odds, to be
tenacious, resilient, brave, courageous, and
unstoppable. The two miracles are
intertwined, they are indeed one and the
same. The light of the Menorah fueled the
army and victory, and the victory enabled
us to keep the light going.
The Sfas Emes asks, how did lighting the
Menorah and having it be illuminated at
night express the presence of the Shechina
in Klal Yisroel? After all it was the Kohen
who struck the match, set up the Menorah,
lit the wick? Anyone who passed by
wouldn’t be thinking of the Shechina but of
the Kohen who lit it. Says the Sfas Emes,
this is exactly the point. The evidence of the
presence of Hashem doesn’t come from a
revealed supernatural miracle but from our
own hands, our own effort, our own
initiative. The same was true with the
military victory. With a moral clarity, a
sense of purpose and resolve, a vision for
representing Hashem, we fought, we
battled, we had the courage to confront the
enemy and take him head on. The
successful result of that sacred mission was
the evidence of Hashem’s presence among
us, that His light shone through us.
The miracle of Chanukah, what we truly
celebrate, is the resilience and the drive of
the הנצח עם, that when we come together,
when we stand up with pride, when we
fight, when we refuse to assimilate, blend
in, or lay down, the result is we are the
miracle, we are the manifestation and
expression of Hashem, we are the light that
illuminates the world. We aren’t a secular,
political state, we are dedicated to the
wisdom of the Menorah and we will forever
fight to rededicate it over and over again.
We met with retired Brigadier General
Amir Avivi who gave great insight on what
has happened, what is happening, and what
he thinks will happen next. At the end we
thanked him and he said I want to tell you
one more thing. He doesn’t wear a kippa
and isn’t observant but he told us he wants
to end with a Dvar Torah:
People often think of Chanuka as a small
war with the Greeks and we won. They
may picture a big battle, but most people
don’t know we fought for 30 years, endless
amounts of wars. Yehuda Macabee fought
the first five big wars, he was killed and
Yonatan took over and kept fighting. Yes,

we celebrate that they liberated Beis
HaMikdash. But the Greeks threw them
out again and they fled to the desert and
only then did they fight back and in the days
of Shimon did we secure all the borders.
What is amazing that in the history of
warriors and leaders, in Jewish wars we
never once hired mercenary armies. We
have always been a people imbued with
leadership and vision. We get our people
again and again, we call them and they
come, led into combat, without getting
paid, just to save the Jewish nation, that is
our DNA, that is who we are.
That is why Al HaNissim focuses mostly
on the military victory and only briefly
references the miracle of the oil. The
victory was the result of the endless drive,
determination, will, positivity, faith, of a
people who were fueled by the values,
wisdom, and truth of the Menorah. It was
their initiative, their efforts that reflected
the presence of Hashem.
On the border of Gaza, at a barbecue we

made for 700 soldiers, we met a 51-year-
old sleeping on the floor, eating army food,

going in to fight. We asked him, how are
you still in the active army? He told us he
was released 11 years ago but refused to be
finished. He negotiated with the army until
they agreed that if he passes a physical each
year he can continue to serve. We said,
“what do you do, make the food, clean the
guns?” He said, “No I drive a hummer into
Gaza to our missions.”
We met soldiers everywhere, on several
bases, in Chevron, at new pop-up locations
to feed and care for them. There is no such
thing as a secular soldier. We found angels
of Hashem putting on tzitzis, securing a
pair of Tefillin, and going to fight for a
cause they believe in with every fiber of
their soul. Shem Shamayim Shagur Bfi the
IDF, all of them telling us “Elokim
Yishmor,” “Hashem Yaazor.” We met
injured soldiers at Tel HaShomer hospital

who are fighting to heal so they can return
to battle. They are positive, upbeat,
determined. We spent time with a father of
a fallen soldier. He and his family are Olim
and he told us he has no regrets bringing his
family to Israel despite paying the highest
price because it is what it means to be a
Jew, it is why we live and sometimes what
we need to die for.
We toured Be’eri for three hours, walking
the site of a pogrom, like visiting Poland
the day after the Holocaust. We will never
get that smell out of our nose or unsee what
we saw. We saw burnt homes, bloody
sheets, bullets on the ground, smashed
windows. We heard stories of how two
parents and a big brother leaned over three
younger siblings to save their lives by
paying with theirs, homes people were
kidnapped from. A man named Yarden told
us the story of his heroic brother, a medic
who tried to save the injured and ultimately,
Hamas terrorist shot him at blank range first
saying out loud, a witness later shared, רק
הכיף בשביל,” just for the fun,” before
pulling the trigger.
Naor, whose father-in-law was murdered,
shared with us: “A strong message I remind

myself, is when the same thing happened in
Europe, we didn’t go back to Poland and
Germany, but this is our house, our land,
our country our people. We are going to
come back. It doesn’t matter what you did
to us, you cannot stop us. Buildings you
can burn, but you can’t break our spirit. We
will rebuild.”
I think this is our part of the war from
America. Yes, donate, support, visit, check
in. But ultimately, the enemy around Israel
is the same enemy sitting in the
administration at Harvard, MIT and Penn,
the same enemy in the offices of the New
York Times, in some Congressional offices,
and on streets of major cities. They all want
להשכיחם תורתך ולהעבירם – thing same the
רצונך מחוקי, for us to abandon our values,
our mission, our way of life, our way of
thinking. They are trying to extinguish our
Menorah, our source of wisdom and truth,
our Toras Chaim.
We may be 6,000 miles away from the
physical front lines, but make no mistake, if
you saw the hearings in Congress in which
the leaders of three prestigious schools of
so-called higher learning couldn’t say
calling for genocide against Jews is hate,

we are very much on the battlefront. They
want us to stop learning and living Torah?
The response must be to learn and live it
more. They want us to abandon our values?
Lean into them, hold on to them stronger,
tighter. They want to dim our candle? Add
more fuel, make it burn brighter. They
want you to hide your yarmulka, tuck in
your tzizis? Get a bigger yarmulka, longer
tzitzis. Someone asked me, if I had $100
million to fight antisemitism what would I
do? I said I wouldn’t buy ads on television
or hire lobbyists in Congress. I would put
every penny into reaching out to our Jewish
brothers and sisters to stand taller, prouder,
to live more Jewishly. I would send a
mezuzah for every Jew and every Jewish
student on a college campus to hang on
their door. I would send candles for every
Jew to light Friday night or for Chanukah.
We cannot win a war if we don’t know what
we are fighting for. We can’t have victory if
we are in the dark without the light of the
Menorah.
Don’t just take something upon yourself,
become a better, bigger, and more practicing
Jew as a merit for the soldiers on their front
lines. Do it because it is how we fight on

our battle front in this very same war. 150%
of reservists showed up for this war, we
have to show up at the same rate, give a
150% effort. They aren’t afraid, we can’t
be afraid, they have courage of their
convictions, we must have the courage of
ours. This war has multiple fronts. They
are doing their job on theirs, will you show
up, will you serve, will you be counted and
will you be part of victory in our battle?
We daven for the miracles today that we
had yesterday, biggest among them not
supernatural oil, but the miracle of believing
in ourselves and believing in our cause and
therefore having the determination to fight
against all odds.