Christ First Forum

As we are about to celebrate the 'birth of Christ', I thought we needed to be reminded how God has bless the Church...
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Light in the Darkness: a Hanukkah Story
In Defense of the Faith
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Wendy Wippel

Christmas Eve, 1938. A train pulls out of Berlin headed for Amsterdam. Judah Geier and family are on that train, fleeing their homeland ahead of the gathering evil that is Nazi Germany. For Judah however, is not Christmas, but Hanukkah. And it will be one that they will remember.

Judah Geier was a wise man, wiser than many in 1938 Germany. Hitler had given the Jews plenty reasons to get out. Nazi propaganda labeled Germany's Jewish citizens as the reason for Germany's loss in WWI and its subsequent economic collapse.

The Nazi party enacted sanctions against the Jews, one by one, to German law, prohibiting them from many occupations, enrollment in German colleges, forcing them to sell their businesses to Gentiles at a loss and restricting them to non-Aryan areas.

In August, 1938 the Nazis decided to get serious, and expelled Polish Jews with German citizenship, dumping them on the Polish border. Poland refused to let them in, leaving 8000 Jews stranded in Polish fields in inhumane conditions.

The situation was repeated often enough in some degree that prominent Jewish statesman Chaim Weitzmann observed that the Nazis had managed to divide the world into two parts: "places where Jews could not stay and places where Jews could not go."

Many German Jews, however, still refused to believe that the country which had given them peace and prosperity for decades could make the persecution and even murder of their Jewish citizens official German policy.

Judah Geier, however, had paid attention, and now it was November, 1938.

November 9, in fact. Kristallnacht, the "Night of the Broken Glass", on which Nazi thugs took to the streets all over Germany, destroying thousands of Jewish synagogues, cemeteries and businesses.

And Judah was sure, quite sure, that he needed to get his family out.

He planned to leave on Christmas Eve, no doubt hoping for a little relaxation in security and possibly some goodwill on the part of German officials, who would no doubt, as always be alert for Jewish citizens insulting the Fuhrer by attempting to flee.

It was late late afternoon on Christmas Eve that Judah, his wife, and their children, Arnold and Ruth, boarded the train to Amsterdam and took seats by the window.

The train, belching smoke, pulled out of the station. The family struggled to appear calm. Well aware of the incalculable dangers they faced, their fears centered on a particular future moment.

A moment that they knew grew nearer with every clack of the wheels.

The Nazi Gestapo as well as the border police waited at the Dutch-German border to inspect their paperwork.

Judah's heart, however, had another sorrow. It was Christmas Eve, but that was irrelevant to this little Jewish family. It was also Hanukkah, the commemoration of the rededication of the temple after the Macabee victory in 165 BC.

A celebration of the menorah oil that, miraculously, lasted eight days, forever celebrated as a testimony to the God-ordained survival of the Jewish people.

It was the eighth day of Hanukkah, in fact, the culmination of the holiday. Judah was a cantor, and never had his family not lit the Hanukkah candles. Never had they not celebrated God's faithfulness and provision.

It was the eighth day of Hanukkah, and he and his family were traveling incognito, slinking out of town instead of lighting the Hanukkah candles in defiance of the Nazis who were just one more, in the historical record, who had tried to eliminate the Jews from the earth.

That consumed his thoughts as they approached the border, where the Gestapo and the German police waited.

A life-or-death moment in which the wrong word or even a nervous glance could spell doom.

But it was the Hanukkah candles that consumed Judah's thoughts as the train sped west as a mere sliver of a moon appeared in the inky winter sky. He fingered the nine candles in his pocket, which he had carried knowing that sooner or later the family would have a chance to set the candles to light and recite the blessing.

Surely God would understand if the celebration was delayed by a day or two.

Inevitably, the moment arrived. The train began to slow and then shuddered to a stop. German officials on the ground huddled together, comparing passenger lists and checking assignments, while Judah and his family waited. The minutes ticked by, an interminable ten minutes.

The Geier's sat, nearly paralyzed with fear.

Finally the Nazis started up the steps.

And suddenly were plunged into darkness! The entire station, inexplicably, had lost power!

Judah, without thinking, pulled the candles out of his pocket and lined them up in the window of the train. One by one, he lit them, setting the shamash, the ninth candle, as is tradition, apart.

"Blessed are you, are God, the Creator of Time and Space, who performed miracles for our ancestors in the days of long ago and in this time…" he whispered under his breath.

And the Gestapo came running, their boots echoing loudly through the silent night.

Judah resigned himself to what may come. He had lit the candles, and he didn't regret it. They had honored G-d, not men.

The door burst open with a bang and the German officials flooded into the car, their focus on the lights and the people they belonged to.

Judah readied himself, but he was not arrested.

He was praised!

The light of the candles allowed the Nazis, always the epitome of German efficiency, to proceed on schedule with checking papers, the chief of border police taking only a cursory look at the Geier's papers before again thanking them effusively for their resourcefulness and help before moving on.

The Germans, who considered Jews lower than dogs, apparently had no reason to know it was Hanukkah or recognize the candles as the lights of the Jewish festival.

The Geiers were safe.

Sitting in stunned awe of the G-d who had delivered them, their brimming eyes drank in the light of the nine candles for the next half hour while German officials, using the light of Judah's candles, completed their task.

Then, just as the candles began to sputter out, the station lights came back to life.

AS the train pulled out towards Amsterdam and freedom, Judah pulled his son Arnold close and told him to remember what happened here, because, like the Macabees, they had had a Hanukkah miracle. God had, indeed, performed a miracle for them just as in the days of long ago.

But why would God do this? Aren't the Jews cursed because they disobeyed? Hasn't God cast them aside? (That's what a lot of Christians think!)

No. God told the Jews, "For you are a holy people to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.". (Deuteronomy 14:2 NKJV)

He told them that He made them His very own people forever. (2 Samuel 7:24)

The last time I checked, forever doesn't mean till you tick me off.

He loves them. And Psalm 89 says when they disobey, He will punish them with the rod but He will not remove his lovingkindness from them. (Psalm 89:32-33)

Thankfully, He loves us too. The Messiah sent to the Jews has become the child born to Gentiles also. The gospel offered first to the Jews is now ours as well.

So today we can celebrate Hanukkah as the arrival of the light that shines in the darkness, the darkness of a lost world and of individual sinful hearts, though the world and those hearts do not always comprehend it.

I came across this story in a precious little book called "Small Miracles of the Holocaust" by Yitta Halberstam and Judith Leventhal. This story, retold, was like others in the book that recount amazing "coincidences" in the lives of Jews at which confirmed God's love in the midst of that terrible time. I highly recommend it! "

Happy Hanukkah!

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