What does a hero look like to you?
For many, heroes are depicted as stereotypical characters, complete with capes and impressive physiques.
What does a Jewish hero look like to you?
Does it look like a man with an orange Kippa?
Does it look like a woman cradling two children in her arms?
Does it look like a young woman with a pony tail?
Does it look like an emaciated man with fire in his eyes?
Does it look like a diminutive woman in black robes?
There are so many Jewish heroes to emulate.
I have referenced just a few-there are so, so many more we need to learn about, to learn from.
Yarden Bibas shared that his captors promised him better treatment if he would convert to Islam.
His response?
“I was born a Jew, I will die a Jew”
The image of Shiri Bibas HYD, may Gd avenge her blood, holding her children as they are being taken in to captivity is seared in our consciousness forever. We can only imagine the strength she needed in those horrific hours.
But her heroism began well before.
Shiri is a woman that most of us would never have had the opportunity to encounter. But through the stories and the eulogies we learn about a strong, loving, protective wife and mother, professional who embraced her students and nurtured an exceptional family dynamic.
That is heroism.
Daniella Gilboa is a recently released hostage. She taught herself to sing Shalom Aleichem in Arabic so she could defy her captors and continue to sing the ritual prayers of Friday night.
Eli Sharabi, another recently freed hostage, shared that from the first day of his captivity he said the Shma prayer daily.
He said “the power of faith is incredible”.
This from a person who returned to a decimated family.
A lone survivor.
That is heroism.
And our own Stacey Hydrick, Dekalb County Superior Court Judge, who articulated her horror over the October 7 massacre and faced a public backlash.
Standing up for the truth is true heroism.

In 1933 the Nazis opened up
the concentration camp called Dachau in Germany.
The Jews who were arrested and interrogated there were killed. Their bodies were sent in sealed coffins to the nearby Munich Jewish community accompanied by strict instructions that the coffins were to remain sealed.
My Grandfather, Tzvi Landau ztzl was on the Chevra Kaddisha, the burial society, in Munich. He ignored the instructions and opened the coffins in order to ritually purify the bodies before burial, doing a process called Tahara.
When he opened the coffins, he was horrified by what he saw.
The people had been tortured and their bodies mutilated.
This moved by grandfather to speak to a Rabbi who was his mentor. The Rabbi told him to go to Palestine (as Israel was known then) as terrible things were on the horizon.
My Grandfather listened to this unlikely suggestion.
He saved his wife and children by doing so.
I thought a lot about my Grandfather today when we saw the hideous scene of the return of the coffins.
Suddenly 1933 did not seem so far away.
We are all reeling from the tragic news.
And the story is still not resolved, the beasts have put an unidentified body in one of those coffins.
Just like my Grandfather, we are horrified by what was seen when the coffin was unsealed.
The weather in Israel matched the mood.
Raining
Gloomy
Dark skies
But the Jewish people is indestructible.

There is a Talmudic story of an elderly man who was planting a carob tree. A young person passed by and scoffed.
“Old man, it takes 70 years for this tree to blossom, you will never see its fruit.”
To which the old man replied, “just as others planted for me, so too will I plant for others.”Today was TuBShvat.
The birthday of the trees.
Tu stands for the numerical value of 15, so literally the birthday of the trees is the 15th day of the month of Shvat.
Much is made of the fact that at this time of year there doesn’t seem to be much to celebrate.
The weather is cold and gloomy, and the trees themselves bare and looking dead.
But the reality is different.
What meets the eye is not the whole picture.
Because miraculously, in that very tree that seems devoid of life, something is stirring.
The sap is starting to rise within the tree.
Rebirth is taking place.
This message of hope is so vital to us now.
In the time of greatness darkness when hope seems out of our grasp, the trees provide us with the ultimate inspiration.
It may look dark, there is not even a glimmer of change, but deep beneath the surface, far from the seeing eye, there is movement.
That movement will bring growth and change.
Ella Blumenthal survived 3 concentration camps. At one point she was actually in a gas chamber waiting to be gassed. The Nazis had an order to murder 500 women and there were 700 in her group. As the orders were for 500 her group was led out and saved. In Auschwitz, Ella was determined to survive. Her only remaining relative, a niece named Roma, begged Ella to allow them both to end the suffering by touching the electrified fence. Ella convinced her to hang on just one more day. Each day she delayed the darkness just for one more day.
When asked about her gestalt in the face of such despair, Ella said she never gave up hope.
In 2022 she was quoted as saying “there is always sunshine tomorrow”.

Rena Quint is a Holocaust survivor.
Rena was a young girl during the War and has limited memories of what she experienced.
She barely remembers her own mother.
She does remember that the family was rounded up at the synagogue and there was a moment where she had a window to escape. She thinks her mother pushed her out the door. She can’t imagine what strength that required.
Many years later, Rena learned that all those who had been captured that day, were taken to Treblinka, where they perished.
In her book, A Daughter of Many Mothers, Rena chronicles her incredible journey of survival. She credits that survival to many women, mothers as she calls them, who protected her along her way.
Being a mother is a difficult job.
It is not defined or limited to being a biological mother, certainly as seen by Rena Quints experience.
Part of being a mother is having faith, often in the most trying of circumstances.
A mother has faith that the child will…survive…thrive…achieve excellence…transcend…she believes in her child, she sees the possibilities.
In Hebrew the word for mother is Em, or Ima.
The letters EM are the first two letters of the word EMUNA, which means faith.
Mothers give birth with faith, they give birth to faith, and their steadfast faith in Gd carries them through.
These Torah portions chronicle the journey of the Jewish nation through the exile of Egypt and to ultimate redemption.
The Talmud states that it was in the merit of the righteous women of that generation that the redemption took place.
This week’s Torah portion, Beshalach, gives us a glimpse of the stalwart nature of those women.
The portion narrates the Jews departure from Egypt and the remorse Pharaoh feels after their leaving.
He exhorts his army to take off in pursuit and can only convince them to do so by giving them great wealth which they carry in their chariots.
The Jews arrive at the shores of the Red Sea, where they find themselves at an impossible impasse.
The Egyptian army is closing in and before them and there is no hope, no road to be taken, only the Sea before them.
One of the Princes of the 12 Tribes begins to walk into the water and when the water reaches his nostrils and he is about to drown, the Sea miraculously splits and the Jews walk through to the other side.
The Midrash shares a conversation between two Jews as they traversed the Sea. One said to the other “it was muddy in Egypt and now it’s muddy here”
This proverbial conversation reflects an attitude.

We are reading the Torah portions in Shmot, Exodus.
The first letters of each of the names of the portions
SHmot , Vaera, Bo, Beshalach, Yitro, Mishpatim spells out the word Shovavim.
(It works when you use the Hebrew letters)
During the weeks of Shovavim we focus on the Jewish family and the roots that support it.
We focus on the Jewish women and their faith.
In Hebrew faith is Emunah.
The two first letters of Emunah are EM, which translates to mother.
The basis of faith in the family stems from the mother.
The basis of faith in the Jewish people stems from the women.
The Talmud famously teaches us that it was in the merit of Jewish women that we were redeemed from Egypt.
There is a Midrash that says that the women took it upon themselves to support the men during the time of exile. They did this from a place of trust and faith in Hashem, Gd. Without their support, continues the Midrash, it is questionable if the men would have survived.
The Talmud goes on to say that it is in the merit of righteous women that we will ultimately be redeemed.
We are in a long dark exile that seems hopeless.
Yet, we are tasked to bring it to an end.
The famous poem of Aishet Chayil, the paean of praise to the Jewish woman, penned by King Solomon in Proverbs 31 says “she arises when it is still night”.
This refers to the strength the Jewish woman who stands up against adversity even in the darkest of times.
It doesn’t seem that times can become darker.
If we are waiting for the inspiration that will bring us out of these times, we need only look around the room.
It is our responsibility to step up and bring redemption.
Time is of the essence.

My dear friend Dr. Julie Zweig forwarded me an astonishing article.
Entitled “From the ashes of a Pasadena synagogue, a powerful discovery is made” the
LA Times shares an incredible story.
As we are all aware, there have been terrible wildfires in California which have wreaked much havoc and destruction.
One of the many buildings that were burned in the fire was a synagogue in Pasadena. The whole edifice came down.
Except for one wall.
To the shock and surprise of all, the wall that remained had been hidden behind years of construction which now had been removed to reveal a mural.
The mural depicted a Biblical scene which seems to show the Jews walking in the desert; men, women and children. Some of those portrayed are playing instruments, and in the midst of it all, a towering and majestic palm tree takes center stage.
The reveal of this mural gave much hope and inspiration to the congregation.
During such a dark time, they felt the message that hope is hiding behind the destruction.
All is not lost.
The timing of this find could not be more appropriate.
This week’s Torah portion is called VaErah and it depicts one of the lowest periods in Jewish history.
The Jewish people are enslaved in Egypt and are subjected to the worst brutality imaginable.
They are tortured and terrorized.
All of a sudden, a man named Moshe, Moses, appears on the scene and announces he has been sent to redeem them and take them out of this horrible slavery.
We can imagine the response.
Dancing in the streets.
Fireworks.
Euphoria.
Strangely enough - none of the above.

This week we begin the book of Shmot.
Our Sages give a name to each of the Five Books of Moses.
For example, the book of Genesis is called the book of Creation.
That makes sense.
Genesis is about the creation of the world and the creation of the family that will birth the Jewish nation.
The Book of Shmot is given the appellation of the Book of Redemption.
That is a little more difficult to comprehend.
Shmot begins with the challenging story of the family of Jacob becoming enslaved, of a Pharaoh who no longer knew Joseph, and the story of a very dark and tragic time for the Jewish people.
The beginning of the book of Shmot actually seems to reflect the opposite of Redemption entirely.
Our Sages teach us that what looks very dark and dangerous, the slavery, is actually the beginning of Redemption.
Redemption emerges from exile. The descent into exile was a necessary step to rise to be able to go back to the Land of Israel. The exile is the crucible of fire from which the Jewish people emerge as a nation.
We would not be able to arrive at the point of salvation without first undergoing the process of slavery.
This idea is borne out in a detail mentioned in the Torah portion.
Moses is rescued from the Nile by the daughter of Pharaoh and is raised in the royal household. Nonetheless he knows of his Jewish roots and never forsakes them. He leaves the palace to seek the welfare of his brethren and at one point he sees an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Jew. Moses intervenes to save the Jewish slave and kills the Egyptian. This act turns Moses into a fugitive and he must run for his life or he will be executed for killing the Egyptian. As the story unfolds, Moses runs to the land of Midian. He arrives at the town well, the local meeting place and he is in the right time and place to come to the aid of the daughters of Yitro who have gone to the well to water their flock. They are being harassed by the local shepherds and Moses comes to their defense. When they return home, unusually early, due to Moses assistance from their daily harassment, their father asks how they have returned so quickly.
The daughters answer their father saying, an Egyptian man saved us.
Some of the commentators take the practical approach and say although Moses was not Egyptian, he dressed the part and sounded like an Egyptian, so the conclusion that he was in fact Egyptian is logical.

Do your kids make fun of you?
Hopefully the teasing is lighthearted and gentle in nature.
The jokes usually tend to tease out deeper family dynamics.
When the children are younger it may reflect the embarrassment they feel due to our behavior (teens anyone).
When they are older the trading may reflect that they secretly appreciate the family quirks but are not quite ready to embrace it.
Hence the teasing is hopefully in good fun.
One of the areas that’s gotten a great deal of response in our family is what has become known as the “bless-fest”.
When we part from our children or grandchildren we give them a blessing.
We learned this custom from our Rabbi and mentor.
We saw that when he was saying goodbye to his offspring, he would always send them off with a blessing.
It’s really a powerful idea.
Our children go out into the world and encounter all types of challenges. We have the opportunity to arm them as best as we can with positive upbringing, instilling good values, teaching them to look both ways before they cross…and also with a blessing.
Can’t hurt.
Certainly makes them feel like we love them.
But sometimes it’s annoying.
Especially when many of them are leaving at the same time, or if they are in a hurry.
Hence the “light hearted” teasing.
But they’ve come to expect it.
And hopefully like it.

It’s the last night of Chanukah.
I want to give you a gift.
The gift is one that is handed down to us from the first Chanukah and it is relevant to each and everyone of us.
Our Sages actually instituted the holiday of Chanukah a year after the events that occurred.
Why did they wait a year?
In our long Jewish story there are many miracles that have taken place.
Yet we don’t have a holiday commemorating each one.
How did the Sages pick the ones that got memorialized?
Each holiday has a special energy that is created. If that spiritual energy becomes palpable and part and parcel of that time, the Sages understood it was to become a holiday.
Therefore, a year later, one year after the holiday of miracles, the Sages understood that the quality of the miraculous was still present and so Chanukah was established.
Every year at this time we feel
the power of the miraculous and we need to tap into it.
There was a story that went viral last year on Chanukah.
A young man by the name of Tamir Hershkowitz returned to his parent’s home in Kibbutz Beeri. Tamir’s parents were brutally murdered in the attack on October 7 and their house set aflame. It burned and smoldered for three days. When the fire was finally extinguished, Tamir went looking among the ruins to see if there was any items to salvage. Remarkably enough, there was a Menora which survived. So, on Chanukah, Tamir went back to the remnants of his home and lit the Menora.
He said it was very important that the light emanating from the house should not be one of destruction, but one of hope and promise.

Chanukah is the story of the unexpected victory of a rag tag army over a super power. When the Jews overcame the Greek army they returned to the Temple to find it had been desecrated by the occupying army. The Priests began the process of cleaning up and restoring in order to again do the Temple service. The first order of business was to once again begin lighting the Menora.
Unfortunately, all the containers which stored the oil were defiled by the Greeks and were not fit for use. During the cleanup of the Temple, one cruse or vial of pure oil was discovered. There was tremendous excitement as now it would be possible to once again light the Menora.
But there was another glitch.
One cruse of oil would only be sufficient to light the Menora for one day. It would take eight days to make new oil.
The dilemma was should they light the Menora?
There was only enough for one day, why light if the next seven days there would be no light?
This is actually a very deep question.
If you would have been there what would you have done?
Would you have lit the oil?
Would you light a Menorah without anyone rational chance of continuing forward?
How many of us would have lit the light.
It just wasn’t enough.
Sometimes we don’t feel “enough”.
Do we wake up a little late and it ruins the day for us as we feel that we haven’t shown up as we should.
Or, do we have expectations for ourselves and we are so hard on ourselves if we don’t meet that impossibly high bar we have set, we feel there is no point in even trying.
Instead of shining our light, shining the light that Gd has given us, we sit in self imposed darkness because we are not enough, or there won’t be enough for us to make an impact.