A Chanukah Message from Allen H. Lipis
Read community insights, advice and perspectives during Chanukah.
The holiday of Chanukah is the celebration of a miracle — a candle that was supposed to burn for one day that burned for eight days. The question you need to ask yourself is this: do you really believe in miracles? We tend to use the word miracle for something that is extraordinary, but often can be explained. That’s not a miracle. A real miracle is a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of God.
If you believe in God, then you should believe in miracles. Here are two miracles that I witnessed. We had friends that wanted to sell their house for two years and never had an offer. They went to their rabbi and asked for guidance. The rabbi said, “Check your mezuzahs.” They went home and found that several of them were not kosher. They repaired the mezuzahs, and the next day, they had an offer on their home. Was that just luck or a miracle? They most assuredly believed that God had had a hand in making that sale happen.
When I was single, my roommate and I went to shul, a shul we didn’t usually go to. My roommate was 32 years old, a lawyer and never married. He thought younger women were not interested in him. After services, the rabbi introduced us to an Israeli couple who asked if one of us would agree to sign a betrothal agreement to marry their 18-year-old daughter in Israel, so that she could get out of army service. My roommate agreed, knowing nothing about the family or the girl, and when she arrived in Columbus, where we lived, he was invited for dinner to meet her. It was love at first sight, and six months later, they were married.
You can say that either story could be attributed to good luck, or some other rational explanation. There are others who see these stories as miracles, honest-to-God miracles, and I am one of them. You just gotta believe.
Allen H. Lipis is a columnist and contributor to the Atlanta Jewish Times.
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