Chanukah: by 8, I Had Graduated from Buchenwald

CHANUKAH: BY 8, I HAD GRADUATED FROM BUCHENWALD OHR TZVI ON THE PARSHA: CHANUKAH: BY 8, I HAD GRADUATED FROM BUCHENWALD Rabbi Yehoshua Weber Sponsored by Nathan Kirsh to wish Rabbi & Rebbetzin Weber and family, as well as Monsey’s Ohr Tzvi Montebello Kehillah, a Chanukah Sameach! It is a story that Israeli Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau shared with our son, Dovi, when we hosted the rabbi at our home. Rabbi Lau had asked Dovi how old he was. Dovi had replied that he was eight years old. Rabbi Lau – whose Holocaust era childhood was spent in the ghettoes and the concentration camps – responded: “By eight, I had graduated from Buchenwald.” This exchange between Rabbi Lau and Dovi segued into Rabbi Lau reminiscing about his first post Holocaust Chanukah. Rabbi Lau tried to portray the bedlam of that broken postwar world. He explained that, because of that bedlam, no one remembered to teach the orphaned Yisrael Meir about the upcoming Chanukah. Because of that, come Chanukah, Yisrael Meir was clueless as to what these Chanukah candles represented. Yisroel Meir, did, though, know all too much about the yahrzeit candles that permeated that ever- mourning post Holocaust world. Yisrael Meir, therefore, assumed that these Chanukah candles were really yahrzeit candles. Until someone finally taught the little orphan about Chanukah. Someone finally taught Yisrael Meir that not all candles are about yahrzeit and, for that matter, not all yiddishkeit is about death. Candles and yiddishkeit are also – and more so – about light and warmth, about celebration and life. Therein lies such an important message. We are an am segula – we have a special role to play in history – and we therefore sometimes pay a heavy price. That price – paid during the Holocaust and at so many other times – unfolded in front of our eyes. But as an am segula, we are also afforded unequalled beracha and redemption. “If your dispersal will be at the edges of the Heaven, from there Hashem will gather you.”[1] And some of that beracha is unfolding in front our eyes. Never in human history has a people been returned to its native land – as we have – after 2000 years of absence. And it is not just our return to Eretz Yisrael that is miraculous. It is also our survival in Eretz Yisrael. Rational people did not expect a ragtag army of immigrants speaking a hodgepodge of languages to prevail to prevail against the trained armies of the surrounding Arab countries in the 1948 War of Independence. We prevailed, nonetheless, and secular “post Zionists” still cannot explain how this happened. Never in human history has a language that had been dead to daily use – like our language – become a living national first language. The resurrection of our language is so unusual that a mystified philologist writes “Hebrew’s return to regular usage was unique; there are no other examples of a sacred language becoming a national language with millions of first language speakers.”[2] It is not just we Jews who see these miracles . Non-Jews also see these miracles, which is why 82% of some evangelical Christians groups believe that “God gave Israel to the Jews.”[3] These devoout Christians study the Bible, so they realize that what has transpired is a miraculous fulfillment of Biblical prophecies. It is the miraculous resurrection of a land and a language and, also, of emuna. A 2012 Avi Chai foundation survey notes that 80% of Israeli Jews believe that God exists, 70% believe that Jews are a “Chosen People,” 65% believe that Torah and mitzvos are God-given and 75% keep kosher.[4] These numbers are more heartening than they seem because they are skewed by the 20% of Israelis who were raised within the framework of Soviet atheism. Much of that population – although it will, iyH, eventually absorb religious norms – is still locked into atheistic thinking. Deduct that population from the sample and the numbers rise: approximately 90% believe in Hashem, approximately 80% believe that Jews are a “Chosen People,” approximately 75% believe that Torah and mitzvos are God-given and approximately 85% keep kosher. Israelis today are more believing than modern Israel’s population has ever been. Our North American reality is not as positive as Eretz Yisrael’s. Nevertheless, here too, there is an amazing return to emuna. Just a few decades ago, non-Orthodox North American Jewry had dismissed Orthodoxy as a relic of the past. And, indeed, in the 1940’s and 1950’s, so many communities embraced non-Orthodoxy. What a difference a few decades make! The growth and the passion that now permeate our community is breathtaking. And it is especially breathtaking when it is compared to the insipid non- Orthodox movements with their 70%, 80% and 90% intermarriage rates. The blossoming of our yiddishkeit, even in North America, evokes the prophecy that “you will return to listen to Hashem’s voice and you will do all of his mitzvos.”[5] Moshiach is not here and much spiritual growth must yet occur, but much beracha has already been bestowed by Hashem. Yes, we pay an am segula’s price and so we light the occasional yahrzeit candle. But we also merit an am segula’s beracha and so we also – and more so – light candles of light and of warmth, of celebration and of life. A Lichtigen Chanukah Rabbi Weber is mara de-asra and founder of the Ohr Tzvi – Montebello Shul and young men’s program. He gives local and zoom shiurim, is a rav to the young men and women at Yeshivas Kochvei Ohr and Ateres Bais Yaakov and is Rabbi Emeritus of Toronto’s Clanton Park Synagogue. Please visit his website, ohrtzvi.org and sign up for his weekly email message or join his nightly amud yomi shiur (Shabbos) from 9:00-9:45 p.m. or his Friday morning parsha shiur from 9:00-9:45 a.m. at https://us04web.zoom.us/j/8251355882, password 444588 [1] Devarim 30, 5 [2] Daniel Bensadoun, Jerusalem Post, October 15, 2010 [3] Michael Lipka, Pew Research, “More White Evangelicals than American Jews Say God Gave Israel to the Jewish People,”, October 3, 2013 [4] Haaretz, Jan 27, 2012 [5] Devarim 30, 8 .

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