Shnayim Yomi - V'zot Haberachah - Sheni - #2 - Rabbi Solly Sardar - The Power of Every Individual

Aliyah Shaini, we are going to read how Moshe Rabbeinu begins to give the bracha to the shevatim. And he writes over here that the bracha of Levi is "Yevarech Hashem cheilo u'fo'al yadov tirzeh." So, Hashem should bless cheilo. Cheilo means his assets, his property, his nechasim. But Rashi brings another explanation and he says cheilo also comes from the word chayil, which means an army. And he was hinting to the army that is going to come from shevet Levi, which is the Hashmonaim. Moshe Rabbeinu was giving a prayer. Hashem should bless the Hashmonaim because we know that the Hashmonaim in the times of Chanukah were a very small army. They didn't have so many soldiers, but yet they were victorious over the Greeks, which was a huge army. "Rabim b'yad me'atim" like we say in the Amidah. So, here is where the bracha came from. "Yevarech Hashem cheilo." His army should be blessed. Now, why is Moshe Rabbeinu exactly pointing towards Chanukah at this time specifically? What's the deeper message? Did he just randomly decide to pray for them? He's giving a bracha at the end of his life. That means he wants to he wants to convey a message over here. And the explanation is Moshe Rabbeinu is teaching us the power of every individual. Sometimes we think that we don't have that much power. We underestimate our potential. We underestimate our value. And Moshe Rabbeinu is saying over here, "Look, there's going to come a time where there's going to be people the Jewish people are going to be assimilating. There's going to be very, very terrible gezeirot and people are going to fall. But there's going to be yechidim. There's going to be individuals that are going to get up and save the day. The power of an individual. You never know how far the power of an individual can go. There's a story of an off Weinberg. He met a boy who he knew left religion. And years later he met this boy and he he he saw that he became religious and he returned back to his heritage. So, he asked him, he says, "What inspired you?" So, he said, "I took a a in a university in Israel and they took us to Europe. And we went down to the concentration camps and when we went down to the concentration camps, we're walking down a road and we saw a wall that led to the gas chambers and I looked very closely at that wall and I saw that there was indentations and I realized that these indentations were actually fingernail marks. And I realized that it was a prisoner who was being pushed into the gas chambers who was trying to fight for his life. And I wondered to myself, I said, "Why would this guy have fight for his life? He's at that point there was no way out. He should have just resigned to his unfortunate fate." And then it it struck me that yes, these people were fighting for life because they were Jews and as Jews every minute of life means something and that's what inspired me to come back. And Rabbi Noach Weinberg said, "Look at Look at this. Look at the power of one individual. This person thought that he was giving himself a few more minutes of life, but actually 60 years later he touched another person's soul and he changed his entire destiny." That's what Moshe Rabbenu is teaching us over here. Baruch Hashem, hallelujah. Sometimes you think you're a ma'atim, you think you're very little, but in truth you have potential to do so many great things.