Chanukah: Believing that a Yeshua is Possible

BS”D

The days of Chanukah are a time to thank HaShem and praise His Great Name

על נסיך ועל נפלאותיך ועל ישועותיך…

“…for Your miracles, for Your wonders and for Your salvations”

We recall what HaShem did for our forefathers and for us as a nation… how He, in His great love for us, saved us from countless enemies– people who were much bigger and stronger than us.

Today we express gratitude and praise for events that occurred in the past, many years ago.

But, Chanukah is much more than a memorial; it’s meant to teach us an important lesson.

Because our gratitude and praises today are the very reason why the story of Chanukah had to happen in the first place.

Chanukah and The Five Stages of Life

Whenever we find ourselves in a dark and painful situation, we can learn from this message of Chanukah and have emunah that a yeshua will come as long as we are doing our end…

According to the Baal Shem Tov, every one must go through five stages in life:

1) Experiencing suffering

2) Accepting the suffering in love as an atonement

3) Praying that the suffering or difficult experience should end

4) Experiencing a yeshua

5) Thanking and praising HaShem

Three of these steps we have control over, two of them not. We can’t choose which painful situations will be sent to us or how long they will last, but we can certainly decide how to respond to them.

Accepting the suffering with love, means we make the choice to recognize the Source of our situation instead of merely focusing on the players within it. We hear HaShem to calling us, telling us through the experience: “Return to Me!”

And we constantly remind ourselves that this moment is meant to not only atone for past actions, but to keep us on our personal path of emes and to a greater awareness of G-d’s Presence in the world. This awareness is our unique portion in the Torah.

But HaShem doesn’t want us to stop there.

He wants us to pray to Him that all the pain and difficulty, all the negative thoughts and desires that rise up within us, should be removed– even if we feel like we can’t change a thing, even if we feel like we will right away fall back into the same deep, dark pit we now find ourselves in.

HaShem then responds by sending a yeshua– one that is in proportion to the way we davened and the amount of emunah we have. And, as our yeshua unfolds, a great light is revealed. We begin to see HaShem’s Hand in the circumstances that surround us. We come to understand a new aspect of HaShem and our relationship to Him…

And, we naturally have gratitude and sing praises to Him on account of it.

This is precisely why we are here. We were brought into this world in order to find HaShem within it and to then express our knowledge of His Presence to others. This knowledge is no small thing. As our Sages say, “Anyone one who has knowledge of HaShem, it’s as if the Beis HaMikdash is built in his day” (Berachos 33)

HaShem wants us to seek Him and find Him; He wants our gratitude and praises. But, that can only happen in the fullest sense after we’ve experienced a personal yeshua.

אוֹדְךָ, כִּי עֲנִיתָנִי; וַתְּהִי–לִי, לִישׁוּעָה.

I give Thanks to You because You afflicted me

and You were for me a salvation

Tehillim 118:21

We can have emunah that our prayers are not in vain, that a yeshua will come, because the situations and places that we find ourselves in are not by chance. They and all of their details are there in order for us to find the light hidden within and then reveal that light to the world.

יַצִּילֵנִי, מֵאֹיְבִי עָז; וּמִשֹּׂנְאַי, כִּי–אָמְצוּ מִמֶּנִּי

יְקַדְּמוּנִי בְיוֹם–אֵידִי;וַיְהִי–יְהוָה לְמִשְׁעָן לִי

 וַיּוֹצִיאֵנִי לַמֶּרְחָב; יְחַלְּצֵנִי, כִּי חָפֵץ בִּי

He delivered me from my enemy most strong,

and from those that hated me, for they were too mighty for me.

They confronted me in the day of my calamity;

but HaShem was a stay unto me.

He brought me forth into a large place;

He delivered me, because He desired [something] in me.

Tehillim 18:18-20

This is the message of Chanukah… HaShem is there in the darkness waiting to bring us out of whatever galus we are in. But, we have to believe that we are good enough and important enough for that to happen. We have encourage ourselves with the idea that HaShem חָפֵץ בִּי, HaShem desires something in me, and only I, and I alone, have the ability to bring it out and shine it into the world.