Beth Shalom
Oceanside Jewish Center

First Light: Our Actions Make a Difference
Parshat Miketz / Shabbat Chanukah 5765

Please, don’t call me the Grinch who stole Chanukah, but I do have some doubts…These days when I tell the story of Chanukah, I tend to play down the miracle of the oil that burned for eight days. There are valid reasons for the celebration of Chanukah. I’m not really sure that the oil is one of them.

In fact, Al HaNissim, the prayer we recite during Chanukah doesn’t even mention this miracle. It offers other reasons for this celebration. We thank God for standing by us in times of trouble, for vindicating us, for redeeming the strong into the hands of the weak and the guilty into the hands of the innocent. We talk about rededicating the Temple and rekindling the lights in God’s house. We even recall the fact that we set aside eight days for thanksgiving and praise. But Al HaNisim does not mention oil.

Still, this story which first appears in the Talmud is beloved to children and adults alike. It’s the reason that most people give for why we celebrate Chanukah. The fact that it was first recorded several hundred years after the events that led to Chanukah took place doesn’t seem to bother them.

Beit Shammai and Bet Hillel chose to commemorate this story in different ways. Beit Shammai suggested that we should light eight candles on the first night of Chanukah and then subtract a candle each night. In this way we commemorate the event: just as the amount of oil diminished each day, the number of lights is diminished each night. Beit Hillel, whose opinion we follow, suggests that we start with one candle and that we increase the number of lights each night. In this way the magnitude of the miracle would be illustrated by the increase in candles.

This all sounds very nice but I’m left wondering, what exactly was the miracle of Chanukah, and if it was a bit of oil that burned for eight days, what was the miracle of the first night of Chanukah when there was clearly enough oil to burn? There was nothing miraculous about lighting the Menorah the first night. The Maccabees had had enough oil for a single day!

And then it occurred to me. Maybe the greatest miracle of all occurred the first night of Chanukah. The miracle was that Maccabees chose, against overwhelming odds, to light the Menorah even though they knew full well that they didn’t have enough oil for an entire week. The acted out of faith; they did what they knew needed to be done. The first light was the greatest miracle of all, because faith and courage overcame despair and hopelessness.

This is the message of Chanukah. Miracles happen not only because God intervenes but because we have the courage to act even when it seems that we can’t make a difference, even when the odds are against us, and even when it would be so easy to give up.

How often in history has this been the case! We lit the first candle. We wrote another book. We moved to a new land. We started over. In the face of despair we took action. After the Holocaust we picked up and came to Palestine. If the world did not save the Jews we would take our destiny into our own hand.

As we celebrate Chanukah, I believe we need to remember the lesson of the first candle. We must light a candle not for ourselves but for the world because despair threatens to overwhelm humanity again.

After the holocaust, who can imagine that genocide is even a possibility? And yet it’s happening. It happened in Cambodia, then in the former Yugoslavia, then in Rwanda and now it’s happening in Sudan.

Sudan. Why should we care about Sudan? In the last seven months over seventy thousand people have died at the hands of government sponsored militia in this country. Its government has turned its back on the systematic rape of women and girls, and over a million people have been forced from their homes. Thousands of people are living in DP camps in neighboring Chad. The refugees are in danger of succumbing to disease and violent death.

The world is silent. As Jews how can we remain indifferent to genocide? For the first time in its history, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington has declared “a genocide emergency.” Its board is calling on the world to take action. A bill has been sent to the White House calling on America to authorize 300 million dollars for aid to bring some relief to the people of Sudan. The bill calls on our president to impose sanctions on the Sudanese government and to freeze the assets of businesses controlled by this government. I suspect that our president is far too preoccupied with Iraq to care about a bunch of Africans.

Last summer Elie Wiesel gave a lecture at the White House entitled “The Perils of Indifference.” At the conclusion of his remarks a woman stood up and said “I am from Rwanda.” She went on to ask how Wiesel could explain the international community’s indifference to the Rwandan massacres. Wiesel turned to the president and asked, “Mr. President: you better answer this question. You know as well as we do that the Rwandan tragedy cost between 6000,000 and 800,000 victims, innocent men, women, and children and could have been averted. Why wasn’t it?”

President Bush answered “It is true, that tragedy could have been averted. That’s why I want there to be an apology in my personal name and in the name of the American people. But I promise you – It will never happen again.”

The following day Wiesel received a delegation from Sudan headed by the Sudanese Bishop. The man said to Elie Wiesel: “You are now the custodian of the President’s pledge. Let him keep it by helping to stop the genocide in Sudan.”

We are all custodians of that pledge. It is too easy to say that we can’t make a difference; that Sudan is too far away; that we have no national interests in this country. As Americans and as Jews we have a moral interest in what happens in Sudan and in any other country in the world. And while we may not be able to stop the genocide, even the smallest action can make a difference.

The story is told of a little boy who stood by the sea shore throwing star fish back into the sea. A man came along and asked him what he was doing. “I am saving these star fish,” said the boy. “You know there are millions of star fish on t3e shore and thousands of miles of sea shore,” said the man, “How will your actions make a difference?”

“It’ll make a difference to the star fish I just threw back,” said the little boy.

I can’t save the world, but maybe I can save one life. And maybe I can light one candle that in turn will light another candle and another and another and another....

Each of us here has a responsibility. We need to let our leaders know that the people of Sudan do matter to us; that genocide is wrong whether we have an interest in the country or not; that America has a responsibility to respond to suffering wherever it occurs.

In the back of our shul this morning there is information on how you can make a difference. Whether it is political action or financial aid we must do whatever we can. We cannot turn away. In the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: In a free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty, all are responsible.

It is up to us to light the first light. God will carry us forward from there.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Chanukah