Chanukah: Many Against the Few | Rabbi Doniel Osher Kleinman

One of the greatest miracles in world history is the miracle of Chanukah. רבים ביד מעטים a ragtag group of yungerleit, essentially, doing battle with one of the greatest armies known to mankind, the Greek army, at the time, at the pinnacle of the Greek Empire. It wasn't guerrilla warfare, it was on a battlefield. And yet, the מעטים prevailed. And it's perplexing. Why don't we find a Mitzvah that commemorates this great נס? We find the Mitzvah of נר Chanukah. נר Chanukah is to commemorate the נס of the פך שמן, the oil that burned for 8 days. There doesn't seem to be any Mitzvah that commemorates the incredible miracle of רבים ביד מעטים. Or so it would seem. In fact, the חוות יאיר in מקור חיים says that the Mitzvah of הדלקת נר חנוכה is not just a Mitzvah to light the נרות. One of the fundamentals of the Mitzvah is to stare at the נרות and to look at them for a half hour and to rejoice with those נרות. And he says: That's what the Tefillah means when it says, You're meant to look. We find in the Gemara a ברכת הראיה, a Bracha on somebody who sees נר Chanukah. So the eye plays a central role in Chanukah, in נר Chanukah, in the Mitzvah of הדלקת המנורה. What is the eye? The Ibn Ezra, in the beginning of Chumash Shemos, says that the eye is the שער השמיים. He says: In contrast to all other limbs of the body, the mouth, the hands, the nose, even the ears, the eye takes in everything. A person who's flying on an airplane, who's on the top of a mountain, can see an enormous expanse and can take an enormous amount in, all at once, through that tiny, little eye. The eye is a דבר מועט, it's a tiny thing, but the eye is constantly tempted by the רבים, by the world around us. We, wherever we live, are constantly tempted, we are bombarded by an onslaught of external things, that are demanding our attention, that are begging for our attention, that are pleading for us to look. We walk down the street, we go to a Simcha, we're in the supermarket, we're driving down the street, we go on vacation, wherever a person may be, there's a רבים, that's always looking to overcome that tiny, little eye. And that רבים can enter the eye, and it can enter an individual’s שער השמיים. When we look at those נרות on Chanukah, we are demonstrating that this eye is conquering the מעטים, the מעט, this tiny little eye is conquering all of those temptations around it. And I am going to focus, this eye will focus on the Kedushah of the נרות. And that commemorates the victory, a Yid’s victory, a Yid being able to control himself in the face of a Nisayon, and to tell himself: I am going to overcome this רבים. I am going to close my eye, I'm going to turn away, I'm going to conquer the רבים. That is the greatest commemoration to the רבים ביד מעטים of the נס of Chanukah. Chanukah commemorates every individual Yid's battle with his Yetzer Hara in Galus. The next time you're encountered by something, the next time you're tempted, remind yourself רבים ביד מעטים is the secret to Klal Yisroel’s success, throughout the generations.