• Our Hanukkah celebration is coming up on Wednesday. Please remember to bring your children to the school by 6:30 pm wearing their full uniform (including black shoes). Also, we are happy to tell you that Howard Sandler Photography will be photographing and videotaping the whole event, allowing everyone else to sit and enjoy the show!
• One of our grade 1 students, Jordan, is helping his mom with a food drive. We will have donation boxes set up at the Hanukkah production. He would love it if everyone brought a non-perishable food item with you to donate on Wednesday evening.
• The January hot lunch form is up on the website. It needs to be put in the PTA box no later than Thursday, December 16th.
• Please remember that game cards such as Pokemon and Chaotic are not allowed at school.
   

The students in grade 6 Navi got to take an unusual approach to learning the book of Samuel. Left, Kyra and Haley report on their interviews with the Levi family, prior to Samuel's birth. The students also created a magazine and got to act out the first chapter of Samuel I.

D'var Torah - Chanukah

While many of us are familiar with the Gemara in Shabbat 21A that deals with "Mai Chanuka" - "what is Chanukah" - it is doubtful that many are acquainted with chapter 99 of Bereishit Rabbah that further elucidates what Chanukah is. While the former tells the famous story of the Maccabean discovery of the uncontaminated flask of a one-day supply of olive oil designated to light the Temple Menorah which  miraculously provides enough light for eight days, the latter relates in interesting detail the relationship between the Maccabees and the Greeks.

The Maccabees were priests, members of the house of the Levi, the third son of Jacob, who fights against the third empire, the Greeks, determined to destroy the Jews. The first two empires are referring to Babylonia and to Persia. The midrash lists numerous differences between the Greeks and the Maccabees, not only in regard to their disparities in fighting forces, but in their manner of dress in battle, and how they fight those battles. Finally, the midrash concludes with words that are familiar to us from the Al Hanisim prayer, that G-d hands the plenty referring to the Greeks into the hands of the few, the Maccabees.

On close examination of this midrash, we note that we are not simply interested in statistical points of information and trivial differences in terms of the respective accoutrements of the Greeks and Maccabees. We are looking at the intrinsic chasm that separates two distinctly different ways of life, which only finds their interrelationship on the battlefield. While we today revere the works and writings of the Greek philosophers and other intellectual giants of that civilization, we stand on our guard as the Maccabees of ancient history to ensure that the differences of the lifestyles and mores of Judaism and Hellenism are not confused and confounded. The Maccabees fight for the survival of Judaism not only militarily, but in their lifestyle dedicated to Torah and to the Mitzvot. We are their heirs, and we dare not squander their gifts of Jewish continuity to us.