Rav Shalom Schwadron, who was known as “the Maggid of Yerushalayim,” once worked as a teacher in a yeshiva, and he noticed that a certain student did not attend the shiur for several nights in a row. He decided to go to the young man’s house and ask him why he had not been in the class, if perhaps he was ill or had some other problem.
The boy explained to him that the World Cup soccer competition was going on at that time. He was not attending the shiurim because he needed to watch the games… The boy assured the Rabbi that the following week, once the World Cup was over, he would come back to the shiur.
Rav Schwadron asked the boy what soccer was. The boy explained that there are two goals on both sides of the field, and each team has to try to kick the ball, without touching it with their hands, into the opposing team’s goal.
“Ok,” the Rabbi replied. “That doesn’t sound too difficult. I could do that.”
“No, Rabbi, you don’t understand,” the boy explained. “The opposing team has a goalie that stands in the goal and blocks the ball so it won’t go in.”
“I see,” the Rabbi said. “I assume that if we go right now to a soccer field, there won’t be any goalie there. So why don’t we just go right now, and we can kick the ball into the goal all we want!!”
The boy laughed. “What would be the point?!” he said. “The whole fun is struggling against the opposing team to try to score goals.”
“Exactly!” the Rabbi exclaimed. “The point is to struggle. Attending shiur next week, after the World Cup is over, is simple. The real ‘fun’ is to struggle to attend shiur this week, when it’s not easy, when you have to make a sacrifice for it.”
Hashem created the world and our lives in such a way that we have to work hard to achieve. He intentionally did not make things easy – because if things were easy, then there would be no point in “scoring.” We achieve and grow through struggle and hard work.
The Bet Yosef (author of the Shulchan Aruch) poses the famous question of why we celebrate eight days of Hanukah, instead of just seven. After all, there was enough oil for the candles of the menorah to burn the first night; a miracle was needed only for the next seven nights. Thus, the miracle was performed for only seven days. Why, then, do we celebrate for eight days?
Many different answers have been given to this question. One especially meaningful answer is that indeed, on the first day of Hanukah, we don’t celebrate a miracle. Instead, we celebrate what we, the Jewish People, did. For seven days, we celebrate the miracle that Hashem performed; on the first day, we celebrate the hard work and sacrifice invested by the Hashmonaim in resisting and defeating the Greeks.
Many Jews heroically defied the Greeks’ edicts. They continued learning Torah and performing mitzvot, for which they were killed. And during battle, many soldiers – including some of the Maccabees themselves – fell. The Jews made incredible sacrifices for the sake of Hashem. And so on the first day of Hanukah, we celebrate not what Hashem did, but what our righteous ancestors did, sacrificing and struggling to defeat the Greeks who wanted to destroy the Jewish religion.
The importance of this concept cannot be overstated. Of course, we must recognize Hashem’s miracles, and give Him praise. But at the same time, we need to understand that in order for these miracles to happen, we need to earn them. And we earn them through hard work, sacrifice and struggle. We earn them not by kicking the ball into the goalpost late at night when nobody else is on the field; we earn Hashem’s help when we work hard, when we put in the effort to kick the ball past the goalie…
Let us draw inspiration from the heroes who struggled and sacrificed to resist the Greeks’ oppression, and learn from them that in order to truly achieve, we need to be prepared to put in the work and make real sacrifices.