FINDING THE MACCABEE WITHIN
Dr. Miriam Adahan
This evening, as I packed up my precious box of Chanukah supplies – dreidels, menorahs and divrei Torah which I’ve collected through the years, I wondered if I would be here next year to unpack this box. It has been a difficult Chanukah, though people tried so hard to be happy, despite the constant terror attacks and “hot alerts.” A week before Chanukah, 11 people, most of them children, were killed in another suicide bombing, and the front page picture of 11 black body bags lined up so neatly on a Jerusalem side street kept haunting me.
On the third day of Chanukah, Rachamim Alter, buried his two sons, aged, 12 and 13, whose bodies had been burned beyond recognition in the Kenya massacre. As with so many of the terror victims, their teachers commented that they were outstanding students, always smiling and helpful and that the boys loved each other as best friends. On the same day, a terrorist sprayed bullets at a large gathering in Beit Sha’an, killing six and seriously wounded many others. That same morning, terrorists shot two heat-seeking missiles at an Arika plane with 271 Israelis aborad as they left Kenya. There is no reason the missiles did not hit the plane, except that the hand of Hashem said “Enough!” I try to focus on that miracle, but my mind often slips out of the grip I try to impose on it and drifts to thinking about how awful the holidays are for those who have lost loved ones.
Chanukah should have been a happy time. Each time I recited the Hallel and the special Al HaNisim I forced myself to make the words penetrate, to truly trust that the Jewish people will again triumph over the vast forces arrayed against. I wish I could always be glowing with trust, hope and G-dly light, but I was often silent and withdrawn, feeling the pain of so many grieving parents, orphans, siblings, relatives and friends, knowing how difficult it is to go on and the terribly difficult times that lie ahead for them. I thought about Avi Ohayan, who, three weeks ago, listened over the phone in horrified helplessness, as he heard his only children, aged 4 and 5, being shot to death by a terrorist as their mother tried to shield them with her body.
This Chanukah, I felt like Yehudah the Maccabee, trying to fight the inner forces of darkness which kept trying to drag me into despair and terror. I tried to focus on the Master Plan and G-d’s love and the fact that the long exile will soon be over – but certainly not before we have all been humbled by witnessing many terrible disasters - and many miracles as well.
My e-mail box is filled with stories about the growing anti-Semitic attacks all around the world –Canada, France, England, Austria, Hungary – the octopus arms of Moslem terrorists have left no one untouched, if not by terrorism than by the horrible economic picture which has left us all in a state of bewilderment.
Each day, hollow-faced women come to my door begging for food for themselves and their children. They search through the bags left by generous neighbors in my little garden area in the hope that something will fit them. According to a recent newspaper article, the number of reported abuse cases is up 800% (not 80) in the last ten years. Unemployed people are not pleasant to be around. They are usually either depressed or violent, and often both.
When Rabbi Akiva view the smoldering ruins of the Second Temple, he laughed when he saw the fox run out. When his distraught colleagues asked how he could laugh at a terrible time like this, he said, “This is the fulfillment of the prophecy. This is precisely as it must be in order for the geula to come.” But I was no where near his level on those first few days of Chanukah. I was as distraught as his colleagues, numbed by grief, watching the slow destruction of life on this planet as we have known it – with weapons of mass destruction ready to be triggered and poverty engulfing millions in an ever-widening cycle of economic gloom. Sept. 11 may have killed 3000 in the Twin Towers, but the unemployment that has resulted from that tragic day has killed the spirits of many more.
Like children building sandcastles on the beach, knowing that the waves will destroy them after they are gone, we build our lives, knowing that everything will be wiped away one day – except for our acts of charity and love. And so I distributed a lot of charity and went to Shaarey Zedek hospital to talk to the wounded. Giving to others lifts my own spirits. By the end of Chanukah, the Yehudah HaMaccabi in me was back to fighting the darkness with defiance and I was able to feel joyous once more at my ability to defeat the forces in my own mind with simple trust in Hashem’s Master Plan and His mercy, which is always there, despite the violence and cruelty which we are all enduring. This is a fight which we must all wage, each in his own way.