Blog - Lubavitch House @ University of Pennsylvania

Monday, December 18, 2023 - 6:47 PM

Chanukah on Steroids.png

Chanukah this year felt like it was on steroids, and was exactly what we needed right about now.

When Jewish People were feeling that the world had become a dark place, a place where people can’t seem to figure out the difference between good and evil and the small voice of truth is so muffled by much louder lies. The message of Chanukah was a balm on our pained souls. The message that light overcomes darkness;">the many, was especially poignant this year.

I think a very big thanks for this goes to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. It was about 50 years ago that the Rebbe created the revolution of celebrating Chanukah in the biggest and most public way possible. You see publicizing the miracle of Chanukah is one of the mitzvahs of the holiday, which is why we light the menorah near the window or door. The Rebbe took that to the next level, on the one hand to remind Jews about the holiday and encourage them to light menorahs in their homes but also to publicize the Chanukah miracles and message which the world needs to hear again and again.

Initially this public display wasn’t a given. Many Jewish organizations felt it was better to hide one’s Jewishness. But for the past 50 years Chabad emissaries have been putting up giant menorahs in public spaces everywhere. On Independence Mall, near the White House, Eiffel Tower, Kremlin, Brandenburg Gate, 5th Ave in NYC and thousands of other towns and cities across the world. The tallest ones standing at 32’ tall.

This year I believe these menorahs were appreciated more than ever, by millions of Jews around the world. It felt so good to be publicly validated, and showed the world that it’s safe to be Jewish in public and that being Jewish is something to be proud of.

This year as a large crowd of students and faculty gathered on the first night of Chanukah to light the giant menorah in front of Van Pelt, there was something so powerful in the air. On the spot where so much negativity had been chanted over the past few weeks, we now stood together to flood the world with light. To show the world that goodness overpowers evil and that the Jewish People do not back down. We will not hide in fear, we will come out stronger and more united than before because that’s who we are.

It set off a week of public and proud displays of Judaism, infusing us with so much life and energy and reminding us that we have so much to be grateful for.

Thank you G-d for gifting us this Holiday of Chanukah and the beautiful messages within it.

~Nechama

2023 at Penn

Monday, December 18, 2023 - 6:30 PM

This week when I went out on campus to help Jewish students say prayers and do mitzvahs for our brothers and sisters in Israel, there was some background noise, to put it mildly.

As large numbers of people walked past us shouting ‘free Palestine’ and ‘from the river to the sea’, implying that it’s ok to butcher thousands, including babies and the elderly, because they were occupiers. I wondered if this is what the early 1930’s in Germany felt like. It was a frightening moment here in 2023.

Today is my father, Prof. Harry Reicher’s 9th yahrtzeit. (r’ Moshe Zvi ben r’ Dov)

I found myself thinking about what he’d think of Penn’s campus today.

One of the many things he did in his life was teach at Penn Law School for 19 years.

One of the courses he taught there, which he created, was Law and the Holocaust. In it he examined how the Nazis created laws to help them perpetuate the Holocaust without technically breaking any laws. Germany was a highly cultured society after all. He wanted his students to understand that laws don’t necessarily equal morality, and they can be misused in immoral ways.

Things feel so upside down right now, people being ok with the mass slaughter and torture of our People, once again. Universities, the media, politicians, huge corporations, Uber for goodness’ sake, (are we all switching to Lyft now? Until we find out that they’re also sending money to aid our enemies).

But, and this is a big but, as I told so many on campus, the Jewish People will prevail, we always have and we always will because G-d promised that in His Torah. We’ve seen that in our 3,000 year history.

The only question is how much do we have to suffer along the way.

The Rebbe, and the teachings of Chabad Chassidus, teach that G-d is One, as we proclaim in the Shema every day, and that the world we see is a facade, created to enable a physical world to exist as a seemingly independent existence.

G-d desired a dwelling place in a physical world. How did He fit His huge spiritual force into physicality? By concealing it. To the point where we can live in this world and believe that He doesn’t even exist, despite the fact that He is recreating this world at every moment and the whole world is actually Him.

Why would He do such a thing? Why would we do what He wants if we don’t even know He’s there?

Because He wanted us to elevate this world, by studying His Torah and doing His mitzvahs. He wants us to do that until we finish all that elevation and reach the ultimate purpose of creation; when G-d’s presence in the world will be revealed, when we’ll understand His ways, when there will be no more war and terror, no more suffering and evil, no more pain and grief. The times of the final redemption, the times of Moshiach.

When it comes to bringing that about, the Rebbe taught that that’s in our hands, we can work on achieving that and that there we are not helpless.

Every mitzvah we do brings that idyllic world closer, and not only do we need to do mitzvahs but our job is to also share the knowledge and mitzvahs with all people in our sphere. That’s why G-d put them into our sphere.

Don’t know what the mitzvahs are? Want to know the deeper meaning of why G-d wants us to do them precisely as they are? That’s where Torah study comes into the picture. Besides Torah study being a Mitzvah itself, we should know the hows, whys and whats of G-d’s plan.

Let’s do our part, bring light into this dark world, peace, safety, security, and healing to all those in the Holy Land and around the world. The final redemption may it happen immediately.

~Nechama