Resilience - CHRONICLE Online/The WORD 12/11/25

Weekly On-line Rabbi's D'var-Torah

December 11, 2025

14 Kislev 5786

Parashat Vayeshev

Last Saturday, about 20 mezuzahs were torn off the doorposts of apartments in a government-subsidized apartment building for seniors in Toronto. It’s being treated as a hate crime, but no arrests have been made.  

Now, this didn’t happen in 1930’s German. This didn’t happen in 1940’s Iraq. This happened in a sophisticated North American city with approximately 200,000 Jews. It is both shocking and not surprising at the same time.

The very next day, a group of volunteers showed up to replace the mezuzahs for free and, while they were there, they brought Hanukkah gifts for each affected apartment. It was a beautiful gesture.

The word “mezuzah” literally means “doorpost.” The first mention of a mezuzah in the Torah is in Exodus 12, when the soon-to-be-freed Hebrew slaves were told to place blood on the doorposts of their homes so that the Angel of Death would know which houses to pass over during the tenth plague in Egypt. The blood on the doorposts was a symbol of God’s protection.

Today, we don’t place blood on our doorposts. Instead, we place a scroll with passages from the Torah. It combines the ancient protection of Exodus 12 with another ancient tradition—amulets. Not only is the mezuzah supposed to be sign of God’s protection, it is also a signal to other Jews that a coreligionist lives behind that particular door. During dangerous times, a Jews could always find a safe place to seek refuge by finding a mezuzah on the door.

So, in addition to being an act of vandalism, the tearing down of mezuzahs was also a violation of the safe and sacred space that we call home. The volunteers who showed up the following day to replace the mezuzahs and restore that sense of protection and hominess performed an incredible act of kindness.

It is no small coincidence that this crime took place a week before the beginning of Hanukkah. The story of Hanukkah is all about a breach of God’s protection and the subsequent restoration of sacred space. Of course, we tend to focus on military victories, oil, lights, food, and gifts. However, the name of the holiday—“Hanukkah”—is not a reference to any of those things.

The word “Hanukkah” literally means “dedication.” In this case, it was actually a re-dedication after the desecration of the Temple. It’s a reference to our ability and our willingness to start all over again when it seems though all is lost.

In modern parlance, we call that resilience.

Resilience is a character trait that has served the Jewish community well over the years. 2,200 year ago, the Assyrian Greeks not only desecrated the Temple, but they also gave Jerusalem a new name—Antioch. They tried to sever the connection between the People of Israel and the Land of Israel. Fortunately, our ancestors did not give up. They were resilient, and they ultimately succeeded in restoring Jerusalem as the spiritual center of our people.  

Today, the Jewish people in Israel and the diaspora are showing the same kind of resilience in order to fend off the international effort to tell us that Israel is not our homeland and Jerusalem is not our spiritual center. Everything old is new again. The story of Hanukkah comes to remind us that we have the strength and ability to overcome October 7 and everything that has followed.  

It’s exactly that resilience that I will see shining out at me from the Hanukkah lights starting on Sunday.

Have a wonderful Hanukkah!

Shalom, 

RAF.