It is a pleasure to be with you on this first Annual Chanukah Banquet since my coming to Springfield. All this past year – eleven months – has been a series of “firsts”: first High Holidays, Purim, Simchat Torah, and so forth. This is the last of my “firsts,” for in a very short time I will have completed my first cycle in Kodimoh. Ordinarily, it would be inappropriate to hold a Kodimoh Festival – a purely congregational celebration – on Chanukah. Ein me’arvin simchah be‑simchah – we do not mingle one celebration with another, so as not to detract from either (as with weddings on Chol HaMoed or Purim). But today, both Kodimoh’s personal and Israel’s national Chanukah festivals coincide in essence: Lo va‑chayil ve‑lo va‑koach, ki im be‑ruchi, amar Hashem Tzeva’ot – not by might nor by power, but by My spirit, said the Lord of Hosts. And what is all this, if not a festivity in honor of our purpose, which is the ruach, the spirit of Torah and Judaism. The program of Kodimoh – in its ritual, educational, administrative, and auxiliary aspects – is the story of the implementation of that ruach, that Divine‑like spirituality, in all phases of our congregational life. All that has been done – and all that will be done – is geared to the premise that the primary function of a synagogue is the advancement of ruach Hashem Tzeva’ot, the spirit of Torah in the lives of those whom Kodimoh serves. I have been asked to present, in outline, both a review of the past year and a preview of what we expect in the coming year, God willing. But I shall not make a clean‑cut division between last year and next. At present we are in a state of flux – of continuing activity and progress. A great Hebrew poet once said something that in English would be rendered, “Today by tomorrow will be yesterday.” Let us look upon Kodimoh’s program as a continuous and unbroken implementation of ruach Hashem, the spirit of Torah. In the realm of ritual: High Holidays featured a pre‑Selichot social, reverent…

My task this evening is to install the new administration of our Kodimoh. Looking over the list, I discover that there are a total of seven units that must be officially charged and installed. And I do not regard this as a mere fortuitous coincidence. The number seven is a ”magic number" in Jewish life. It is above all the number of days of the week, the symbol of the creation of the world, and therefore the symbol of creativity as such. It is my hope and my prayer that this administration will fulfill that function of creativity on the pattern set down before it. For the work of the officers of a synagogue is much like the study of Torah - Im yom taazvenu yomayim yaazveka, neglect it for a day and it neglects you for twice that time. You cannot keep the status quo in a shul - it’s either ahead or backwards, either creative or, chalilah, destructive. Our installation, this evening, of each and every one of the new administration is based on that proposition, the proposition that you must determine to be creative, else you harm this holy work זזhich you have undertaken• Let us proceed then, with the installation, on the pattern of the first seven days in which God created this Universe.2 .On the first day, G-d created Heaven and Earth - and He also created Light, and Darkness. The ability to distinguish between Light and Darkness, the duty of spreading light and subduing the forces of darkness, is a sacred one. In the first of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls discovered recently, an ancient Megillah whose authorship has not yet been determined beyon doubt, tells of the battle between the BNEI OR and BNEI CHOSHECH, the Children of Light and the Children of ^arkness. The members of the Board must consider themselves the true BNEI OR, Children of Light. Upon you we will rely to bring great light into the congregation whom you are priveleged to serve. Upon you depends the future of the administration, and hence the future of Kodimoh. Apathy, indifference, pettiness and lack …

1. Stanley Stern said nice things about me. I'd like to say, publicly, how proud I am of Stanley... not only in person, but symbol – of war + young. Vigorous public-spirited + comm'y-mixed leadership... Parsha... His parents. Please don't suspect חיישינן לגומלין – reciprocity of flattery. ST – Zeide – אין וועל שלווגרן דין טאטע, או דושלאג מיינעם... Not at all... genuine apprec'n – would like thank all you to com'g ....... 2. This evening not a eulogy... inappropriate חנוכה celebration

I know of no better way to express our collective gratitude at reaching the venerable age of 100, or my individual thanksgiving for ten years in office, than by reciting with you the traditional blessing, “She’hecheyanu ve’kiymanu ve’higianu la-zeman ha-zeh.” Blessed is God who has granted us life, let us exist, and enabled us to reach this season. The three critical verbs in this ancient blessing form a meaningful framework for our most cherished sentiments this day. Let us look at them, one by one, in reverse order. Ve’higianu: “He has enabled us to reach this day.” There were several years during this past decade when we never thought we would reach this day, when our future was in doubt. There were those who counseled us to close our doors and go out of business. Others advised us to declare insolvency even though we would live under a cloud forever after. But those of stouter hearts and greater vision and courage prevailed – and we persevered and fought and labored with unfaltering spirit as virtually every member of our boards rallied around our magnificent lay leadership. And so – we have “reached this day” – with dignity and honor. In thanking the Almighty, I thank too the instruments of His salvation: the distinguished leaders of our boards whose names I refrain from mentioning both out of respect for their humility and out of fear of inadvertently omitting other worthies; our many friends who gave sacrificially of both their time and their substance; my colleagues, whose loyalty and hard work bordered on the unbelievable; all of you who are with us to celebrate and who so richly deserve to join us in our joy because you were with us in our times of woe and worry. Ve’kiymanu. God let us exist to this day. This verb has always bothered me. Surely, if she’hecheyanu and ve’higianu – if He granted us life and enabled us to reach this day – then certainly He granted us existence! I am reminded of the Woody Allen character who wrote a scholarly paper, entitled, …

The "Rambam Award" bestowed upon me by Amit Women leaves me both grateful and humbled. One cannot but feel the weight of one's own intellectual, spiritual, and moral inadequacy when his name is linked to the immortal Rambam or Maimonides. Permit me, therefore, to try to overcome this paralyzing inferiority – at least for a short while – by using this special occasion to suggest the relevance to us of Rambam's teaching, specifically in relation to our present holiday, Hanukkah. Here is the cleaned version of the text with all odd characters removed, en dashes with spaces, and typos corrected. Words and phrasing have been preserved exactly as in the original, per your instructions.The Rambam, in his great halakhic opus, the Mishneh Torah, codifies the laws of Hanukkah. The very last of these laws is of special interest:היו לפניו נר ביתו ונר חנוכה או נר ביתו וקידוש היום נר ביתו קודם משום שלום בית... גדול השלום שכל התורה ניתנה לעשות שלום בעולם שנאמר דרכיה דרכי נועם וכל נתיבותיה שלוםRambam is telling us that if one is exceedingly poor, so that on the Friday night of Hanukkah he must choose between buying a single candle for Shabbat or a candle for Hanukkah, or between buying a Shabbat candle or wine for Kiddush on Shabbat, he must choose the Shabbat candle over all else. This is so, the Rambam decides on the basis of the relevant Talmudic text in the second chapter of tractate Shabbat, because the Shabbat candle (unlike the Hanukkah candle whose light may not be used for any illumination or other "profane" purpose) is kindled for the sake of shalom bayit, domestic peace. Without the Shabbat candles, without light in the home on Shabbat, people would fall, trip, get in each other's way, hit into each other, and tempers would flare. A dark home is a home without joy, without peace, without shalom bayit. Even though today we enjoy the kind of affluence which ensures illumination even without the Shabbat candles, their symbolism remains as powerful and relevant as ever. The…

The festival of Hanukkah, but recently concluded, is centered about the מנורה – celebrating the victory of the Israelites over the oppressive Greek‑Syrians. The origin of the מנורה goes back to Moses, who was commanded by God to construct it. I want to share with you a rather strange legend about the מנורה: Moses had difficulty with the divine instruction to construct the מנורה in the Tabernacle – משה נתקשה במעשה המנורה עד שהראה לו הקב"ה מנורה של אש... What did the Sages mean to teach us with this comment? What made them attribute to Moses difficulties which even a beginner would not have, so clear and explicit are the Biblical instructions? I believe that one major problem perturbed them: מנורה yields mixed signals; is symbol two apparently conflicting values — beauty/spirituality. The very loving attention Torah showered on details ornamentation מנורה is sufficient evidence its status as work unblemished art. In course time, generations Jews came to revere מנורה as Jewish symbol of beauty. At same time, pure flame of מנורה made of מנורה itself the ultimate symbol spirituality/רוח. Thus, Zechariah envisions a מנורה, exclaims, כי לא בחיל ולא בכח כי אח .ברוחי אמר ה״צ. Now, these two values suggested by the מנוחה, beauty and spirit, da not at all seem compatible. Beauty is external, it speaks to appearances. Spirit is inwardness, it reflects essence, not appearance. Beauty is enchanting, spirit is enduring. Beauty thrives in revelation — artist seeks exposure; spirit shuns public scrutiny and flourishes only in concealment, in the closed chambers of the heart, shy and shame-faced. In course history, symbols expanded: not only beauty but all worldly knowledge; & spirit=sacred, Jewish teaching. And these two as well — considered incompatible, irreconci1eable. Yet the מנורה implies both; hence difficulty experienced by Sages/Moses. How indeed construct this center-piece for the Temple when it in and of itself is a contradiction? Hence, the מנוחה required the direct…

I am delighted to greet the President of Israel, Chaim Herzog, an old and distinguished friend, in a triple capacity: as the President of Israel – a country in which over 10% of our undergraduate alumni have settled and now call “home,” and where we send some 300 or more students every year to spend a year or two in study – as an honorary doctoral alumnus of Y.U. – and as a role model for our students, a man who has had the finest education in two worlds – the world of the university and the world of the yeshivot, where he studied at Yeshivat Chevron as well as at the feet of his late, famed father, Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog. We appreciate your friendship in making this special trip and wish you well on your return journey this evening – בואכם לשלום וצאתכם לשלום. Hanukkah, like everything else in life, is open to a variety of interpretations, and to an even greater variety of misinterpretations. The event has been taken to signify a purely secular nationalist struggle – and the celebration of a supernatural miracle; the political assertion of freedom of religion – and the revolt against Hellenism, the then-contemporary form of assimilation. But whatever one’s inclination in historical exegesis, one thing is clear: the Hasmoneans (or Maccabees) were fighting for something beyond themselves. Their success consisted not in appealing to self-interest, but in rallying people to a higher cause – which made their self-interest meaningful and tenable. There is nothing quite so unrealistic and impractical as the cynical and smug assumption that people are interested only in their status and stomachs. But what was the overall and overarching cause for which our Hasmonean ancestors were willing to sacrifice their very lives, for which they revolted against the Greek-Syrian oppressors, and which we celebrate on this night of Hanukkah? The key lies in the special addition to our regular prayers during this happy festival, the Al HaNissim prayer. The oppressors had one priority:…

גמרא שבת כ"ג ע"ב: בעי רבא – נר חנוכה וקידוש היום מהו? קידוש היום עדיף משום תדיר, ושאינו תדיר – תדיר קודם, או דילמא נר חנוכה עדיף משום פרסומי ניסא? בתר דאיבעיא הדר פשטה – נר חנוכה עדיף משום פרסומי ניסא. תוספות שם: לפיכך כשחל ראש חודש טבת בשבת, אז ההפטרה היא “נרות זכריה” – לא “השמים כסאי” – דפרסומי ניסא עדיף מתדיר. ולעניין מפטיר – תחילה ראש חודש, דתדיר, ואח"כ חנוכה, כיון דמצי למעבד תרוויהו – עבדינן תרוויהו, ותדיר ושאינו תדיר – תדיר קודם. יש שני מיני יהודים דתיים ושני מיני הורים – מין אחד של “הפטרה”, ששיטתם היא או–או: או תדיר או פרסומי ניסא, ואין להם הסבלנות לחטט אחרי פתרון יותר מעולה. ויש כאלה שהם הטיפוס של “מפטיר” – דהיינו, מחפשים אחרי דין של “מצי למעבד תרוויהו”, ולא לדחות אלטרנטיבה טובה אם אפשר בלאו הכי. חיה ודוד – הם מבני “מפטיר”, אינם מרוצים מהשקפה צרה, תמיד מבקשים אופק יותר רחב. כך הם אדוקים בשיטת תורה ומדע... שמים לב תמיד לבנותיהם היקרות, ובו בזמן עוסקים בצורכי ציבור וגם מקצועיהם אינם נזנחים... התינוקת המתוקה שאנו חוגגים בשמחה לידתה – כינו שמה פנינה מאירה, צירוף של שמות אבי–מורי ואמי מורתי, עליהם השלום: פערל (פנינה) ומאירה (מאיר שמואל). ומה מאוד גדולה שמחתי שזכרונם מונצח ע"י בתה של בכירתי תחיה. אמא ע״ה הייתה יותר בגדר “תדיר” – אהבתה לנו הייתה תדירה ותמידית ובלי הפוגות... ואבא ז״ל היה יותר בחינת “פרסומי ניסא” – השתעשע בהשגותיהם והצלחותיהם של בניו ובנותיו כאילו קרה לו נס שעליו לפרסם... אבל שניהם היו “מפטיר אידך” כפי הגדרתי לעיל. בחג האורים הזה, בשמי ובשם רעייתי, הנני מאחל לחיה ולדוד – ולטובה ותמר ואריאלה ואהובה – מזל טוב, ויהי רצון שהבת המתוקה החדשה כשמותיה כן היא: פנינה המאירה את בית הוריה, וסביה וסבותיה, וכל בית ישראל – אמן ואמן.

I have often wondered: Why is there such an elaborate festival of Hanukkah to commemorate the re-dedication Temple in Jerusalem, yet nothing to celebrate its original construction? Why eight full days for rebuilding and not a single day for the original building by King Solomon? I suggest that the answer is this: re-doing is far more arduous than doing; it elicits less inspiration, there is no drama, almost no thrill, and a painful absence of applauding audiences and cheering crowds. The Rabbis of the Talmud put it succinctly: קשה עתיקא מחדתא — the old is more difficult than the new.But it is precisely because it is so much more thankless, because it appears so much less rewarding, that it is considered as or more important, and hence more praiseworthy, than the original doing. Because the Macabbean effort at rededicating the Temple was less dramatic and impressive than Solomon's initial construction that we remember Hanukkah annually to the accompaniment of candles and song, prayer and pomp.That is, at core, the message of renewal, although it is also called by a variety of other names, all of which essentially boil down to the same thing —reinventing, recreating, remaking, restoring, reprioritizing, rebuilding.Voltaire (in his Philosophical Dictionary) partially recognized the truth of this idea when he wrote:Men who are occupied with the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exercise of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create.Although I thank Monsieur Voltaire on behalf of our Albert Einstein College of Medicine for his accolade for physicians, I say that he was only "partially right" because it holds true not only for medicine but, as well, for a host of other disciplines which help mankind in its quest for renewal. Moreover, it is not only "almost as noble as to create" but, I submit, more noble.That is what Hanukkah teaches us: to recognize …

א) השאלה נשאלת: מדוע חוגגים אנחנו שמונה ימים של שמחה זכר לחינוך המזבח ושיקום המקדש מחדש, אבל אין שום זכר חגיגי לבנינם המקורי בימי שלמה—האם אין בנין הבית החדש ע״י שלמה המלך חשוב לנו כחינוך הבית ע״י החשמונאים? התשובה: בנין חדש תמיד מלווה ע״י חוש של חידוש ואנרגיה של חלוציות, אבל לשקם מה שנבנה כבר אין לו אותה אווירה של גיל ושמחה ורגש של תרומה חדשה ונקייה. ועל כן מגיע שכר יתר למי שעמל בלי טובת חוש של עשייה מחדש וכויב) האורתודוכסיה המודרנית זקוקה לארגון הדוגל בשם א״י ומדינת ישראל עפ״י תורת ישראל, בלי להיות כעין סניף למפלגה דתית כלשהי, ארגון בו יש מקום לנצים ויונים גם יחד... לאלה הפועלים לחקיקה דתית ולאלה שאומרים דיינו... תנועה. לא מפלגה...ג) בפרשת וישלח — "וישאלהו האיש לאמר מה תבקש". האדמו״ר מקוצק באר: המלאך לימד ליוסף "לאמור" תמיד, לחזור ולשאול את עצמו "מה תבקש", מה המבוקש שלך בחייך עלי אדמות, לא להרשות אינטרסים קטנטנים להסיח דעתך מהמשימה הנשגבה של חייך, של מבוקשך. אם אנו נעשה חשבון ונשאל את עצמנו על המבוקש של חיינו אנו, נסיק שאי אפשר בלי להתחשב עם א״י... ולפיכך אנו מוכרחים לעשות כל מאמץ שאפשר לנו לבסס את תנועת המזרחי במדינתנו...ד) גמ׳ שבת דף כ״ד — מהו להזכיר של חנוכה בברכת המזון? ומסיק שם שמזכיר בהודאה. וקשה, למה לא שאלה הגמ׳ אותה שאלה לגבי פורים? אלא, שפורים מסמל לנו ההצלה מידי אויב שרצה לאבדנו גופנית, באופן גשמי, "להרוג להשמיד ולאבד" וכוי ולכן מובן מאליו שמזכירים נס פורים בברהמ״ז, אבל השאלה היא לגבי חנוכה שעניינה הצלה רוחנית וכוי כידוע, והתשובה היא לפענ״ד שא״א להודות על הצלה רוחנית בלי מעמד ובסיס גשמי, אין קיום לרוח בלי בסיס חזק ובריא של החומר. ולכן עלינו שנאספים כאן לשם שיקום המזרחי על איתנו, לאושש ולחזק את היסוד הפיננסי של התנועה ואז תוכל האידיאולוגיה שלנו להתקיים ולהתקבל...