The battle of the Maccabees and the miracle of the oil that lasted for eight days are often treated as discrete phenomena. What after all does a military victory have to do with oil burning for eight days. The Al Hanissim prayer hardly mentions the miracle of the oil, instead it focuses on the military victory in the following terms. "Gibborim beyad Halashim veRabim BeYad Meatim", the strong fell into the hands of the weak and the many into the hands of the few. Only then could the lights be lit in the holy temple. Last week's parsha, Parshas Vayeishev begins with a curious Rashi. After the previous parsha's conclusion had described the descendants of Edom and all the kings of Edom who had ruled before a single king had ruled in Israel, Parshas Vayeishev mentions the Toldos of Yaakov as being Yosef. And the Rashi uses a parable to explain that. A flax merchant led a caravan of camels through the street loaded with flax. A blacksmith standing by the side of his sma...

Moshe's leadership of the Jews in the wilderness is bookended by two incidents, that in Parshas Beshalach after the Jews have left Egypt when the people clamor for water and toward the end of their journey through the wilderness in Parshas Chukas where once again the people clamor for water. What does water represent? Life. While people can survive for a time without food, they cannot live at all without water. Especially in a desert. Food is therefore livelihood and the manna represented explicitly livelihood, which is why it was not harvested on the Shabbat. But no such stipulation was made for the well. People always need water. Water is life. The journey through the wilderness was a journey of faith. By depending on G-d for their life and their livelihood, their water and their food, they were meant to learn faith. Demanding water from Moshe both times demonstrated a lack of faith. In Parshas Beshalach, we are told that they journeyed Al Pi Hashem, on the word of G-d. An...