Parashat Vayigash: Reflections on Miracles

Where are the miracles in life?

I look into the light of the candles each night and wonder at the miracle of light itself, how it somehow seems to exist both in this physical world as well as in some other more ephemeral world. It is here to behold, yet it speaks to us of something also here, but not so easy for us to behold. Light seems to span the distance between heaven and earth, between this world and the next, between the living and the dead, the body and the spirit.

The Sefat Emet says there are two types of light, the divine sort that shines and gives light without consuming, and the human sort that burns and consumes and eventually runs out. The Hanukah light, he says, is powerful because it is a mix of the two. There was the small jug of oil that started the light --a human light that shone by consuming -- but out of that light also grew a divine light that didn’t require oil, that somehow shone without burning and lasted and lasted and lasted.

This is the miracle of Hanukah. As I glance around at my family, I feel that they, too, are part of this miracle. They, too, are a sort of light. I can feel them and hold them and see them, but they also exist in my heart, in some miraculous place of eternal presence that is not limited to physical presence. I carry in this place both those that are with us and those that are not; they live inside me like the little light that would not go out.

The parsha speaks of family reunions, of the coming together of the family of Yaakov, as Yosef is tearfully reunited first with his brothers and then with his father. Surely this is the biggest miracle of all, the ability to come together in love and forgiveness, to hold on to one another despite past grievances and irritations. Surely this attachment, this love, this connection between human beings is a kind of miracle, an eternal divine light that burns between us.