This past Chanuka, I was privileged to witness my own
personal miracle. I'm not exactly the type to have strange
things happen to me and I'm surely not deserving of such
Heavenly forces appearing in my behalf. I'm just an ordinary
Jewish lady who tries her best to perform mitzvos. I
have trouble concentrating when I daven and I need to
work hard on not speaking or listening to loshon hora.
In short, no one was more surprised than I to see such an
unusual phenomenon. But it really did happen.
My father, z'l, was also an ordinary Jew. His early
life was spent in the Palestine of the Turks, the Germany of
the Kaiser, back to the Palestine of the British, over to the
Depression in America and all in all, not much stability for
becoming a Torah scholar. As the Depression lifted and gave
way to post- World War II prosperity, he established a
family, kept mitzvos, and educated his daughters to be
proper Jewish ladies. He supported Torah scholars and other
Jewish causes. In short, a good Jewish man.
Boruch Hashem, he merited grandchildren and great-
grandchildren who are learning Torah in the land of his
birth, Eretz Yisroel. Still, an ordinary Jew -- not one that
you'd associate with private miracles. But the tale I tell
you really did happen.
My Dad was a businessman who would take over once a year for
the shammosh of our shul. The shammosh
had a son who had married a girl from Israel and settled
here. So once a year, he took a month off for a visit and my
Dad took his place. In his later years, he ran the daily
minyan, reminded people when they needed to say
Kaddish, and was the official driver of the neighborhood for
funeral attendance. He drove until the age of eighty-five.
If one had to put a label on the type of Jew that he was, one
would say he was a shammosh, someone always ready to
serve the public however he could.
His yahrzeit falls on one of the last days of Chanuka.
I lit a candle in the house and we lit the Chanuka Menora
outside in its own little glass house. In the morning, at
about seven-thirty, I checked to see if the yahrzeit
candle was burning nicely and got a little teary-eyed. Then I
glanced outside at the glass house.
Amazingly, there was a little flame still burning out there,
as well. I went to take a second look to see if I was
imagining things. It was really lit. Which little cup was
it?
Why, the shammash, of course. My Dad was winking at
me. It's all right, maidele. I'm in a good place and
everything is really alright.
Miracles can happen even to plain, ordinary Jews like us.
