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Changing the World, One Person at a Time

by Rabbi Dov Greenberg

  

Library » Holidays » Chanukah » About | Subscribe | What is RSS?


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This time of year, if you notice a house with candles burning in the window, chances are that it’s a Jewish family celebrating Chanukah, the Jewish festival of lights. The Chanukah candles shine their radiance into the street. Our task is to bring light, morality and holiness not only inside our own homes, but also outward into the world.

But the problems out there are so vast and global: terror, environmental damage, natural disasters, countries and continents afflicted by poverty and disease. The impact we can make feels inadequate to the sheer scale of these tragedies. There are six billion people on earth. We are no more than a wave in the sea of humanity, a grain of sand on the surface of infinity. How then can you and I make a difference?

And on this Chanukah has something simple but quite significant to say. We repair the world in small steps, light by light, act by act, day by day. G-d asks us to do what we can, when we can. Each act mends a fracture of the world. A youth was picking up starfish stranded by the retreating tide and throwing them back into the sea to save them. A man went up to him and asked “This beach goes on for miles, and there are thousands of starfish. Your efforts are futile, it doesn’t make a difference!” The boy looked at the starfish in his hand and threw it into the water. “To this one,” he said, “it makes all the difference.” 

There are six billion people on earth. We are no more than a wave in the sea of humanity, a grain of sand on the surface of infinity. How then can you and I make a difference?
That story captures a fundamental idea in Jewish thought. We can’t fix the world all at once. We do it one day at a time, one person at a time, one deed at a time. A single life, say our sages, is like a world. Save a life and you save a world. Change a life and you begin to change the world.

We call this Tikkun olam, perfecting the world. Judaism believes that it is no accident that we are here, at this time and place, with these gifts and capabilities, and the opportunity to make a difference. This belief is known as divine providence: the idea that G-d is active in our live as individuals, not only, as the Greek philosophers believed, concerned with universals. We are here because there is a task that only we can fulfill. We can never know the ripple of consequences set in motion by the slightest act.

One day a poor Scottish farmer named Fleming heard a cry for help from a nearby swamp. There, caught up to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the youth from a slow and painful death.

The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman’s modest home. A rich nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy.


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Maimonides
Moses son of Maimon, born in Spain in 1135, died in Egypt in 1204. Noted philosopher and authority on Jewish law. Also was an accomplished physician and was the personal doctor for members of the Egyptian royalty. Interred in Tiberius, Israel.
Chabad
Chabad, an acronym for Wisdom, Knowledge, and Understanding, is the name of a Chassidic Group founded in the 1770s. Two of the most fundamental teachings of Chabad are the intellectual pursuit of understanding the divine and the willingness to help every Jew who has a spiritual or material need.
Chanukah
An eight day mid-winter holiday marking: 1) The miraculous defeat of the mighty Syrian-Greek armies by the undermanned Maccabis in the year 140 BCE. 2) Upon their victory, the oil in the Menorah, sufficient fuel for one night only, burned for eight days and nights.
G-d
It is forbidden to erase or deface the name of G-d. It is therefore customary to insert a dash in middle of G-d's name, allowing us to erase or discard the paper it is written on if necessary.