Happy Chanuka!!

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There is a famous question concerning Chanukah.  Why it is, that if there was enough oil found in the Holy Temple to last one day and it lasted eight days, we celebrate eight days of miracles, when actually the miracle itself only appeared on the second day, therefore there were only seven days of miracles?

There are many answers to this question. One of the more known ones is that we celebrate the miracle of the victory of the few over the many (the Jews over the Hellenists) on the first day, and on the next seven days we mark the miracle of the oil. Others say that the small vial of oil was divided into eight portions, knowing that it would take 8 days to make more. This way, the menorah in the Temple would be alight at least a small part of each day, until more oil could be procured. However, the small amount of oil lasted all day until it was time to light the menorah again the next day with its own day's portion. Therefore, each day, for all eight days, a miracle did occurr. Over the centuries, more and more answers have been given to this question, and there is a book called Ner L’Meah (A Candle for One Hundred) that gives one hundred separate answers.

I found this answer, based on the teachings of Rav Smicha Zissel Ziv – known as the Alter (or elder) of Chelm – very moving and relevant to today.

Rav Zissel begins by explaining Rambam. This 10^th century Rabbi/philosopher/doctor/commentator explains that there are two kinds of miracles; ‘open miracles’ (galui), which are those that obviously go against the rules of nature. An example would be the parting of the Red Sea. Other miracles are ‘hidden’ (nistar). These are occurrences which happen regularly and within a pattern, and are not necessarily seen immediately as a miracle. (We here in Beer Sheva were witnesses to many hidden miracles during the ‘Cast Lead’ war, two years ago.) Intrinsically, however, there is no difference between an open and a hidden miracle.

Rav Zissel explains that the only difference between the two kinds of miracles is one's perspective. He brings this example:

For forty years manna fell from heaven for the Children of Israel as they wandered in the desert. We, today, consider this a great miracle. However, let's look at it from the perspective of a person of that generation, born in the desert. Every day of his life, he sees the manna fall from the sky. To him this is a natural, regular occurrence. He knows no difference.

And then, one day, along with his people, all of whom were born in the desert, he enters the Land of Israel. Suddenly, the manna stops falling. For this person, there is no food. Where does he find food? Growing inside the earth, growing from the trees!! He has never seen anything like it. For him, this is a great miracle. An even greater miracle is that when he plants a tiny seed, it grows into a large plant! For this desert born man, these are open miracles.

So now we understand that the only difference between an open and hidden miracle is on e of perspective.

The Gemara in Masechet Ta'anit tells a story of Rav Chanina ben Dosa's daughter, who one Friday evening accidentally filled her candelabrum with vinegar instead of oil. She became distraught, but her father comforted her by telling her "He, who says that oil should burn, will say that vinegar should burn!" She lit the vinegar and it burned throughout the Shabbat.

Rav Zissel of Chelm explains that the miracle which occurred in this Talmudic episode is not that the vinegar burned, but that oil burns at all. Everything which happens on earth is a manifestation of G-d's will.

Explaining the eight days of Chanukah, the open miracle is that the small amount of oil 'unnaturally' lasted for eight days. But the first miracle (which we mark by lighting a candle on the first day of Chanuka) is that the oil burns at all!

The Greeks and the Hellenists tried to forbid all those mitzvot which did not seem to have a practical purpose. Circumcision? Why scar a perfect body? Shabbat? Why sit in the dark when you can just reach and put on the lights? 

There is absolutely no practical use to the chanukiya. We are not allowed to use its lights for any purpose. The only function of the chanukiya is its function as a mitzvah. Therefore lighting it is our way of proclaiming – all these years – that we recognize G-d's miracles – open and hidden. We recognize His domination over us, and that we are blessed and sanctified by doing His mitzvot.

The relevance of this story to today’s generation – or anyone under the age of 60 – is this:

Like the desert-born man who was born into a world where manna was an every day occurrence, we were born into a world where the state of Israel had always existed. We have never lived in a world without Israel being here, protecting us. Those who were on earth before Israel became a state recognized, then, the open miracle that had occurred. But we, whose perspective is different, might not recognize or appreciate how great a miracle we are living every day.

When you light your candles, think of this ongoing miracle we have been privileged to be witness to.

Chanuka Sameach to all.

An Israeli Thanksgiving

Last night, for the first time, I had a taste of American Thanksgiving. Being Canadian-born, and having spent two thirds of my life in Israel, I have very little feeling for the American Thanksgiving. No, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, I have NO feeling at all for the American thanksgiving, other than the fact that I’m thankful I’m Canadian.

I’m also very thankful that at least one of my prime ministers is a man of principles, and stands by his word. Go Stephen Harper, my new superhero.

Whenever I officially think of giving thanks, the first thing that comes to mind is this book I read a long time ago, but stayed in my head, called the Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. Corrie was a Christian Dutch woman, who was sent to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp with her sister for hiding Jews in her home in a small town in Holland. After the war, she wrote a book about her experiences, and was honored by Yad VaShem as a righteous gentile.

In her book, she describes her time in the camps. She and her sister would lead prayer groups with the other prisoners, where they would give thanks for whatever they could. One day, her sister, leading the group, gave thanks for the friends they had made, for being together with her sister, and then thanked G-d for the fleas they were infested with. The fleas, of course, were a source of typhus and other diseases. Corrie protested this inclusion. “How can you thank G-d for fleas!!” she asked. But her sister insisted, “Yes, we must thank G-d for everything He gives us.”

Later on, Corrie discovered that the reason they were able to carry on with their prayer meetings was that the German guards didn’t want to come near them because the place was infested with fleas.

In this week’s Parsha VaYeshev, we read the story of how the 10 sons of Yaakov decide to sell their brother Yosef and he is taken as a slave to Egypt.

It’s written “And they (the 10 sons) sat down to eat bread, (after throwing Yosef in a deep pit with the thought of leaving him there to die) and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and behold, a company of Yishme'alim came from Gilad with their camels carrying aromatic gum, balm, and ladanum, going to carry it down to Egypt".

It is to this caravan of Yishmaelim that the brothers sell Yosef instead of leaving him in the pit.

Now, we know that the Torah never wastes words. It doesn’t believe in descriptions to make more interesting reading. There is a reason that the Torah tells us what the camels that are going to take Yosef to Egypt are carrying. They are carrying aromatic gum, balm, and ladanum. (I looked up what ladanum is in the dictionary – in case anyone was wondering. It’s the juice extracted from certain rose plants and used to make perfume.)

We know that Yosef’s sale to the Yishmaelim is the first part of a divine plan. We know that he goes to Egypt so that he can eventually attain a position in which he is able to save his family from famine. We know that G-d wants the sons of Yaakov to come to Egypt. G-d’s plan is for Bnei Yisrael to become slaves, leave Egypt as a nation, and receive His Torah and be brought to the Land as a nation. We know this, but Yosef doesn’t.

So the Torah tells us that the caravans were full of aromatic gum, balm, and perfume. This is a hint to Yosef that he is not alone in his troubles. The caravans could have been full of chickens, or fertilizer, or old boots. But they were full of perfume, making his dark journey into slavery just a little easier, a little brighter. It’s a message to Yosef, and to us, that G‑d is with us even when we don’t understand or see the good, there is always some good to be thankful for. Sometimes, we need to look for the good and recognize it, even in the toughest situations.

And sometimes, like Yosef, or like the Pilgrims in 16whatever, we have to go through some difficult times to be able to really appreciate the good in life.

It’s something to keep in mind.

Like my (Canadian-born) friend Bracha said last night at our Thanksgiving soiree, just like every day should be Mother’s Day, every day should be Thanksgiving.

Wishing all my American friends happy Thanksgiving, and all my non-American friends happy giving thanks!

The Three Fs: Family, Friends, and Facebook

I have several friends, acquaintances, and family members who refuse to join Facebook (or any other social networking site). Others are on, but seldom sign in. They all say that they don’t have time to waste on such nonsense. One person said that she doesn’t have enough time to stay in touch with the people in the real world, never mind in cyberspace. Another told me that she does not want her private life and thoughts splashed all over the net.

I say hooey!

I love Facebook. I don’t play the millions of games it offers. I seldom take any of their quizzes (though I did take “which Canadian city suits you best—and ended up with Toronto even though I deliberately answered so the results would come out to Winnipeg—I think these quizzes are rigged).

What I do do on FB is look up old friends and relatives with whom I have lost touch, and in some cases were never in touch. I’ve had much success. I have found old classmates from high school I haven’t seen or heard from in 30 years. I’ve rediscovered college mates from Bar Ilan University who left Israel and lost touch. I’m now in contact with relatives, close and more distant, and we share news and pictures of our families, though, geographically, we are all so far apart. In addition, Facebook has allowed me to get to know some cousins who were either not yet born or were too young when I left Winnipeg, or who lived in a different city and I had never met.

The first high-school mate I found on Facebook, several years ago, told me that I had ‘set a record’ for being out of touch the longest and being the furthest away. I protested that I wasn’t out of touch – they were! I have since found several others, and they all seemed genuinely happy to hear from me, though our lives have taken such different paths. We’ve exchanged gossip, caught up with families, sent pictures.

I have one schoolmate friend who recently joined FB. I had actually been in touch with her off and on over the years. More off than on, to be honest. She gave me the names and emails of other friends, and now I’m in email touch with them too!

A college friend of mine whom I found, and lives in the US, invited me to his son’s Bar Mitzvah last summer at the Kotel. He had married another college friend. We had lost touch shortly after I moved to Beer Sheva 25 years ago. I traveled to Jerusalem that day with some trepidation, I must admit. I had aged, gained weight, and looked a bit older than my 21 years. What would they think of me? But I was excited to see them. At the Bar Mitzvah was yet another friend; – also on FB – who lives in Ra’anana. I hadn’t seen him since his wedding 23 years before.

I made two discoveries that day. The first was that – surprise!! – all these other people had aged too. The second was that it didn’t matter how much time had passed. The 27 years since we were last together faded away. We joked, we shared info on other college friends, we talked. There was no awkwardness, no embarrassment, no lack of what to say to each other. And my friends, I am happy to report, felt just as comfortable making fun of my height – or more precisely, lack of it – as they did 27 years ago.

And more. This year, those friends’ daughter is spending a year in Israel. We’ve just hosted her for Shabbat. I told her that I and her parents had been family, when none of us had family in Israel, and that by extension she could feel that she was now family, too. I was delighted and grateful to pay forward to the next generation a little of what I received back then.

So I say to all those who denigrate Facebook: Like most things in life, it is what you make out of it. I believe that no one can have too many friends or too much family (unless you have to wash their dishes or do their laundry – fortunately FB doesn’t have that technology yet).

I’m happy that the word friend has become a verb. (“Hey, you know who friended me today? My old roommate’s second cousin. Now I have 675 friends.”) You can’t say friend enough times.

I’m glad that the opposite of the word like is no longer dislike, but unlike. You no longer actively dislike something; you simply have stopped liking it. Much more positive.

And Toronto is a nicer city than Winnipeg.

Birthday Greetings

One of the nicer things about living in Israel, along with only having one seder and only one possible three-day holiday, is having two birthdays. One is the regular Gregorian birthday. We used to call it the English birthday, but that really doesn't make sense. What do French or German people call it? We changed it to the Christian birthday, but some of our relatives not living in Israel took offense. So now we call it the Facebook birthday. That's when you get all those birthday wishes from people who never knew when your birthday was, and anyway you haven't seen in 30 years. I actually enjoy my Facebook birthday. The other, 'real' (in our family) birthday is, of course, the Hebrew Birthday. (If you don't know when your Hebrew birthday is, by the way, there are sites on the internet that can convert any Gregorian [or Facebook] date in history, to the Hebrew date and year.) A couple of years ago, my friend Reena told us that the period between the two birthdays is the birthday Chol Hamoed (the term usually used for the intermediary days of Pesach and Sukkot). We have since lovingly and enthusiastically adopted this term.

My Facebook birthday, being in late September, always falls sometime during the chagim. The Hebrew birthday however, is always the same - the day before Erev Yom Kippur. It's easy to remember. As a kid, my birthday (there was only one then) seemed always to be pushed aside, as my mother was so busy preparing for, and cleaning up after, the chagim.
My family was never very big on birthdays anyways. I don't remember my siblings having many parties. If I remember correctly, and really I might not - it was, after all, a very long time ago - I seem to remember monthly cakes, a kind of all purpose cake for any celebrations or simchas that occurred that month.

Now that I'm all grown up (not everyone would agree with that statement - certainly not my own children, two of whom are actually older than I) and have my own family, birthdays are not a very big deal here either. I do bake everyone their own cake, usually two (if you have two birthdays you get two cakes - logical, n'est pas?). Sometimes, they even get three cakes if they have to take one to school or they make their own party. But we don't do elaborate parties, or go out to eat, or give lots of presents. Sometimes there's no present at all, just a vague 'we'll get you something soon'. I figure I'm feeding and clothing the kid all year, isn't that present enough?
But since I'm the baker in the family (though the kids - especially Adin - have started to bake cookies and elaborate pies), for my birthday I usually got left over cake from one of the chagim with a candle in it. One memorable year, I was handed 10 shekels and told to buy a cake while I was out. (I did too, and ate it)

Which is why, when Martin (husband) suggested, two days before Yom Kippur, we go out to dinner to celebrate my birthday that evening, I was quite taken aback. I had also just woken up from a rather impromptu nap after falling asleep on the sofa in the basement.
"Nah," I told him, "I'm too tired". After a second, still rather sleepy and befuddled I asked "What, the four of us?"
Martin and I have been blessed with 5 terrific children. Israeli (religious) society, however, dictates, that as soon as a child becomes useful, can help with chores, and babysit the younger ones, they leave home. Then, several years later, when they are too old and busy to babysit and do chores, they come back home. At this moment in time we have the youngest and oldest kids at home (girls) and the 3 boys are all away at yeshiva.
"Yes, the four of us", he answered.

When I came upstairs I found the two girls all ready to go out. It's not every day (to put it mildly) that we go to a restaurant, and I didn't want to ruin anyone's fun. Within a few minutes, it was decided where to go, and I was more or less simply led out the door.
By the time we got to the restaurant - a small dairy place with outdoor seating - my head was a bit clearer, and they actually left it up to me to decide to sit inside or out. Unfortunately, making important decisions is not my strong point.
"Outside", said my oldest, Rivka, taking the situation in hand.
We sat down, briefly discussed whether or not we needed to push two tables together (we did), were handed the menus by a very efficient waitress, and relaxed. Just as I started to peruse the menu, Martin exclaimed in a very loud voice "The problem with sitting outside these restaurants is that just anyone can come by, any old lout."
I squirmed around in my seat, expecting to see some friends who happened to be passing by. Or perhaps, indeed, there was some lout walking past us. No shortage of louts in Beer Sheva.
But, instead, what I saw were three terrifically good-looking boys, singing (very quietly - they are, after all, boys) Happy Birthday. As my three sons sat down at the table, I just sat there, unable to move. Shocked, stunned, amazed, flabbergasted, astonished, astounded, overwhelmed, surprised, blown away; take your pick - that's how I felt. The boys, at three different yeshivot in three different directions of the compass, had come home, just before Yom Kippur (the biggest day of the year in Yeshiva Life) for my birthday.

I glanced at husband and daughter, who were laughing, looked again at the boys, who were grinning, and just sat there. In the eleven days that have elapsed since then, I have been trying to think of a word (or even two) to describe how I felt. I can't. I was just filled with emotion.
Because, you see, this was no spur-of-the-moment decision to go out for dinner. This had been planned. Nothing is ever planned in our house. We are not a planning kind of family. Certainly not a birthday planning kind of family. But here it was, a planned birthday. For me. And they all participated.
Eventually, I was able to move (and breathe) and got up to to kiss the boys, much to their chagrin ("Um, mom, we're outside. People can see").
Between laughing, and figuring out what to order, details began to emerge. "I just did what I was ordered to do" said Avi - who just finished his army service this past summer. Adin came, so he claimed, to get out of an evening of learning before Yom Kippur. And Chaniel told me endearingly, "I wouldn't come home for supper in a restaurant?" They had made all the arrangements on the previous Saturday evening. "Where was I?" I asked. "On the computer, where else?" they all said together. And why this particular restaurant? It was near the bus station.
In hindsight, the restaurant decision at home - which would normally take about half an hour, on a good night, to make - was made a little too easily.
Rivka had arranged the whole thing. She told me she sent more SMS's that day than ever before, certainly to her brothers.
"Look!" I wanted to shout to the waitress and all the passers-by and louts. "Look at these amazing beautiful people! They are mine!!" But I figured I had done enough 'fadichot' (embarrassing acts in Hebrew slang) for one evening. Also, I was still finding it hard to move.

But there was more. When we got home, after a lovely dinner, but no dessert, there was cake and presents on the table. When we left the house to go to dinner, Rivka said she would lock up. I reminded her to set the alarm, and walked out. I didn't actually notice we had to wait for her a few minutes, while she set the table with the cake and presents.
Rivka had baked the cake that morning while I was at work, and had to have fried hotdogs for lunch to cover up the smell. She didn't even want fried hotdogs. "Oh! so that's why you made me lunch today!" piped up Galit, the youngest, who was almost as surprised as I was at all the fuss.
And Martin had given up his bridge game to go with Rivka by bus (!!!) to the mall to buy presents - an MP4 from the kids, and a necklace and bracelet from him. "Boy, that was fun. Picking out jewelery with dad. Uh huh...." said Rivka, shaking her head. And where was I? I had taken the car, and gone to Galit's school for a talk. I came home early, had forgotten my key, and almost ruined their surprise. They were still on the bus coming home when I called them. Martin had to go an extra stop so I wouldn't see them come home together. I never suspected a thing.

There's a page on facebook 'Inside every old person there's a young person wondering what the hell happened.' That about sums me up.
But when I think about it, I know the answer. What happened? Life happened; the good, the not so good, and every once in a while, the wonderful. And my 50th birthday was one of those wonderful times.
And I thank G-d, every day, for all of it.

And I still have two more days in my birthday chol hamoed to enjoy.

Post Rosh HaShana musings

Another Rosh Hashana has come and gone. I must admit, that for me, this one was a lot of work, and has left me quite exhausted. Six meals to prepare, extra laundry, shopping, and cleaning leaves me little time to spiritually prepare for the chag. It's difficult to soul search while fighting for a spot to choose apples in the shuk. Or while peeling potatoes, or hanging out yet another load of laundry. It is for me anyway, and I'd be interested in learning if I'm alone in feeling this way. I should send out a questionnaire; what is the most effective approach to spiritual soul searching? 1. matching 245 different socks 2. cleaning the toilet or 3. preparing a honey cake.
Seriously, Rosh HaShana, and the weeks preceeding, are supposed to be a time of introspection, a time to take stock of your actions during the past year. All I was able to take stock of was how much chicken I had to cook [7 people times 5 meals (we were invited out for one!!) plus 11 guests times 1.5 pieces each - and do they eat white or dark?]. When was I suppose to think about the past year? When I measuring cups of water into the soup pot to see if it would hold enough for 2 meals?
I'm sure there are people who do it. People who sit down at regular times and learn about tshuva (repentance), who honestly think of sins committed, who try to understand in what way they can better themselves. I can only hope that keeping your temper a whole day while the said soup is boiling over, the cake is burning, and a mouse has just wandered into your kitchen counts as a good deed.
I DO have good intentions. Every year I tell myself that I will start early with the preparations, so when erev chag comes I WILL have time to take a leisurely shower, put on makeup, or, at least, wear matching clothes. Not that that is spiritually important. It's just something I would like to accomplish some time.
In shul, on the first day of the holiday, I try very hard to concentrate on the words of the prayers. "I will elevate my knowledge in righteousness, will ascribe righteousness to my G-d, and request righteousness in judgment. When in prayer I lift up my voice as the sound of the Shofar..." My mind skips about, flitting between prayers (And all believe that He is the sole King of the Universe, who exercises His mercy in every generation) to speculating on whether there are more babies in shul this year than last year, to wondering if, in fact, I am going to have enough chicken. I pull my mind back to the prayers. "Because of our sins we were exiled from our country, and distanced from our Land. We were unable to fulfill our obligations in Your Temple."
I hope we have enough hummus to last the three days.

Don't get me wrong. I love being with my family and friends over the holidays. I'm especially grateful that all the kids were home. How many more chagim will that happen? And I'm glad and grateful and acknowledge the blessing of being healthy and able to do the work. But sometimes, I find myself resenting the the dishes to be washed, needing a map to find various containers in the fridge (which are piled like a game of tetrus) and wishing we didn't have quite so many holidays. I try to push these thoughts out of my mind. Be grateful, I tell myself. For my family, for my community, for my ability to live in the Land of Israel, for being able to put food on the table. Maybe that's my tshuvah.

I'll end with something I did manage to learn. I don't know why I never knew this before.

On Rosh HaShana we greet one another with the words "Shana Tovah U'metuka" - Wishing you a good and sweet new year. Why do we wish both a good AND sweet year? Isn't it enough to wish just a good year?
The reason is that everything G-d does is for the good. Even when we can't see the good. When we can't fathom that this too is for the good. Because we aren't G-d. We can't see the intricate mosaic of the world, and of history, and we can't understand that sometimes bad things turn out to be good. And sometimes no is the correct answer to our prayers. We have to remember that EVERYTHING G-d does is for the good. So we wish one another a sweet year, so that the things that happen to us are not only good but OBVIOUSLY and immediately good - that they feel sweet.

Shana Tovah U'Metuka to all of Am Yisrael.

My First Blog

After holding out for so long, I've finally succumbed and have started my own blog. I doubt I'll be using it very often; time is not always available. However, I do want to share a very short 'dvar Torah' I gave last night in honor of Rosh Chodesh Shvat (the first day of the Hebrew month of Shvat). For several years here in Beer Sheva there was a group of women who met every Rosh Chodesh. I was one of the organizers. It disbanded a few months ago, but last night a wonderful group of women organized a wonderful meeting for everyone, and I was honored to be asked to give a Dvar Torah.

So here it is:

I was asked to give this dvar Torah several weeks ago, and I started to write something long ago, look up sources and references etc, so as to make this dvar Torah something special, and more than my usual 'live in the Land, and do mitzvot' talk. And I was busily writing away about unity, and well, living in the Land and doing mitzvoth, when an event occurred this past week that made me change my whole direction. I threw away the other stuff, and decided instead to talk about 2 very special women, neither of whom is Jewish.

The reason I changed my topic for this dvar Torah is because this week Miep Gies passed away. For those who don't know, Miep was one of those who helped Anne Frank and her family hide from the Nazis for two and a half years. Born in Austria, Miep came to Holland as a young girl to escape the hunger that was rampant in Austria and Germany in the 1920s. At the time of the Nazi invasion of Holland, Miep worked as a secretary for Otto Frank (Anne's father) at his spice factory. When the time came and Otto asked Miep if she would help his family and another 4 Jews hide away in the Secret Annex in the factory, Miep did not answer, as she could have, "let me think about it", or "how much will you pay me? And she certainly didn't say "I can't" or I won't". She said, immediately, unhesitatingly, "of course". It was Miep who rode around the city of Amsterdam buying food at different shops so no one would suspect that she was buying more than her rations. It was Miep who brought Anne notebooks, and paper, and pens, books to read, and her beloved Hollywood magazines, which Anne would cut up and tape the pictures of movie stars to her wall. After those 8 Jews were taken from the Annex, it was Miep who found Anne's diary strewn across the floor. And it was Miep who hid the diary away, waiting for Anne's return. She never read it, claiming that Anne deserved her privacy. Until Otto Frank returned from the camps in late 1945, Miep had no idea what was written in those notebooks. Afterwards, she said that it was a good thing she hadn't read them, since she would have had to burn them, as they incriminated, not only her, but her husband and several other people who had helped the families. In addition to the honors she received by both the Dutch and British monarchies and other educational institutions, Miep Gies was honored by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile.

Yet, throughout the past 65 years, while she promoted peace and tolerance around the world, Miep refused to acknowledge that her deeds were heroic. "I'm not a hero", she would say, "I just did my human duty."

Speaking to a group of school children she said "Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary secretary and housewife."

She claimed that she was not a hero because, as she said, "It's not as if I saved all of Dutch Jewry."

But she was wrong. We know that ordinary people can be heroes. That saving one life is as if you've saved a world. That being a hero doesn't mean being brave, or strong, or important. Being a hero means precisely doing your human duty, acting as you know G-d wants you to, as a being created as צלם אלוקים, despite your fears, your inadequacies, your unimportance. Miep Gies was a hero in all ways. Outliving Anne Frank by 65 years, Miep passed away this week one month short of her 101^st birthday. May her memory be for a blessing.

The second woman I want to speak about lived a few years before Miep. Unnamed, we remember her only through her father, and as saving only one Jewish life. But what a life.

Known in the Torah only as Bat Pharaoh, the daughter of the King of Egypt, and featured in only about half a dozen pasukim, she defied all of Egypt, and saved a baby from the river. It doesn't really seem like much. She was, after all, a princess, she had nothing to fear. There was no fear of arrest for her. But let's imagine for a moment, that this episode took place 3500 years later. She's not Bat Pharaoh, now she's Bat Hitler. She's the daughter of Hitler, a symbol of the Nazi regime and its ideologies. Imagine the daughter of Hitler, or of Stalin, or Bin-Laden, saving a Jewish child, with the full attention of the media.

Bat Pharaoh openly and defiantly, in front of her maids and royal entourage, went against her father's orders. Remember, she didn't simply save a baby from drowning. She knew exactly who this baby was, and what he represented. She gave him to his mother for nursing, and took him back after several years. She could have forgotten about him, she could have changed her mind in those intervening years. But she did not. And not only did she raise the boy, but she raised him with morals, with a sense of doing his human duty. She never kept his roots from him. He visits his people, and slays the Egyptian in moral rage. He meets his brother Aaron in the desert and they already knew each other.

And yet, though she saves the most important Jew of that generation – in fact in our whole history – we're not told her name. We're not told what happens to her. She's mentioned that one time, in a few short sentences, and then she is no longer in the story. Bat Pharaoh didn't stop the slavery in Egypt; she didn't soften her brother Pharaoh’s heart. She didn't ease Bnai Yisrael's workload; she didn't save a whole nation, she didn't change the culture of Egypt. But Bat Pharaoh did her human duty. She acted, despite the environment in which she lived, as צלם אלוקים and saved one Jewish life. Is this unnamed woman a hero? Does the Jewish tradition acknowledge her as such? Chazal say that the baby she saved had many different names. Certainly his parents had given him a name when he was born before being cast into the river. He had a different name in Midian. Yet, throughout the entire Torah, he is known only by the name his adoptive mother gave him, Moshe, as a tribute to her courageousness and heroic, human acts.

Chazal tell us that Bat Pharaoh left Egypt with Bnei Yisrael, going into the unknown, rather than stay within the murderous society in which she was a princess. It is only in the book of Divrei HaYamim that we are told her name is Bitya – the daughter, no longer of Pharaoh, but of G-d.

Being a hero doesn't mean taking out a nest of Hamas terrorists. It doesn't mean feeding all the poor and ending all wars. It means living your life and doing your human duty despite your surroundings, despite your fears, despite your status. Miep Gies said she was a nobody, “only a secretary and housewife”; Bat Pharaoh was a princess in the house of the king. Both, doing their human duty, are heroes. And they teach us that we don't have to stop all the wars, feed all the hungry, we don't have to change the world all at once. Just one deed at a time.

In the words of Anne Frank, "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world".