Parshat Miketz-Shabbat Chanukkah We all had a wonderful experience lighting the Chanukkiyah for the first night of Chanukkah and we have no doubt that throughout the next 8 days there will be numerous family and friend gatherings with lots of latkes, gifts and fun. Purim and Simchat Torah may be very fun holidays but they are only one day each so nothing beats Chanukkah when it comes to enjoyment as it lasts eight nights. We all know the custom of breaking the glass at the end of the wedding to remind us of past tragedies and that no matter how wonderful a perfect a wedding is the fact is that the world out there is really broken. In other words the Rabbis wanted us to pause at the time of the immense joy of a wedding and remember sadness at least for a moment. The reason? Judaism never wants us to lose perspective or disconnect from reality. In the first place its dangerous and in the second place it interferes with our task of repairing Gods world. We mustnt ever fool ourselves about the world out there. So on a holiday that is so focused on children and family it was a terrible and numbing blow to hear of the slaughter of over 100 children in their school in Pakistan by the Taliban. We have already heard cynics who have no moral clarity tell us that America is no different - after all we have had children slaughtered in their schools. Yes we have and it is tragic. But the perpetrators were mentally ill loners and not part of a concerted and deliberate effort by a revolutionary radical Islamic government whose goal is destroying anyone who doesnt agree with their brand of Islam (including Muslims). So there is no moral equivalency here. It was so ghastly a deed that even those who understand the pure evil that the Taliban and their like are (Hezbollah, Hamas, the Iranian regime) were stunned by this brutality against children. That it occurred on Chanukkah (not that they knew it was Chanukkah) is very important for us because Chanukkah is about our peoples refusal to have the religion of the Greeks forced upon us. We didnt ask the Greeks to be Jews (and we do not even seek converts) because we respect the right of all people to worship in their own fashion. At that particular moment in history a combination of Hellenist Jews and a fanatical Syrian Greek King led to the persecutions and the attempt to force the Jews to convert to the Greek religion and culture. It was a brutal affair but the Maccabees led us to victory. The Taliban are the modern day Syrian/Greeks. Every generation has a group that believes it has the only true religion and wants to impose that upon everyone else and is willing to use extreme violence to accomplish their mission. Every generation needs Maccabees to fight these people off. The world is stunned and horrified by this perverse murder of over 100 children. But words and condemnations are meaningless unless backed up by action. It is almost insulting to just get up to a microphone and offer a condemnation if it is not accompanied by a plan of action as it only encourages the murderers and hurts the victims families by giving them a sense of abandonment. It is true that today all Jews live in freedom. When you think back to the days we marched for Soviet Jewry, Syrian Jewry and Ethiopian Jewry it is remarkable to realize that today every Jewish community lives in relative freedom. But that is because we just didnt condemn and talk. Many actions were taken to gain the freedom of those Jews and we were helped by many governments and non-Jews. The message of Chanukkah is universal. That is why we put the Chanukkiyah in the window. It is not just a message for the Jewish people - it is a message for humanity. If the free world and the non-radical Moslem countries do not rally to save these people from the evils of the Taliban and in Iraq from ISIS then the light of humanity which is symbolized by the bright lights of the Chanukkiyah will grow sadly dim. Let us enjoy Chanukkah with our families, friends and community but let us not forget the meaning of this profound holiday - a meaning that is as poignant today as it has been throughout the ages. Shabbat Shalom and Happy Chanukkah! Rabbi Ed Farber
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 18:59:02 +0000
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