FACETS OF LIFE

2017 / 5778

Sent Thursday, 14 December 2017 · for Shabbos 16 Dec 2017 · כ״ח כסלו תשע״ח · also listed under Chanukah

Dear Family,

I hope everyone is well.

Mommy and I were learning together on Tuesday and we came across some interesting points about the Chanukah DREIDEL, and how this also represents FACETS of our own lives.

The dreidel has 4 facets, each with a Hebrew letter representing a particular aspect.

I think everyone knows how the game is played.

The Gimmel (gantz) wins whole kitty

The Hei (halb) wins half the kitty

The Nun (nisht) means no win, but also no lose

The Shin (shtell) means loss, ie one has to pay into the kitty.

This also represents different facets of our personal lives, or how each day is going ie:

Some days we will feel elated - Gimmel

Other days happy but not elated - Hey

And then there could be days when we are not only feeling not so good - Nun,

But we could even feel like we are 'losing it' and quite upset - Shin.

This is only when we look at one facet at a time.

But really the DREIDEL is one entity with all 4 facets.

And the 4 facets together spell out the word Nes Gadol Hayah Sham. Which means' A great miracle happened there'

This means that the Macabees were being oppressed by the Greeks (facet of Shin), but they did not focus on this. They rather focused on fighting and being victorious (facet of Gimmel).

And a Divine miracle happened, and they were victorious against all odds.

This can be seen in next weeks Parsha Vayigash, which is always close to Chanukah.

Yaakov and Klal Yisrael were heading into a dark exile.(going down to Egypt)

And where does Yaakov send his son Yehuda?

GoShNaH -the same 4 letters as on the dreidel!!!

And what does he set up over there? A Yeshivah.

He recognised the seeds of Redemption within the exile, as long as we retain our connection to the Divine, in the same way as it occurred with the miracle of Chanukah.

And one more connection.

If you add up the numerical value of all the 4 letters on the dreidel, it adds up to 358.

This is the same value as the word MOSHIACH.- 358

Ie when Moshiach comes, He will show us how every FACET of our life, even the darkest of them, is part of the Divine purpose, thus illuminating the darkness of exile.

Gut Shabbos and Gut Chanukah to all.