“Perhaps we are not as lost as our enemies would have us believe. I rejoice in the Maccabees’ success, though it is long past,” Washington had supposedly said. “It pleases me to think that miracles still happen.”
Even in the darkest period of a dark year, we are not as lost as our enemies would have us believe. Neither the trials nor the triumphs of faith are long past. And miracles still happen.
The Jewish holiday of Chanukah has two major symbols: the menorah and the dreidel.
The menorah, a candelabra with eight branches, and one light above, memorializes the liberation of the Temple from the religious persecution of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Syrian-Greek ruler who had outlawed Judaism, and the other a spinning top recollects how Jewish children learning the word of G-d in the banned ‘hedge schools’ of ancient Israel would take out tops and pretend to be playing games when Antiochus’ inspectors arrived.
American Jewish children had lit menorahs and spun their dreidels for generations without imagining that an Antiochus would arise in America. Let alone that he would arise in New York.
