True Friends in a Time of Crisis

For the talmudically trained, there was a terrible and obvious irony in the attack on a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, by a machete-wielding assailant as Jews gathered within to celebrate Hanukkah. In the classical period, the rabbis had originally ordained that the Hanukkah lamp, or menorah, be lit outside the door of one’s house, in the street, so that Jewish commemoration of the holiday could be publicized to passersby, both Jew and Gentile alike. To this the Talmud adds a temporary dispensation: that besha’at hasakanah, in times of danger, when the enemies of the Jews are rampant in the streets, the lamp can be brought inside and lit there in privacy.