After Yosef’s brothers cast him into a pit filled with scorpions
and snakes, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelite’s coming from afar. Upon seeing
this, the brothers decide it would be better to sell Yosef to these men, as
opposed to leaving him to die in the pit. In the Torah’s description of this
episode, the Torah tells us the seemingly unnecessary detail that these
Ishmaelites were carrying with them “spices, balsam, and lotus.” As the Torah
does not record any unnecessary details, it is puzzling why it informs us of this
seemingly insignificant fact. Rashi points out, quoting the Midrash, that
Ishmaelite caravans typically carried foul smelling cargo like naptha and tar—but
in order to spare Yosef from a long journey in a smelly caravan, G-d arranged it
that this caravan would carry fragrant spices.
Many are bothered by the
following, perhaps obvious question: At this point in Yosef’s life, when all appears
lost- his life as he knows it will forever be changed—he is being taken as a
slave to a foreign land—what difference does it make how the caravan smells on
his way down to Egypt? What comfort does the anomaly of a nice smelling
Ishmaelite caravan afford him?
In order to answer this question,
Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz notes how the Talmud tells us that when the Jews
returned to the Holy Temple which had been desecrated by the Syrian Greeks,
they found one small jug of pure oil, that had not been contaminated. It seemed
like there was only enough oil to last one night, but in the end, it lasted for
eight nights. As a commemoration for this miracle, the Rabbis enacted an eight
day holiday of thanksgiving to G-d known as Chanukah.
If
one delves into this idea a little deeper, it seems a little bit puzzling. We
know that there was also another very significant miracle that took place at
the same time—namely that a small band of Jewish priests, overtook a massive
force from the Syrian Greek army, in an unprecedented, shocking military
victory. If the Jews would have lost the military campaign, the results would
have been catastrophic. And yet, when the rabbis decided to enact a holiday to
commemorate these events, they chose to commemorate the miracle of the oil
lasting eight days instead of the more significant military victory. The
obvious question becomes—why then, is Chanukah based on the miracle of the oil,
as opposed to the key military victory?
Rabbi
Chaim Shmuelevitz gives a phenomenal answer to this question by giving a very
powerful metaphor: Imagine if there was a family who lost a precious object.
For a full week, the whole family is searching for the object, with no luck.
Finally, the five-year-old boy finds it, and immediately, the father runs over
to him, gives him a hug and a kiss on his head. For that boy, there are two
things happening: A) The overall, large-scale satisfaction of the whole family
finding the lost object, and B) the personal delight and immense pride that the
child experiences when his father gives him a kiss on his head. For that child,
that kiss was priceless.
Rabbi
Shmuelevitz says that this was the reason that the rabbis enacted the holiday
of Chanukah. While it is true, and undeniable, that on a macro level, the
larger miracle clearly was the military victory, what we want to remember
throughout the generations is how G-d enabled one small jug of oil to last for
eight days. Were we to have walked into the Temple, as victors of the battle,
that surely would have been enough. But in G-d’s immense love for us, He gave
us the miracle of the oil lasting for eight days. He demonstrated His love
for us by giving a timeless kiss on our head, and that is what the Rabbis want
us to remember and to cling to during Chanukah, the darkest time of the year.
So too, for Yosef, during his darkest days, as he was brought down to Egypt
against his will, and his life was falling apart before his very eyes, G-d
wanted to give him a kiss on the head, to remind him that He was still very
much with him.
Rabbi
Shimshon Pincus points out that even nowadays, there are miraculous things happening all the time,
where G-d is constantly giving us a Divine kiss. Our problem, however, is that
we are unable to perceive them. We are unable to perceive the kiss and embrace
of our loving Father. He likens this reality to the fact that there are an
abundance of sound waves that exist in the vast universe. It is true that there
are sound waves—but if we don’t have the right instruments, they will never be
perceived. On Chanukah, our job is to work on perceiving these daily miracles;
to build our own personal radio transmitters, so that we too, can bask in the
unending love of the Almighty.
