Fw: [-aneinu] Ner Echad - We will NOT darken our light

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From: "'Chicago Aneinu' via chicago-aneinu" <chicago-aneinu@googlegroups.com>

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Sent: Thu, Dec 18, 2025 at 5:58 PM

Subject: [chicago-aneinu] Ner Echad - We will NOT darken our light

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	Ner Echad Newsletter, Parshas Mikeitz 28 Kislev 5785, December 18 2025 To print this newsletter, click above where it says  'click to view this email in a browser' and  then right click anywhere on the page. Select 'print' and enjoy over Shabbos.  Dear Chaya Miriam,  It has been a week of light and a week of darkness. The Jewish people have suffered attacks, hate, and fear, and every night we've lit candles brightly in our windows, on our streets, in our shuls, and in each other's hearts. The video clip below really sums up the lessons of this time: We never darken our light. We will continue to shine proud as the Jewish people and  give strength to each other. More than ever before: we thank you for lighting up the world, together. CLICK TO WATCH: Not a member yet? If a member forwarded this email to you, then take the two minutes to join now and start lighting up the world with us! If you are a registered member, but you have not been getting your weekly candle lighting notifications lately, (or if you never completed your registration) then please reply to this email and let us know, so we can fix that :) We want to see your Menorahs! This is a truly unique group of diverse Jewish women from around the globe - and we'd love to see all your differences "shine"- literally!  Send us a picture of your lit Menorah with the name of your city, so we can see all the different styles in which we are lighting up the world this Chanukah :)  Sunday night: Zos Chanukah - Last Chance! The last day of Chanukah is referred to as Zos Chanukah. The significance is that the word zos – ''this'' connotes that this is it! This is the climax, zenith and greatest day of Chanukah.  The holy sages say even more: Not only is this day the greatest day of Chanukah, but they state explicitly that Zos Chanukah is the culmination of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur; it is the final chance of the High Holidays of judgment. Even if someone didn't do Teshuvah/repent, or if they did, but then fell back again, they now once again have that chance on this very special day to return to their Father in Heaven.  In fact, the holy Ruzhiner, zy''a, said that what great Tzaddikim can't accomplish during the last prayers of Yom Kippur, every simple Jew can accomplish through her prayers and repentance on Zos Chanukah! So let's seize this wonderful G-d-sent opportunity! Chanukah Demands We Recognize the Miracle in the Mundane The Hanukkah lights remind us that nothing, not even nature, is forsaken by God.  A thought experiment: Imagine a world where no grain or vegetation has ever grown. People and animals are somehow nourished by breathing the air and eating soil. Suddenly, a stranger appears and procures a seed, something never seen before in this strange place, and plants it in the ground. The inhabitants look on curiously, regarding the act as no different from burying a stone, and are shocked when, several days later, a sprout pierces the soil where the seed was sown. They are even more flabbergasted to witness its development into a full-fledged plant, bearing fruit — and, even more astonishing — seeds of its own. A great rabbi, Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler (1892-1953), painted this bizarre panorama, and, as it happens, the conjured scenario has pertinence to Hanukkah. Rabbi Dessler was illustrating the fundamental Jewish idea that there really is no inherent, objective difference between what we call nature and what we call miraculous. We simply use the former word to refer to that to which we are well accustomed; and the latter, for things we have never before experienced. All there is, in the end, he concludes, is God's will, expressed most routinely in nature. The celebrated essayist and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson famously conveyed much the very same idea, when he wrote: If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. The star-filled sky, Emerson asked us to realize, is seen as something less than a miracle only — and only — because it appears every night. Famed physicist Paul Davies put the thought strikingly: "The very notion of physical law," he wrote, "is a theological one." What does all that have to do with Hanukkah? The holiday, on a simple level, commemorates the Jewish Maccabees' routing of the Greek Seleucid fighters who sought to impose heathenism on the Jews in the Holy Land. The Jewish fighters recovered the enemy-captured Holy Temple in Jerusalem and restored it to the center of Jewish worship. Famously, only one vial of undefiled oil for the use of the special Temple candelabra was found in the debris. It was enough to burn for only one day, yet, once kindled, lasted for a full eight, yielding Hanukkah's observance of eight nights of candle-lighting. Why, though, is Hanukkah observed for eight days, when the miracle of the oil was really only evident over seven — since there was sufficient recovered oil for one day? It is a question famously posed by the 16th-century codifier of Jewish law, Rabbi Yosef Karo. One answer, offered by, among others, the late Rabbi Dovid Feinstein, is that one of Hanukkah's eight days commemorates the miracle of nature itself — the fact that oil can fuel flames to begin with. The "extra" day is an acknowledgment of the Divine essence of nature itself. The Talmud tells of how the daughter of a famous scholar, Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, realized shortly before the Sabbath that she had accidentally poured vinegar instead of oil into the lamps, and began to panic. Her father reassured her, saying "The One Who commanded oil to burn can command vinegar to burn." And that is what happened. None of us likely merit a miracle like vinegar burning, but the story's message speaks loudly all the same: That oil burns is itself a "miracle," just one to which we have become accustomed. Heading into the cold and darkness of what some people might think of as a "God-forsaken" deep winter, the Hanukkah lights remind us that nothing, not even nature, is "forsaken" by God, that divinity is manifest even in the mundane. Avi Shafran December 12, 2025 Mikeitz - Lying Eyes A botanist named Joseph Banks who was aboard Captain James Cook's 1770 voyage recorded in his diary that while the 106-foot-long Endeavour sailed along the east coast of Australia, native fishermen totally ignored the large boat, the likes of which they surely had never before seen.  Rashi (Beraishis 42:8) quotes the Gemara that explains the reason Yosef's brothers didn't recognize him when they appeared before him in his role as second in command of Egypt: They had last seen him as a teen and now he was a grown man with a full beard.  But Yosef, the Midrash says, looked just like his father Yaakov, whom the brothers knew as a grown man, if one considerably older than the Yosef facing them. And so, he must have resembled surely bearded Yaakov when his brothers came before him in Egypt. Perhaps, though, there was another element at play here, too, the sort of cognitive dissonance that might explain the Australian aborigines' lack of reaction to the sudden appearance of the large ship. It has been speculated that they had no model in their imaginations for a vessel like the Endeavour and so their minds blocked out what was before their eyes, rendering it, for all purposes, invisible. The very last place Yosef's brothers could have imagined him being was on a throne in a powerful country. They had left him in the hands of slave-traders and "knew" that he was, if he was even alive, toiling somewhere as a lowly servant.  Might that "knowledge" have been at least part of why his face didn't register with them, why they couldn't see him even as he was right before their eyes? Even in our times, we see the incredible power of assumptions and preconceptions, how blinding they can be. Even when faced with overwhelming evidence for the truth of something, whether a fair election or the need for a country to destroy an enemy pledged to its destruction, the fact can still remain for millions of people an unthinkable thought, and render what is right in front of them effectively invisible. © 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran Not a Member Yet? Join Today!  Signing up to be part of our weekly united Mitzvos takes 3 minutes - and you can even do it from your phone! Click here or call 844.637.3242 to light up the world today! www.NerEchad.org                                              info@nerechad.org      1844.637.3242(844NERECHAD)                  Text/WhatsApp 917.246.9305

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