Parashat Miketz - Chanukah
Many of us may remember the classic movie, “The Wizard of Oz.” A sweet girl named Dorothy gets knocked out during a tornado and “wakes up” in the colorful land of Oz where she has many adventures in her quest to go back to Kansas. Along the way, she makes new friends and learns many lessons, but, in the end, she finds out that all she has to do is to tap her ruby slippers together and say over and over, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home….” For Dorothy, it took a mad-cap adventure to realize that there certainly is no place like home.
The week’s Torah portion, Miketz, also tells the story of a journey. It begins with Joseph’s rise from the jails of Egypt to interpret Pharaoh’s dream of seven years of plenty and seven years of famine which wins him the vice-premiership of Egypt along with fine clothes and jewels. During the famine, Joseph’s brothers leave Canaan and travel to Egypt to buy food. They are received by Joseph who begins to exact retribution for their actions so many years ago when they threw him in a pit and contemplating killing him.
Like Dorothy in Oz, the characters of the Torah have to leave their homes to find their destiny and learn life’s greatest lessons. So also, there are those who sit in this congregation tonight as travelers on a journey, having come to Israel to discover their heritage, gain new perspectives on Judaism, and to connect with parts of themselves they may not have known existed.
On the other hand, Chanukah, which we are now celebrating, is about coming home. The main mitzvah of Chanukah is performed in the home. We light the candles of the chanukiah and place it in the window facing the street to publicize the miracle. After the destruction of the Temple, whose rededication by the Maccabees we celebrate during Chanukah, the rabbis taught us that the new temple was located in the home of each and every person. The dinner table is the altar, and each person is his/her own priest. During Chanukah, each person also acts as the priest and, by lighting the chanukiah, symbolically lights the menorah that stood in the Temple.
The home symbolizes safety and comfort, stability and camaraderie. A place where you can most be yourself and always feel accepted. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, in conversations he held about Chanukah, said, “If I live in a home, and no one knows what is special about me, it isn’t a house, it’s a hotel. In a hotel, I’m just a number. In a home, I have my special place.”(1) A true home that gives each person the space to be their own true unique light. There are many who sit in this congregation tonight and feel as if in their own home. Congregants have shared here with each other some of the most personal moments of family celebration as well as loss. We are comforted by familiar melodies and traditions that have spanned many years.
Tonight, Congregation Darchei Noam and Temple Chaverim come together as one community to realize the message of our Torah portion of venturing out and the message of Chanukah of coming home. But the fact is that we are all at home tonight. We are all in our joint home, Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel -- a home that provides our people with refuge from persecution, a home that is a beacon of Jewish culture, a home that serves as a place for each and every Jew to be in the way that he or she wants to be a Jew.
Reb Shlomo also said, “What is a true home? A true home doesn’t just warm me when I am there. A true home is a home that warms me also when I am far away.” This is the goal for the great Jewish project that we are building here in Israel. This is the goal for the home, the synagogue, we are building for our community here in Ramat HaSharon. We want to be a home for the Jews who live here and we want to be a home for those who come from far away (Lev HaShamayim, Conversations and Stories with Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, Chanukah, pp. 40-4).
One of the goals of community is to create a home in which each person has his own special place, a home that is open to all. Let us all work together to make a home in which there is a place for each and every unique individual, both for its members and guests, a home from which the light of Judaism and the warmth of friendship will emanate.