Matityahu and his sons did not start a revolt due to political pressure. They, along with the rest of the people, accepted their political suffering. It was due to the Greeks’ hatred for our spiritual essence, our difference – our Torah. It was the same hatred Haman felt when he complained, “Their laws are different from those of every people.” It is the same hatred we felt during the Holocaust and, indeed, during the most recent expression of that hatred, Har Nof.
It was easy to understand the statement by the director of the Zaka rescue and recovery organization likening the scene he witnessed in Har Nof to pictures from the Holocaust.
The comparison rings true, not just in the images but on a deeper level. How did we celebrate a bris the day after the tragedy of Har Nof? How did we rebuild the Jewish nation after the Holocaust?
How can we comprehend such a rebirth? Just as the toppled dreidel is picked up to spin again, so too do we go on. The day after the tragedy at Har Nof there was davening, there was learning, there was celebration. Our DNA is defined by renewal. No one can stop us. We are God’s nation. He is Eternal. So then are we.
When we are massacred in shul we return the next day to pray and to celebrate a baby boy’s bris. When the gates of Auschwitz slammed shut, the gates of Haifa opened.
Chanukah is not about Matityahu’s military victory. That did not last. What did last to this very day is the purification and renewal of Jewish life. Difficult to grasp? Seems senseless? Walk the length and breadth of Israel and see for yourself.
In another essay, Rav Soloveitchik expresses similar thoughts:
“One can see that which is revealed, but not that which is concealed. The Kabbalists speak about the antithesis between the hidden world and the revealed world. These terms express the idea that most things that humans can sense are only the last phase in a long evolutionary process that unfolded quietly, far from the perception of the human eye, which can discern only things that are ripe and complete.”
The Rav points out that the Hasmoneans fought not against an imperial power but for the purity of the Jewish soul, in their own time and forever. They fought and won to show that the people can be reborn and renewed. That is the miracle.
When the dreidel shows a gimmel it is good to remember that on the other, unseen, side is the nun.There, sometimes hidden, untold miracles abound. We are all dreidels. We keep spinning. That’s why I continue to acquire more dreidels – the miracles of our eternal existence never cease to create renewed amazement.
May we always seek the hidden and find the miraculous of the Eternal even when we are confronted by the pain of the temporal.