Saturday, December 24, 2011

We need the hope of redemption.

In 1943 in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, devout Jews secretly gathered to light the Chanukah candles. After chanting the blessing "Who made miracles for our ancestors, in those days at this season," the Bluzhever Rebbe broke into sobs, for he had already lost his wife, his 10 children, and his grandchildren.

The Rebbe said:"We may wonder as we stand here in the Nazi pit of death, where are the miracles for us today? Yet of one thing I am certain: Just as God pulled the Maccabees from darkness, and just as He has preserved the Jewish people throughout the ages, so will the Jewish people survive this, too."

Rabbi Azriel Tauber, a businessman and Torah scholar in New York, says he was able to survive the Holocaust because every day, his father would encourage him and say: "Don't despair, my son, for redemption can come at any moment."

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