Cleaning the Menorah for Next Year

chanukah-michoel-muchnik

As the last cold latke gets tossed into the microwave oven, and the candle wax is scraped off the menorah, this year’s Hanukkah winds down. We look out into the world and see hope and fear, success and failure, as always.  Hmmm.

What is the “point” of celebrating Hanukkah, anyway?

A Jewish response to Christmas? An excuse to eat fried foods? A historical series of battles, defeating a military giant? Clinging stubbornly to one’s own culture, in the face of foreign challengers?

Yes, all of that…sort of. But that’s only the surface.

Columnist Daniel Greenfield declares it a “Dangerous Holiday”, and that it surely is.

In the end the answer is hinted at by the declaration “Am Yisrael Chai”; “The People of Israel Live”.  As the Jews survive, against all odds… indeed, contrary to all reason, then the world has hope.

Hanukkah, it’s successes, and it’s failures, shows us once again that everything exists because G-d wills it to be so.

Ein Od Milvado

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One thought on “Cleaning the Menorah for Next Year”

  1. This is beautiful YB, I’m sure at times G-d looks down and shakes his head. I can picture him saying did they not learn anything the first time around when they gave their culture away with both hands to the Greeks? I love Hanukkah, the latkas are fun, I adore the history of the Dreidel. Sufganiyot? Yummy! But the Maccabees, the Maccabees have my heart. I adore this time of year, thinking about G-d, the Maccabees and miracles. Love it.

    Again, beautifully said.

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