On Sunday we will celebrate the first night of Chanukah. I thought it was appropriate to share this incredible story I heard from R'Elimelech Biderman.

There was a secular Jew in Israel who although having religious ancestors decided after WW2 that he wanted nothing to do with religion. He grew up on a secular kibbutz, got married and fully ingrained himself and family in secular Israeli society. He eventually had children but the last thing he wanted was for his children to have anything to do with religion. When his son grew up and turned 13 he didn't have a bar mitzvah but the father did want to mark the occasion by buying his son a very nice gift. He told his son they would go to town and he could pick out whatever he wanted. The father, by now a very wealthy secular Israeli, took his son and began going from store to store to find the perfect gift. The son didn't find anything he wanted, not a keyboard, not a camera, nothing. The son then pulled his father to the religious section of stores and the father tried to convince his son not to go in that direction. The last thing the father wanted was for the son to buy some religious gift. Nevertheless, the son prevailed and he saw in one of the shops a beautiful menorah. The son was enthralled by the menorah and told his father that it is what he wants. The father kept trying to persuade his son otherwise but wasn't successful. They entered the store and the father asked the store owner how much does the menorah cost. The store owner replied that the menorah was not for sale. The son urged his father to offer more money and still the store owner refused. The store owner said that the menorah was hand-crafted by a religious jew in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The son kept pushing his father to offer more and more money until the store owner finally agreed to sell them the menorah.

The son was ecstatic and took home the menorah and placed it in his room. Everyday he would take down the menorah from the shelf and he would look and examine it. The father was at first concerned that his son would have some spiritual awakening but as the months passed he saw that nothing changed. The was just fondly connected to the hand-crafted menorah. One day as the son was in his room the father hear a loud scream and ran to his son's room. He found his son next to the menorah which had apparently fallen and broken. The son was distraught that his dear menorah was broken. The father began to pick up the pieces and he saw that one of the arm's of the menorah was hollowed out and there was a hand-written note stuck inside. He opened up the note and almost fainted. He began to read the note which was written by the man who crafted the menorah. It explained how he was in Auschwitz and it was Chanukah and he wanted to light a menorah. Some prisoners used different makeshift menorahs while risking their lives to perform this mitzvah, but he wanted to beautify the mitzvah and therefore handcrafted the menorah. The note was signed by none other than this man's grandfather!

The man sat there just thinking about how far he has come and what he left while his grandfather sacrificed so much for his own religion. That chanukah he lit candles with his grandfather's menorah and slowly made his way back to religion. He moved with his entire family to a religious area and returned to his roots.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Chanukah,

Heath