TAKING A CHANCE

Rabbi Rick Brody

Oct. 31, 2007 / 19 Cheshvan 5768

As we enter the darker months of the year (it’s almost time to change the clocks), we realize that soon, Chanukah will be upon us.  In many ways, Chanukah celebrates the phenomenon of chance.  When the Maccabees waged their revolt against the Greek-Syrian occupiers of the Jewish Homeland, they were taking a huge gamble.  A small guerilla army stood little chance against an international super-power.  Yet the Jewish leaders of the time felt they had no choice but to engage the risk of total annihilation; they were already suffering a deadly spiritual blow from their oppressors – the forced assimilation, the desecration of the Temple, the destruction of Jewish culture.  So, even with the odds against them, the Jews took action; and even though they employed daring strategies and clearly had resolute faith, we can still describe their revolt as the proverbial “roll of the dice.”  Or, perhaps a more appropriate metaphor would be a “spin of the dreidel.”

The history of the dreidel and its relationship to Chanukah is intriguing.  We learn one story as children: The spinning top reminds us of how our Jewish ancestors would hide their forbidden Torah learning by pretending to be engaged in mere child’s play. It turns out that this explanation is a late European invention, devised by school teachers to make a completely secular gambling game relevant to the holiday.  Even the four letters on each side of the top had nothing to do with the Chanukah story – they were German indicators for the results of each spin: N for Nichts (nothing), G for Ganz (all), H for Halb (half), S for Stell (put). The Hebrew letters on the dreidel seem to have come directly from these German letters – but with the very Jewish addition of telling a story.  For Jews, any little game could communicate the gist of a grand narrative and deliver an important lesson.  The story the school teachers chose to tell in their “spin” on the celebration of Chanukah was one about miracles, the defying of all odds:  Nes Gadol Haya Sham (“A great miracle happened there”).

I think there is a more basic connection between the game of dreidel and the Chaunkah story, more fundamental than the transformation of a secular toy into a lesson about the holiday (although the idea of incorporating aspects from secular culture into religious life is indeed one of the truly important legacies of the struggle for Jewish identity that Chanukah emphasizes).  The connection lies in the notion of taking chances.  Every time we spin the dreidel as an act of play, we are actually reenacting (on the most simple, benign level) the risk-taking of our ancestors.  We do not know what the outcome of our efforts will be.  Yes, we can turn to faith, but the critical point is that we take action; remember the joke about the fellow who keeps asking God to help him win the lottery and then finally hears a voice saying, “Buy a ticket!”  Before there can be any kind of divine role within our lives, we need to pick up the dreidel and give it a whirl, recognizing that the final outcome is, ultimately, not within out control.  Some say that this recognition of the need to initiate miracles through our own actions is the real miracle of the Chanukah story.  So much of life is a game of chance – the miracle is that we don’t let that trap us into idleness.

What meaning does this “chance-taking” have for us today?  If we wish to find enduring meaning in our journey through life, we take risks.  Sometimes, our pursuits of an as-yet unknown outcome are for personal advancement, for the thrill of facing a good challenge, or to launch ourselves into more exciting and fulfilling opportunities for growth and development; sometimes, like the Maccabees, we find ourselves in perilous situations, in which the risk we wind up taking is one upon which our lives or our well-being depended; and sometimes we are completely overcome with a sense of blessing that we are in the right place in the right time – that we didn’t even “take” a risk, but are simply the beneficiaries of a divine confluence of seemingly random events:  The dreidel landed in a way that was for our gain.  Our habitual response in such situations is to thank God.  We don’t truly understand if a divine force has deliberately entered into our lives to bring about the desired consequence, or if the result really is much more of what we call, in totally secular terms, chance.  What we do know is that we feel blessed to be on the receiving end of it all – to “get” all the gelt in the pot.

I have had many experiences in my life in which I have embraced this feeling of blessing that was clearly beyond my control.  One, recently, had no real, tangible “gain” for me, but was rather more of a mystical moment.  I was taking a walk with Noa in the late afternoon, and the sun was beginning its descent towards the horizon in a clear, blue sky to the west.  To the east, the white of an almost full moon was already visible.  How lucky I am, I thought, to be on this planet at this moment, at just the right distance from this ball of fire that provides the light and warmth that allows for the amazing diversity of life of which I am a part.  In the billions of years in which this universe has unfolded, we have no idea if there has ever been another confluence of space and time that has yielded the miracle of what exists on this planet – the current, short span of several hundred thousand years of human development that have led to my writing this article and your being able to read it.

Another blessing of chance for which I am grateful is the opportunity to serve this special community.  Ami Shalom was looking for a rabbi at the same time I was looking for a congregation to serve.  The match between the synagogue and me was unexpected, but it came at the right time.  I feel incredibly blessed to be your rabbi, to share with you my sense of the subtle miracles of life, and help us grow in relationship to Torah and God.  As we approach this Chanukah, let us remember that a combination of daring risks that do not have any guaranteed outcomes and a willingness to receive the blessings of chance can yield miracles for us in our time.  Let us spin the dreidel and rejoice at both the opportunity to do so and in whatever results come when it lands.  With the right perspective, we can always gather in all the gelt.