Rise and Shine

Here in Eretz Yisrael, there is a growing sense of despair, as public Shabbos observance wanes and seems on the point of disappearing. For many years, we were blessed with relative quiet on our streets as public transportation was shut down for Shabbos, and now, city after city is crossing the line that defined Israel as a Jewish country. One by one, supermarkets and malls are opening to lively commerce as the Shabbos Queen is pushed aside to mourn in her abandonment. And we look on helplessly, because we truly don’t know what can be done about it. More passionate speeches in the Knesset? At this point, it seems that all we can do is turn our eyes away and be thankful that we can still keep Torah and mitzvos, still honor Shabbos, in our own homes and communities. Really, what else can we do?

Well, for one thing, we can consider how we might model ourselves after the Chashmonaim. What empowered them to bring about a change, even before they embarked on a military struggle against their Greek oppressors and the Hellenists among their own people? Rav Eliyahu Dessler ztz”l gives us a perspective on Chanukah that is absolutely applicable to our times and the aggressive incursion of secularism in Eretz Yisrael we are witnessing today. Perhaps we can learn from the Chashmonaim what it takes to turn the tide and bring a few rays of light back into the darkness that seems to be rapidly encroaching on us.

Rav Dessler ztz”l writes: “With their mesirus nefesh, the Chashmonaim merited to reveal the fact that the inner light of the Torah can never be extinguished, and it is destined to stand before the darkness of concealment in every generation. It was in order to inculcate this lesson that the miracle of the oil was revealed and its memory perpetuated. We don’t find any mere historical remembrances in the Torah or Chazal; any remembrance that was instituted is to teach us something essential for our service of Hashem. A person is meant to recall the miracle and be awakened to learn from it.”

Rav Dessler goes on to explain the reason the Greeks and their Jewish imitators succeeded, then and now, in propagating secular Hellenism among the entire Jewish People, and what we can do in emulation of the Chashmonaim so that we, too, might be worthy of miracles and wonders.