Happy Hanukkah from all of us in the Abrahamic Reunion
“Purity and Holy-ness can save the world”
Hanukkah 2021 Message for the Abrahamic Reunion
by Rabbi Shlomo Dov Rosen, Yakar Jerusalem
“Hanukkah is the celebration and the commemoration of the miraculous success of a people’s revolt against an invading imperialistic, Hellenistic army in the time of the Second Temple.
The invasion aimed to contaminate and bring impurity to the temple, and to undermined Jewish culture and religion, and small number of people with pure aims stood by what they believed in, and God helped them, to bring back the purity to the Temple, to their own lives, and to repel this invading army.
It is a time to meditate upon the meaning and the forcefulness of small numbers against unequal odds when they stand by purity and holiness in their own lives, and the possibility of these small numbers miraculously turning the tides of cultural invasions and militaristic invasions. IN the context of peace-work,
Hanukkah is really a time to realize who holiness and purity of intention and purity of action in one’s own life is able, if God so desires, to have real physical and cultural effects, and that these cultural effects come through investing in that purity in one’s own life.
It’s able to turn the tides of military and cultural invasions, and bring harmony and peacefulness to the world, purity, internalizing purity and holiness makes a real effect on the world, and it’s able to save the world.”
–Shlomo Dov Rosen, Yakar Jerusalem and Abrahamic Reunion collaborator, presenter, speaker