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The drinking on Purim that renders bochurim both a danger to themselves and to those around them has too many enablers
My wife and I will once again flee our Jerusalem neighborhood this Purim for the calmer haven of Ramat Beit Shemesh. At some point, I realized that I have no wish to spend Purim where one cannot drive without fear of drunken young men jumping on the hood of one’s car.
But I would not mention my holiday itinerary were it not for something that happened last year. We returned to Jerusalem late afternoon of Shushan Purim to join my son for his seudah. On Motzaei Purim, as I was driving my mother home, I heard no fewer than four ambulances leaving the neighborhood.
The two miracles of Chanukah were Hashem’s response to the Greek denial of a realm above nature
Chanukah falls at the darkest time of the year, the time when the nights are longest. And the twelve months since last Chanukah have certainly been dark ones for most of us.
Yet just as the darkness of night better offsets the Chanukah lights and increases their glow, so too if we genuinely appreciated the meaning of those lights, they would have the power to dissipate much darkness in our lives, both as individuals and as a people.
THE MIDRASH (Bereishis Rabbah 2:4) expounds the word “darkness” at the beginning of Bereishis (1:2) as a reference to the Greek exile: The Greeks “darkened the eyes of Israel with their decrees, for they would say to them, ‘Write for yourselves on the horn of an ox that you have no portion in the G-d of Israel.’ ”