24 Dec CELEBRATING OUR HARD WORK AND SACRIFICE

Rav Shalom Schwadron,
who was known as “the
Maggid of Yerushalayim,”
once worked as a teacher
in a yeshiva, and he
noticed that a certain
student did not attend the shiur for several
nights in a row. He decided to go to the
young man’s house and ask him why he had
not been in the class, if perhaps he was ill or
had some other problem.
The boy explained to him that the World
Cup soccer competition was going on
at that time. He was not attending the
shiurim because he needed to watch the
games… The boy assured the Rabbi that the
following week, once the World Cup was
over, he would come back to the shiur.
Rav Schwadron asked the boy what soccer
was. The boy explained that there are two
goals on both sides of the field, and each
team has to try to kick the ball, without
touching it with their hands, into the
opposing team’s goal.
“Ok,” the Rabbi replied. “That doesn’t
sound too difficult. I could do that.”
“No, Rabbi, you don’t understand,” the boy
explained. “The opposing team has a goalie

that stands in the goal and blocks the ball so
it won’t go in.”
“I see,” the Rabbi said. “I assume that if we
go right now to a soccer field, there won’t
be any goalie there. So why don’t we just
go right now, and we can kick the ball into
the goal all we want!!”
The boy laughed. “What would be the
point?!” he said. “The whole fun is
struggling against the opposing team to try
to score goals.”
“Exactly!” the Rabbi exclaimed. “The point
is to struggle. Attending shiur next week,
after the World Cup is over, is simple. The
real ‘fun’ is to struggle to attend shiur this
week, when it’s not easy, when you have to
make a sacrifice for it.”
Hashem created the world and our lives
in such a way that we have to work hard
to achieve. He intentionally did not make
things easy – because if things were easy,
then there would be no point in “scoring.”
We achieve and grow through struggle and
hard work.
The Bet Yosef (author of the Shulchan
Aruch) poses the famous question of why
we celebrate eight days of Chanukkah,

instead of just seven. After all, there was
enough oil for the candles of the menorah
to burn the first night; a miracle was needed
only for the next seven nights. Thus, the
miracle was performed for only seven days.
Why, then, do we celebrate for eight days?
Many different answers have been given to
this question. One especially meaningful
answer is that indeed, on the first day of
Chanukkah, we don’t celebrate a miracle.
Instead, we celebrate what we, the Jewish
People, did. For seven days, we celebrate
the miracle that Hashem performed; on the
first day, we celebrate the hard work and
sacrifice invested by the Hashmonaim in
resisting and defeating the Greeks.
Many Jews heroically defied the Greeks’
edicts. They continued learning Torah and
performing mitzvot, for which they were
killed. And during battle, many soldiers
– including some of the Maccabees
themselves – fell. The Jews made incredible
sacrifices for the sake of Hashem. And so on
the first day of Chanukah, we celebrate not
what Hashem did, but what our righteous
ancestors did, sacrificing and struggling to
defeat the Greeks who wanted to destroy
the Jewish religion.

The importance of this concept cannot be
overstated. Of course, we must recognize
Hashem’s miracles, and give Him praise.
But at the same time, we need to understand
that in order for these miracles to happen,
we need to earn them. And we earn them
through hard work, sacrifice and struggle.
We earn them not by kicking the ball into
the goalpost late at night when nobody else
is on the field; we earn Hashem’s help when
we work hard, when we put in the effort to
kick the ball past the goalie…
Let us draw inspiration from the heroes
who struggled and sacrificed to resist the
Greeks’ oppression, and learn from them
that in order to truly achieve, we need to be
prepared to put in the work and make real
sacrifices.