Harry's Video Blog - You Can Run But You Can't Hide: Chanukah

during the long and often painful history of the Jewish people our enemies often differed with respect to their choice of Weaponry often organized and sophisticated and other times more crude and personal but they typically agreed on a common goal to kill the Jews and that's why there's that famous joke summarizing all of Jewish holidays they tried to kill us we won let's eat but there's one exception at the time of the kanah story when we were fighting the Greeks the Greeks weren't trying to kill us they were trying to henize us trying to assimilate us they were trying to kill the Torah trying to kill Judaism but not the Jews the Greeks would have been perfectly happy had we agreed to be good Greeks no longer insisting on our annoying Habits Like shabas and circumcision but we fought back and we won there was a physical battle but that's not what we're celebrating we're celebrating our spiritual survival and at the heart of the Kaneka Miracle those little jugs of oil that kept producing light for eight days and the manouras that we light remembering that light we know represents the light of Torah which makes us unique and maybe that's why Kaneka is the one holiday during which you can run but you can't hide as the saying goes every other holiday can be observed for the most part in private we can eat our matah on Passover in our homes we can pray on yum Kipper in our synagogues even on sukus when we're told to build the sukka and go outside our home you can build it in your backyard or your back deck there's no obligation that your neighbor has to see your Suka not so on Hanukah when we light our Manas we've got to light them right in front of our homes or in the front windows not the side not the back you've got to light it in a place where people are going to see that manora from the street and you got to light it right at nightfall when there's still people around not at 3:00 a.m. and maybe that's why the Hanukah story always falls out during the total portions where in which we read the story of Yosef of Joseph who was always proud and always proclaimed his Judaism no matter where he was in this week's total portion we see the wine Minister after being freed from jail referring to Yosef as the iy the Hebrew the Jew obviously Yosef had introduced himself in jail to his dungeon mates as a Jew I can tell you this if I'm ever captured in Egypt and thrown into a dungeon this happened once to my father by the way so if you ever meet him ask him to tell you the story it's a classic but if it ever happens to me and I find myself in an Egyptian dungeon I can tell you now my last name is going to be Robinson not Rothenberg but not Yosef no matter where he was he was always proclaiming himself publicly to be a Jew and that's what we do on Kaneka we go to that front window we put our manure there we light it we thump our chests and we tell the world I'm proud to be Jewish Judaism still here the tourist is still here and this is a Jewish Home happy [Music] Kaneka