R' Amichai Gordin from Shabbat Bi-Shabbato
The family. Celebrate with the family. Light a lamp in every house. Not every person, every house. Every family. Do you want to take special care with the mitzva? Light one candle for every person in the house. But the lighting is in the home, within the family. You cannot light outside, only inside the house. Is the father on reserve duty or the child on a field trip? No matter, you can light for him, in your home. The main thing is that the family should light the lamps.
"A lamp for every man and his home" [Shabbat 22b]. Chanukah is a holiday for the family.
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The community. Celebrate with the community. Not alone, together with the community. Send food to your neighbors from across the hall. Give gifts to the poor people at the other end of the street. Read the Megillah together with all the others. You are a community. Drink wine together and be happy together. The community in the nearby city will celebrate Purim one day later. No matter, that is a different community, and it celebrates at a different time than you do. You are a community in an unwalled city, they are a community in a walled city. Every community has its own appropriate time. Enjoy yourselves together with your community.
"The Jews gathered together" [Esther 9:2]. Purim is a holiday for the community.
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The nation. Celebrate with the nation. Everybody ascends to Jerusalem together. Dimona, Acco, Herzeliah, and Karmiel. Everybody. Everybody eats the sacrifice together. Everybody. If a person cannot come, he or she is given a second opportunity a month later. Everybody is meant to take part in the Pesach sacrifice. Those who miss the first date have Pesach Sheini, when all those who did not make it the first time can join together. We will do everything possible so that the whole nation will take part. Let nobody be left behind.
"Let all of the community of Yisrael make it" [Shemot 12:47]. Pesach is the holiday of the nation.
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Assaf Inbari grew up in Kibbutz Afikim. In the beginning of his book, "The Home," Inbari explains the starting point for this historical novel that he wrote:
"The kibbutz defined itself as a family. Privacy was not allowed. There are no secrets in a family. Photos of parents and their children were taken out of the family albums and gathered into a shared album. Every personal letter that was sent to a member from Odessa, from Kiev, from Moscow, was opened and read out loud to everybody by whoever picked up the envelope first, whether the one to whom it was addressed was present or not. This was in spite of the protests by Clara, who was alone in her opinion that there should be some limits to sharing. 'In a family there are no secrets,' she was told. Every letter, no matter how intimate, was read by candlelight." [Page 27].
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"In the evening, when they were sent away to visit their parents [from the children's house – A.G.] the jackals that gathered around the fence howled at them. 'Let G-d protect me,' a little girl whispered while she walked. When she reached her parents' home and told them that she had arrived safely because G-d watched over her, her father told her that there is no G-d. Darkness and jackals surrounded her when she traced her steps back to the children's home, without G-d." [Page 150].
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The kibbutz movement tried to build a new world. To do this, it destroyed the old accepted traditions. The members of the kibbutz replaced G-d with social justice and morality. The intimate family unit was replaced by a community based on sharing. The community became the new family.
Much has already been written about the loss of G-d by the secular kibbutz movement. But the members lost not only G-d, they also lost the family. The three partners in the creation of a person – the Holy One, Blessed be He, the father, and the mother – were replaced by another kind of sharing = the kibbutz. There were no longer three partners in creation of a person, but only one entity – the kibbutz.
Giving up the family had two unfortunate consequences. The first one was the loss of the intimate basic family unit. The second result, which was just as unfortunate, was the loss of the community. The character of a community is a very delicate matter. On one hand, it must create unity and a feeling of mutual responsibility, but on the other hand it must also allow an individual to feel freedom and to have an independent living space. When the community replaces the family, a human being loses his or her individuality and freedom. It is very wrong for the community to become a person's family. We need both a community and a family.
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The proper structure based on family – community – nation is a basic form within Judaism. During the cold and dark winter, we begin the process of mending ourselves within the framework of the family. On Chanukah, our family lights a small lamp and begins to light up the darkness.
After the main part of the winter has passed, a few minutes before sunrise, the dawn begins. Why was Queen Esther compared to the dawn? Rabbi Chiya Bar Abba and Rabbi Shimon Ben Chalafta were walking in the Arbel Valley and saw the beginning of the dawn. Rabbi Chiya said, "This is how the redemption of Yisrael will begin." After cold months of mending within the family, the community mending of Purim begins.
After sunrise the nation is born. After the mending on family and community levels, Pesach arrives in the spring – the mending of the nation as a whole. First we start with the family, and then the community. Out of these events, only then, will the nation rise up again.
