Chanukah - Miketz - 2019

Chevra, this week’s parsha is מִקֵּץ (Miketz) and it’s Chanukah and Rosh Chodesh. As I mentioned at the candle lighting, the Beit HaMikdash is central to Jewish prayers. All prayers flow through the Beit HaMikdash and now through Har HaBayit. There were 2 Chanukah miracles. The bigger external one was the military victory of little Am Yisrael over the Greek Superpower of the time. It’s very similar to the War of Independence where recent survivors arrived, no one spoke the same language and barely everyone had a firearm let alone bullets that worked in that weapon. The other miracle was more internal. Just as only select individuals are allowed inside AWS regional data centers, only the Cohanim are allowed inside the Beit HaMikdash and only to do their holy work. The pure oil that was found was for these internal workers. Just as we know when something goes wrong inside a region, we felt that something was wrong with the Beit HaMikdash. Now-a-days we don’t understand what it feels like to have an active Beit HaMikdash, this is our normal. But I can imagine that there was a 6th sense that the people of the time understood that the Beit HaMikdash was operating correctly even without special announcements and the TAMs all calling all their customers to notify them of problems. Shabbat Shalom, Chanukah Sameach and Chodesh Tov.