Rabbi David Wolpe teaches:
When the Israelite spies enter the
land of Canaan, they grow afraid. Returning to Moses, the spies report that
after seeing the giant inhabitants of the land they looked to themselves as
grasshoppers and so they must have looked to the inhabitants. (Num. 13:33) Was
their sin fear, lack of trust in God's power? The Kotzker rebbe suggests that the sin
was not. Their sin was in caring how they appeared to the inhabitants of the
land. Drawing their self-image from these giant strangers negated their own
identity. Rather than see themselves as God instructed, a sacred people, they
saw themselves as they imagined the Canaanites saw them.
Theolgian
Thomas Merton diagnoses the same malady, still alive in us, in his
autobiography The
Seven Story Mountain:
"The logic of worldly success
rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends upon the
thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to
be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place
in which one could at last become real!"
Are you
real because you are on Twitter? Only alive on Facebook? Is your image of
yourself a feedback loop, or do you know, deep in your soul, who you are, and
how you stand before God?
How do we stand before God? One way is by rededicating ourselves to ourselves
and to our Judaism, our community, and our spirit. Chanukah is the holiday that
celebrates this rededication. Just as the Holy Temple was saved and rededicated
by the Maccabees, so too do we invite you to join us for our annual Chanukah
dinner this Saturday evening at 6:00 pm to light the Chanukah lights and
rededicate yourselves to Micah and to yourself in a new way. Bring your
homemade Chanukiot and come celebrate the Festival of Lights with Micah!
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