Tiny Lights in Israel
Chanukah shines hope into days of darkness.
Healthy Israel - Part 5 of 6
Strangely enough, the biblical Jewish calendar doesn’t have a holiday celebrating the land of Israel.1
The Torah marks lots of other events and beliefs:
The Exodus from Egypt (whose purpose was to go to Israel)
The Sinaic Revelation (Shavuos)
God’s caring for the Jewish people in the desert (Sukkos)
Judgement (Rosh Hashana)
Forgiveness (Yom Kippur)
Why not rejoice in the point of it all - daily Jewish life in Israel?
Far From Israel
The answer is simple and painful: we can’t celebrate Israel because it’s not yet wholly ours. Unfortunately, the Nation of Israel never completely united with the Land of Israel.
As I explained last week, Judaism’s founding generation - the folks who experienced the Exodus and Sinaic Revelation - didn’t want the Perfect Land for Imperfect People: ten spies scared them with tales of “a land that eats its inhabitants,” and they ignored the two who reported “the land is very, very good.” So they didn’t enter Israel, and the core of the Torah - the five books of Moshe (Moses) - ends with the Jewish people right outside of Canaan. This tragedy dug a gap between the Israel’s Nation and Land.
The gap was never filled, and after almost a millennia it broke into a yawning chasm that threw Israel the Nation into thousands of years of wandering and persecution, far removed from their Land.
But the day will come, we know, when the chasm will close, and Israel’s soul and body - the Nation and the Land - will finally unite forever as one healthy, thriving human life. When that happens, we will celebrate the gift of our land.
Instead of the Middle East being a hotbed of violence, it will light the entire world with peace and purpose.
“A new light will shine on Zion, may we all merit its light soon” (Morning Shacharis prayer).
Tiny Lights From the Future
This isn’t only a fantastical dream.
Even today, tiny lights from the future shine back through the darkness, sending us hope and sometimes even happiness.
Where are those lights? In millions of tiny spiritual experiences: a sincere prayer, a sublime Torah insight, an act of kindness with no strings attached, any mitzvah.
Encouraged by these lights, Israel’s heart beats through the pain, its lungs breathe through the fear and mourning. Life shines straight through death’s darkness.
Tiny Lights of Chanukah
Every day this week, as darkness falls, Jews all over the world shine our tiny lights from our windows.
Why?
Because some 2200 years ago, far after the heyday of Jewish national life in Israel, and only several centuries before Roman legions flung us into millennia of exile, God guided the Hasmoneans in a series of brilliant victories against Greek occupation armies, after which “Israel’s sovereignty returned for over 200 years until the Second Destruction” (Rambam/Maimonides).
God then shined a tiny light onto Israel: the menorah in the Temple burned 8 days on oil that should have lasted for one.
On those 8 days, we celebrate our only holiday centered on an event that happened inside Israel and celebrates God’s presence in the Land.
Our lights are tiny, because Israel the Nation is still separated from Israel the Land. They aren’t written in the Torah, because they shined long after prophecy ended. They aren’t even recorded in the Mishnah, except for an allusion or two.
But these tiny lights prepare - the Hebrew word Chanukah means preparation - for the day when Israel’s bright light will illuminate the entire world.
Burying Limbs of Light
On a trip last week with our Lev Hatorah gap-year students, we met a special tiny light on a nature-reserve-turned-army-base right over the hill from Gaza.
This soldier belongs to a special unit that regularly jumps into the fiercest battles, sometimes behind enemy lines. But their job isn’t to kill.
They gather the tiniest limbs of shattered bodies and return them home to be buried with dignity according to Jewish law.
On October 7, this unit shined tiny lights on the Jewish nation’s darkest day since the Holocaust. While firefights still raged around them, they began the gruesome work of piecing together the bodies of their brothers and sisters.
Nowadays they regularly drop in and out of Gaza, finding and burying tiny limbs of light.
“The day will come that isn’t day nor night.
Exalted One, make known how day is Yours, and night also is Yours.
Guards, stand by your city all the day, and all the night.
Let daylight shine into the darkness of night.”
(Pesach Haggadah, Vayehi Bachatzi Halailah)
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You might ask: didn’t I write on Sukkos that we take four species in gratitude for Israel? Good question! But that wasn’t the primary focus of the holiday. More importantly, as I explained there, the four species celebrate the joy of entering the land from the barren desert, not the seven species that bless daily life in Israel.