A Chanukah story

The whole battalion was camped together for the first time since last year for the imun gidudi (battalion maneuvers). We had been at it for two-and-a-half weeks already: first in the Bika (the Jordon valley) on the shooting ranges and on maneuvers from squad to company level, and this week in Midbar Yehuda. Since Sunday, we had been competing against each other in competitions ranging from running to navigation and shooting skills, and every soldier in every company and platoon in the battalion had given his all. Now we had come to the targil gidud, the culmination of our maneuvers. It was Wednesday morning. We got orders to take down the tents that we had been using since Sunday, and the officers and sergeants went to look at the fire ranges and to be assigned objectives and boundaries. We, the soldiers, were left alone on base to prepare for the coming twenty-four hours.

The plan was for us to move out toward our objective at midnight in battalion force and to launch our attack in the wee hours of the morning. The range was to be taken by late morning when we would fall back to a staging area to daven and rest up for further missions. By the next night we would be back on home base sleeping in our own beds. There was only one problem: It was erev Chanukah. When were we to light the first candle of the menorah?

The gidud (battalion) had by no means forgotten Chanukah. The menorah would be lighted in Shul after mincha, and then again at midnight, when we assembled at the jump-off point. But, we all knew, one can not fulfill the mitzvah of neros-Chanukah by a public lighting (which is for pirsumai nisa, publicizing the miracle of Chanukah) alone. When were we, the soldiers, to light our own menorahs? A group of hesder soldiers (who do military service during their yeshiva studies, and then go right back to yeshiva) confronted the rabbi of the gidud, hassling him as to what we were to do in order to fulfill this mitzvah. The problem was not time – we had hours from nightfall until we had to move out to the jump-off point. The problem was the place, where to light our candles. According to Jewish law, the menorah has to be lit at home (or if you’re away from home, wherever you call home). We had already taken down our tents, and we would not be back at our home base in the Bika until the next night (in time for the second Chanukah light) and so on this night we had no home. The Rav therefore paskin’d: being that we were not home and had nowhere to light the menorah, we were patur and did not have to light the menorah at all that night.

In the army it is often hard to remain committed to all the religious standards you had been so careful about before. Even in a religious unit there are many soldiers who are not strong in Torah and mitzvos. I was speaking to some friends, Lubavitchers, some of whom it was hard to identify as being Lubavitch. When I told them what the Rav had explained about our being patur from lighting the menorah, they were outraged and demanded: “What do you mean that we’re patur? Our grandfathers in Siberia lit the menorah in potatoes, with the threat of death hanging over their heads! Do you think that we, in the Israeli army, are not going to light the menorah?!”

Night fell. The officers had not yet come back from the pre-targil briefing. We went to the shul for mincha, the menorah was lighted, and together we sang Haneiros Halalu. I walked out of the shul and came upon one of the Lubavitcher bochrim sitting on the floor next to a large rock. Standing proudly on the rock was a Chanukah candle, and next to it, the Shamesh light. When I walked by ten minutes later, there were twenty candles burning on the rock and a whole circle of soldiers standing around them. The lone flame of one boy who could not even think of missing out on lighting the menorah had ignited the chag for tens of soldiers around him, and as much as I wanted to join everyone else in the shul, somehow the lights on the rock were so much brighter.

Later, at midnight, just before moving out to the maneuvers, we had the public menorah lighting in the pouring rain. Then we jumped off to an all night hike, a morning raid, and a very long patrol the next night that ended where we had started: by a public menorah lighting. An officer from another unit spoke about the previous night; he had never seen anything as beautiful as an entire gidud at attention for a menorah lighting, completely disregarding the rain. But for me, it was the candles on the rock that had captured the true spirit of Chanuka, bursting into flame from the spark burning in a chosid’s neshomah.

The Chanukah story happened thousands of years ago, yet we still celebrate it today, two thousand years after the destruction of the Bais-Hamikdash. Just so, those candles on the rock are long gone, but their light will shine forever.