“I THOUGHT THAT I WAS GOING TO BE HOMELESS TONIGHT!”

Pnina Souid

It was getting late. Where is that Access-A-Ride? Jamie thought to herself. Jamie, a legally blind woman in her late seventies, had waited patiently for the car. It was daytime still when her doctor’s appointment in Manhattan was over.

Now she anxiously dialed the number of the Access-A-Ride dispatcher.

“Sorry to keep bothering you, but where is my car? I have been waiting for hours. It is raining and it is turning dark outside,” Jamie asked with a sense of urgency in her voice.

“Lady, don’t worry, we are sending someone to you. Be patient,” the dispatcher answered.

Jamie waited a little bit longer and realized finally that the pre-arranged ride was not going to show. She began to fear that she would be homeless that night. Who could she turn to? She asked Hashem to please help her.

Help with the Press of a Button

Then she remembered that at the Senior Citizen Center Residence on Kings Highway one of the staff members programed the phone number of the Mitzvah Man hotline into her telephone. If Jamie ever had an emergency (like the one she was having now), help might be just one pressed button away.

Quickly, Jamie pressed that button. A friendly voice responded. Jamie explained her predicament. “I am legally blind and have been waiting the better part of the day for my Access-A-Ride car. It is now dark and raining. I am afraid that I will be alone and homeless tonight. I am scared.”

The volunteer answered in a reassuring voice, “Don’t worry. We are here for you and are used to getting calls around the clock. We have a special hesed car service that will be able to come to you as quickly as possible. Just please give me your location.”

Unending Thanks for Hashem’s Compassionate Angels

In Jamie’s thank-you note to the Mitzvah Man organization she wrote that within 20 minutes a car pulled up and asked if she was Jamie. He told her that he is the Mitzvah Man driver and he helped her into the car, using utmost caution. Jamie was so grateful that he was able to find her in the dark, on that rainy night. The driver did not just drive her home. He spoke to her, calming her down as her fear of a night of homelessness had caused her entire body to shake.

Jamie ended her letter of gratitude with the following words:

I blessed the driver and the organization. What a relief to have such an organization staffed by such amazing volunteers. They are certainly messengers of Hashem.

I will never forget how I thought for hours that I was going to be homeless that night and how Hashem sent an angel to rescue me.

Take a look at these cool new gadgets, perfect for Hanukah gifts for family members and friends on your list.

Nanoleaf Canvas Light Panels Kit

These light panels are controlled via an app to display any color you like. By attaching them to the wall in a unique configuration, they can make some beautiful, high-tech art. This is mood lighting for the future at its best.

Ember Temperature Control Smart Mug 2

Coffee tastes better hot, and this smart mug will keep it that way for up to an hour and a half per charge. The intuitive Ember app allows a coffee drinker to tinker with the heat setting to best suit their preference, and alter settings for espresso, tea, and more.

Oura Ring Health Tracker

One of the smartest health wearables – and that’s saying something – to be released in recent years. This ring accurately tracks heart rate, sleep cycles, and activity, then provides insight and guidance based on what it tracks. Considering how discreet it is, that’s quite a feat of engineering.

DJI Mini 2 Drone

They can crouch and stretch and lean all they want. They still won’t be able to get the shot or capture the video from 4,000 meters in the air. The Mini 2 features 4x zoom, panoramic views, and an app to quickly save and transfer footage, among other features.

RadMission Electric Metro Bike

The RadMission adeptly bridges the gap between lightweight city bike and bulky E-bike. It can skirt cars and pedestrians with ease, but also give its rider a battery-powered boost when their energy is lagging.

Makeblock mBot Robot Kit

Teach kids the joys of artificial intelligence early on. The mBot is a programmable playmate that makes use of S.T.E.M. coding skills to function and move.

Thermoworks Classic Thermapen

This thermometer, designed for professional kitchens, takes incredibly accurate readings in two seconds. Anyone serious about cooking meat can use it to achieve grilling perfection.

Orbit Plus Turntable

U-Turn’s turntables not only look beautifully modern, but they pack audio tech that makes you really stop and listen. The Orbit Plus will impress the most intense of audiophiles and will impress the vinyl acolyte on your list, too.

Rabbi Zamir Cohen

This month we will celebrate the holiday of Hanukah.

As a person matures, he develops a more profound understanding of the insights he acquired in his childhood and builds on them. For example, we cannot compare the Torah we learned in elementary school to our in-depth study with the Torah commentaries as adults.

It is the same with Hanukah. When we were young, we learned a superficial and shallow view of the Hasmoneans. Now the time has come to understand them in a more profound way.

What the Rambam Tells Us About Hanukah

Let us begin with the Rambam’s words at the beginning of the Laws of Hanukah. He writes as follows:

“In [the era of] the Second Temple, the Greek kingdom issued decrees against the Jewish people to nullify their faith and prevent them from observing the Torah and its commandments. They [the Greeks] extended their hands against their [the Jews’] property and their daughters; they entered the Sanctuary, wrought havoc within, and made the sacraments impure.

“The Jews suffered great difficulties from them, for they oppressed them greatly until the Gd of our ancestors had mercy upon them, delivered them from their hand, and saved them. The sons of the Hasmoneans, the High Priests, overcame [them], slew them, and saved the Jews from their hand.

“They appointed a king from the priests, and sovereignty returned to Israel for more than 200 years, until the destruction of the Second Temple. When the Jews overcame their enemies and destroyed them, they entered the Sanctuary; this was on the twenty-fifth of Kislev. They could not find any pure oil in the Sanctuary, with the exception of a single cruse that contained enough oil to burn for merely one day. They lit lights from it for eight days until they could crush olives and produce pure oil.”

Two Miracles

From the Rambam’s words we can see that the Greeks’ main reason for waging war against the Jewish people was to destroy their unique Jewish identity, and this was why the Hasmoneans went to war against them. The Rambam also explains why we celebrate eight days: because that was the minimum time necessary in those days to produce oil and bring it to the Temple. Once they had produced the required amount of oil, there was no need for a further change in the laws of nature. The fire that had burned miraculously from the small amount of oil went out, and it was possible to use the new oil to light the Temple Menorah.

Actually, two miracles occurred on Hanukah: the first miracle was as we say in our prayers: “You gave over the strong into the hands of the weak, and the many into the hands of the few.” The second was the miracle of the cruse of oil: a small jug with pure oil sufficient to burn for only one day was found with the stamp of the High Priest but miraculously the oil burned for eight days in a row.

The Real Maccabees

Today, when describing the events of Hanukah, there are those who present things in a very skewed light. Judah Maccabee is frequently illustrated as a muscular man with a shock of hair blowing in the wind, without a beard, and with a defiant look in his eyes – as if he were an Attila the Hun. The historical fact is that Judah Maccabee was a completely different type of person. He and his brothers were Gd-fearing men and Torah scholars who realized that the Greeks were destroying the people spiritually and corrupting them morally. When he and his brothers saw that there were Jews who were failing this difficult trial and were becoming Hellenists and behaving like gentiles, their hearts bled. They decided to take a stand and wage a battle that had no logical hope of succeeding. The entire campaign against the Greeks was a battle over the spiritual existence of the Jewish people.

Maccabi is an acronym of the words Mi kamocha b’elim Hashem which means “Who is like You among the powerful, Gd?” This is the slogan that they chose as a rallying call to launch their war. After all, what did Antiochus want? Unlike Haman, who wanted to destroy, kill, and exterminate all Jews, Antiochus did not seek to kill the Jews’ bodies but rather their souls. He wanted them to abandon their religion. If the Jews had come to Haman or Hitler and told them that they were ready to change their religion, these mortal enemies would not have given up on their programs of extermination. Their goal was to eradicate any remnant of the Jewish nation, Gd forbid. Antiochus, however, did not want to wipe out the Jews, he only wanted to wipe out Judaism. He wanted us to adopt the Greek culture.

Greek Culture Versus Our Culture

Much of Western culture that we see today has its source in Greece. The word “Olympics” comes from the sacred Greek site Olympia, where the ancient Olympic games were held. The word “stadium” derives Greek as well, and the cult of the body comes from Greece. The Maccabees fought this worldview against all odds, and with full confidence in Gd’s assistance.

Judaism teaches us that it is important to keep our bodies healthy, so we can fulfill our spiritual goals according to the Torah, and to live happily and with contentment in This World and in the World to Come. But our body must not become an object of worship.

Logically, the war led by a handful of Torah scholars against the powerful and trained Greek army was a war they had no chance of winning. But from the moment they were willing to sacrifice themselves for Heaven – victory was theirs. And for this we praise and thank Gd and say: “You gave over the strong into the hands of the weak, and the many into the hands of the few.”