Q:
Today when boruch Hashem there’s no Antiochus so in what way does the mesiras nefesh of the Chashmonaim, of Chana and her sons, inspire us?
A:
Mesiras nefesh doesn’t mean only that you have to die. There are other ways too. Because when a mother has a lot of children, a whole houseful of children, and she’s sending them all to the yeshivah and Bais Yaakov – she’s busy day and night sacrificing for them to be good Jews; the father too – so that’s a great deal of mesiras nefesh.
You have to know that the frum Jewish mother has before her eyes always Chana and her sons. But instead of sacrificing the sons for the resistance of idolatry, that she should see her sons slaughtered before her eyes, she sacrifices her sons so that they don’t become doctors. They don’t become lawyers. Instead they go to the yeshivos. I don’t say they shouldn’t become doctors or lawyers but that’s not her primary aim. They go to the yeshivos and spend their best years in Torah and yiras Shomayim.
Now, instead of seeing her children slaughtered she finally goes to the chasunos of all her children and of her grandchildren and she has nachas from all of them, Jewish nachas. But it’s because of the sacrifice that the story of Chana supplied.
And when a Jewish boy somewhere out in a Midwestern town decides he wants to be frum and his mother says, “Don’t go crazy. Take the yarmulke off your head,” and she gives him a slap. And then his father, when he comes home from work beats him up because he’s wasting his time with Jewish books. In the high school they ridicule him. And he keeps the yarmulke on his head. He’s moser nefesh. That boy you have to know was the result of Chana and her seven sons.
And there are a thousand of examples like that, every day. So there’s no question that we’re still moving forward today with the push that we got from the story of Chanukah, the mesiras nefesh of our ancestors.
Tape #533 (December 1984)
