MIKETZ 1993
 
Today is Shabbos Chanukah.  On Shabbos Chanukah we always read the Torah portion
Miketz.  It seems strange that we should read the Torah portion Miketz since the
Torah portion Miketz does not have anything in it about lighting candles, about
the building of the Temple, about rededicating the Temple, about the revolt against
an oppressive power.  It just talks about Joseph getting out of prison and interpreting
Pharaoh's dreams, offering Pharaoh advice and becoming the Viceroy of Egypt.  It
then talks about how the famine spreads to the land of Canaan and how his brothers
were forced to come down to Egypt and how they bowed down to him, as his dreams
had predicted, and how Joseph then accused them of being spies.  In order to prove
that they are not spies he takes Shimon prisoner and orders the other brothers to
bring back his younger brother, Benjamin, who his father, Jacob, had not wanted
to leave Canaan lest something would happen to him.  Then we learn how Jacob is
very reticent to let Benjamin go but eventually he has to because they are running
out of food and Judah agrees to guarantee his safety and they come before Joseph
and they are very afraid because when they had returned the first time from the
land of Canaan their money had been returned in their sacks, and when they are called
to come to Joseph's house they are very much upset and they think that it is because
their money has been returned, that this is going to be used as a pretext against
them to fall upon them, but everything is fine until they leave.  They are sent
o” with great fanfare but then after they have gone just a few miles they are overtaken
by a representative of Joseph's household who said, "How dare you steal our master's
diving cup?" They are abashed and embarrassed to be accused of such a deed and they
say that they will become slaves to Joseph if this is true, and, lo and behold,
they found the diving cup in Benjamin's bag and Joseph's servant said, "Now Benjamin
will be a slave to Joseph forever and you can go." There does not seem to be anything
in this story at all about Chanukah.  Why should we read this story on Chanukah?
If we look carefully we will see this whole story that is recounted in this Torah portion has to do with interpreting things.  Joseph had the uncanny ability to see
 
that which was true and real and to pursue that which was true and real.  In life many times it is very difficult to tell what is true and what is real.  Life has so many flip-flops in it.  After all, who would ever have thought that a slave who was imprison would turn out to be the Viceroy of Egypt? When the brothers came down to Egypt it says that Joseph recognized them but they did not recognize Joseph. The rabbis say there was good reason why they did not recognize Joseph because he left when he was 17 and now he was fully bearded, although the Egyptians did not like beard and did not care at all but used to wear fake beards, and, besides that, this was the last place they would ever think of looking for Joseph.  A slave almost never becomes a viceroy of a kingdom, and, besides, the fate of a slave is usually an early death in Egypt, not to be turned around to be the head of a country.  What's more, we can see in this whole incident that things constantly turn upside down. Joseph's brothers make the wrong assumption when they think that they are being set upon when their money was found in their bags.  They also had no idea of why the Viceroy would want them to bring down their youngest brother in order to prove that they are not spies.  Then everything seems to be fine and once again a flip-flop. The diving cup of Joseph is found in Benjamin's bag, truly a frame-up, but, again, life has so many flip-flops.  That, of course, is the story of Chanukah.
Who would have ever thought that a small band could overcome the Selucid Empire? But what's more than that, Antiochus made some very great assumptions, assumptions which would seem to be true to reality.  After all, the Jews, themselves, did not seem to care very much for their religion.  They were buying and selling the high priesthood.  There was a man named Jason, whose real name was probably Yehoshua, who happened to want to be the high priest so he went to Antiochus and said, "I will offer you so much money to oppose the high priest who is now and put me in his place." Antiochus did it.  He needed money.  Then another man came, who was not even a Kohen, who offered to pay more than Jason paid for the high priesthood, and Antiochus accepted his offer.  How did Menalaos pay this huge amount of money
to Antiochus to be high priest? He sold off a lot of the vessels of the Temple itself, in order to raise the money to secure the high priesthood.  It was as if Michael Abramowitz told me the first incident of a leveraged buy-out.  We see here that Antiochus seemed to be making the right assumptions that the Jewish people were finished.  They were not interested in religion.  They were not interested in fighting for their religion.  He needed to unify people to send against Rome because he had just conquered his enemy in Egypt and he had to give up his victory and leave Egypt because Rome had threatened to intervene if he would not do so. So it seemed logical that the Jewish people were willing to give up their antiquated practices and becomes Hellenists in the full sense of the word.  After all, didn't the residents of Jerusalem petition him to make Jerusalem a Greek city like Antioch? So from his point of view it seemed a very logical thing to ban the Jewish religion. The Jews were not practicing it anyway.  The Jews did not seem to way it anyway. If we actually look from the point of view of many Jews in Jerusalem they agreed with that position.  Judaism had nice folkways and customs but, listen, you had to be modern and get rid of these antiquated ways. When Judah Maccabee stood up and challenged the authority of the Selucids there were many Jews who thought he was completely crazy, that he did not have any sense of history or any sense of modernity, and that he was quickly going to be crushed.  Life is not always what it seems.  That's why people like detective stories so much because it is not always the person you think who is the obvious candidate to have done it who usually did do it.  It is somebody else who you did not even suspect.  In life, too, there are many flip-flops.  The reason why Joseph is known as Joseph HaTzedek is because Joseph never gave up his vision of living a moral and decent life even in Egypt.  He had faith that somehow things would work out.  The Maccabees revolted and they had to revolt because that was their only option that was left otherwise Judaism would have been wiped out.  They looked at things from Jewish eyes.  They saw that G-d needed the covenant to be upheld, that He needed the Jewish people to spread the
message throughout the world.
In fact, in our day, too, there are many people who have written o” Judaism,  In the 1930's and 1940's they said that traditional Judaism and orthodoxy was dead. It would never survive, but we see that it is thriving now.  The same thing is true in Israel today.  There are many Jews in Israel who do not really care whether Judaism survives, whether Israel has a Jewish character and they look at whether America is going to boycott us or Europe is going to boycott us and they cater to this PLO demand and that PLO demand, not realizing that by so doing they are threatening the very fabric of Israel.  They should look at Jewish history through the eyes of the Maccabees.  They should look at it through the eyes of Jewish tradition, that eventually things are going to turn out all right.  Sometimes we may have to fight.  Sometimes we may have to suffer losses, but we should not cave in just because we are afraid of the good opinions of the socialists in Europe or are afraid of what the American administration is going to do.  These things are ephemeral and they change.  G-d has promised that the Jewish people will survive but we will only survive if we are willing to fight for our own ideas and we are all ready to cling to them and hold on to them.  Joseph was willing to hold on to them even if it meant that he would be accused of rape by his mistress because he refused to be seduced by her.  He ended up in prison but somehow he maintained his faith that things would turn out all right and they did turn out all right.  The brothers, too, did not realize that all these different machinations that were going on were eventually to ensure that the family would be strong and united and that they would realize that Joseph had totally forgiven them.  Things are not always the way they seem and many times people look at facts and come to completely wrong conclusions, as I think that Arafat and the Arabs have done today where they think that the Jewish people are tired, that Zionism is dead and that is why they want to make an agreement because they just want a fig leaf to cover up their surrender, but that is not true,
and I think that many demonstrations in Israel today prove that that is not true. The Jewish people have not given up.  We are not just looking for a fig leaf so Arafat can walk into Jerusalem and take everything over.
I am reminded of the story they tell about a Chelmite, a fancy Jewish aggie, who bought a puzzle and he was so impressed with his own intellectual ability that he went up to his friend and said, "You know, I must be a genius." His friend asked why he was a genius.  He said, "Because I made this puzzle in two weeks.  And you know what it says on the box?  It says from 2 to 4 years." Of course, we all know that he misread completely what 2 to 4 years meant and there are many of us, too, who when we look at the world and do not look at it through Jewish eyes and through the tradition of the Jewish people who come to the wrong conclusions.  We should always look at the history and life through the eyes of the Jewish tradition.  If we will do so we can rest assured that we will come to the right conclusions and no matter how things flip-flop we will realize that the Jews will survive and Judaism will survive and that we will be able to live the best life possible we can by being Jewish that allows us to fulfill our humanity and our spiritual aspects.  May we all do so so the Mashiach will come quickly in our day.  Amen.
1994 Rabbi Joseph Radinsky
Today is Shabbos Chanukah.  It is also Rosh Chodesh. Today we also read the Torah portion Miketz. We took out 3 Torahs. This is one of the few Shabboses we take out 3 Torahs. We took out 3 Torahs because we had to read from one Torah for the Torah portion for Shabbos, we had to read the reading for Rosh Chodes, and we also had to read the reading for Chanukah. Chanukah is our longest holiday. It is 8 days. There is no other holiday which lasts 8 days. The other holidays are 7 days, not 8 days. Succos is only 7 days, but Chanukah, even in the land of Israel, is 8 days. Why is it that the rabbis should see fit that Chanukah should be 8 days? We know that Shabbos is very important to the story of Chanukah. The rabbis wanted to make sure that there was a Shabbos and if possible two Shabboseem in the holiday of Chanukah, because Chanukah speaks about Jewish spirituality which is encapsulated in the Shabbos. Shabbos is the holiday which teaches us, that things of the spirit are more important than material things, that the things that you cannot measure are more important than the things you can measure, that love and devotion and dedication are much more important than the things that you can measure.
The Greeks wanted to destroy the Jewish religion. The Syrian Greeks set out to make sure that the Jewish people would give up 3 main mitzvahs. They wanted them to give up the mitzvah of Bris Milah, of circumcision, the mitzvah of Shabbos, and the mitzvah of Rosh Chodesh. That's why the rabbis arranged is so that on Chanukah we always bench Rosh Chodesh, we always start the new month. They could have arrange this holiday so that it would all be in one month. After all, the events of Purim did not take at the time that we celebrate them now. Many of the events transpired months earlier, and we know, too, that they could have done the same thing with Chanukah. They did not have to have Chanukah occur on the day that it occurs, but the rabbis wanted to make sure that there was a Rosh Chodesh in the holiday of Chanukah.