Holiness Onto The Mundane - Rabbi Aryeh Lebowitz | Chanukah 2020

on hanukkah we celebrate two things we celebrate a war and we celebrate a miracle that's almost the exact opposite a little jug of oil we didn't really need it we could have used the tame oil and it lasted for eight days and it was just such a nice embrace of a kurdish barracuda we just felt like hashem was giving us a hug at that time i was thinking that maybe the idea of the two miracles is to show how british mark was involved in every element of our lives from the most spiritual to the most physical but maybe it's something else also maybe the message of these two miracles is that life is always full of moments where we feel the closeness of hashem and the only way we're going to appreciate those moments we're going to know what to do with those moments is if we also take advantage of all of the moments in between all of the mundane moments all of the moments that don't seem so special you know i asked my tell needham as an extra credit question on the test but it was last year two years ago it was very hard question i asked list three things about judaism that are very special to you then i asked the second question list three things about judaism that are not very special to you that are very challenging and on almost everyone's list of the special things with shabbos on almost everyone's list of the non-special things was minha and it's interesting because if one is really going to appreciate shabbos if you're really going to appreciate what it means to have sparkles spend some time with us a person really has to experience the milkas of life as well you know we say in alanis and we celebrate we talk all about the war and then we say and afterwards we went in and we lit the menorah because the only way we're going to appreciate lightning the menorah is if it's first if first we have the war if it's preceded by the war in 1967 there was a major event in the jewish people he got back to the hotel we had a speaker in yeshiva about 15 years ago that told us that he had a son that was born shortly after the khotel diadem shortly after we got back to hotel and he was so inspired by the whole event it was such a moment for the jewish people this speaker told us that he named his son israel yair that israel should give off light because he was so inspired by the incredible vent and obviously you're probably aware that baby grew up to be our rebbe our rashi shiva ravi kevinetsky [Music] now in that moment there was another fellow that was alive at that time who was a major general in the army and later went on to become the prime minister ariel sharok and aryla sharon was at the koto and came over to him and gave him a parrot's villain ariel sherwood was as secular as he gets he would never put on film probably never did before that day and probably never again after that day and a reporter asked him i don't understand when you came to the western wall husson gave you a parrot's villain asked you to wear them and you did it why suddenly the religious fervor and he answered yeah i did do it i did put on this villain and he explained when i came to the hotel i had very deep feelings and i wanted to express those feelings but to my dismay i discovered that i didn't have the vocabulary to express those feelings religious jews have the vocabulary to express those feelings i had no context in my life to appreciate what was going on a religious jew has the context to appreciate what was going on if you reviews them is shulhan if one wants to appreciate the nehru's kaneka it's important that a person experiences the shulkhan of judaism what we do at our table in the base madrid what we do at our table in schulich what we do at our table at home how we act day in and day out it's only if we have that kind of dedication if we take care of the myths of our lives that will be able to appreciate the hanukkahs of ours