Timeless Torah

It could only have happened in a dream. Where else, but in the world of fantasy, could seven beautiful, healthy and robust cows be consumed by seven ugly, inferior and scrawny ones? Nonetheless, each year these surreal dreams of Pharaoh are recited, for like all of Torah, they convey an important lesson; outward appearances can be deceiving.

Then one year, they stopped reading of kingly dreams. Indeed, the stories of Noach's ark, Jacob's ladder and Bilaam's donkey were halted as well. Antiochus Epiphanies, ruler of the Syrian-Greek Empire, had forbidden the public reading of the weekly Torah portions…and so G-d had to send us another reminder of this eternal teaching. We call it Chanukah. It is thus no accident that the Biblical account of these cows and the ears of corn are studied concurrently with the time that G-d, “Ddelivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few."

But who says these miraculous events can only occur in dreams? "Not I!" whispers the youngster, who twenty one centuries later still revels in the victory of Yehudah and his band of Maccabees against the mighty forces of oppression.

Even if you concede that these wondrous tales are not limited to the world of imagination, perhaps you might argue, they are confined to ancient history. Today, however, the external, the mighty and the many must triumph.

In response to this charge, our Sages tell us that the Festival of Lights will last forever. Unlike other holidays, whose significance and power might be dulled in the face of future and greater redemption, Chanukah and its eternal message will never cease to illuminate our lives.

The reason for this phenomenon is because the battleground between the two cultures of Judaism and Hellenism is still with us. Hellenism, which was the Greek way of life, glorified beauty, while Judaism exalted the ideal of holiness We may even say that Hellenism was dedicated to the holiness of beauty, the other, to the beauty of holiness.

That struggle still continues today. The neon lights that are strung through the malls blaze away in a multitude of colors. They flash in time to musical accompaniment and they swirl in various patterns forming murals to catch the eye. They are devoted to the cause of beauty for its own sake.

The other lights are feeble in comparison. The shadows they create loom larger than the area they illuminate. With one healthy puff you can blow them out. Offering no discounts, announcing no bargains, they still attract the modern Maccabee.

And so the story goes on. The gaunt cows consumed the large ones. Little Mount Sinai towered over Olympus. The single family of Israel subdued the thirty one Cannanite kings. David slew Goliath. And at the end of the 20th century the tiny flame of a child's holy Menorah eclipsed the harsh glare of endless bulbs.