My Chanukah Miracle

Sometimes miracles do happen...

"I am a pessimist by nature, who married an optimist. Most of the time, this means we balance each other out nicely, but occasionally I confess that I find Yair’s optimism infuriating. I find it naive and unrealistic. But sometimes it turns out that he’s right.

Two years ago, we found out about my third miscarriage on the second day of Chanukah. Lighting the candles after that felt, not for the first time in my life, like a cruel joke. Where were the miracles that the bracha (blessing) promised? I was sure they would never come. When Yair told me that he believed deeply that one day we would be holding a squirming baby during Chanukah, I scoffed at his faith. I was too angry to believe anything.

The thing about miracles, according to the rabbis, is that you aren’t supposed to rely on them, because there’s no rhyme or reason. Fundamentally, to use a somewhat Christian idea, they are an act of grace. We don’t always deserve them, or sometimes we do, but they still don’t happen. And we have to work to create them sometimes, even though our work isn’t always enough.

I wish I could promise all of you hoping for your own miracles that they would happen, or that there was something you could do to bring them to be. There isn’t, sadly. It’s not because you don’t deserve them, it’s because sometimes life is just fundamentally unfair.

But every once in a while, we might get a miracle of our own, and I think we have to acknowledge them when we are lucky enough to see them.

So two years later, on the third night of Chanukah, the night when I refused to light candles because I couldn’t believe in miracles, here is our tiny miracle, who is growing bigger every day. When I cried lighting candles this year, how lucky I was that it was for a different reason.

ברוך שעשה ניסים בזמן הזה. ברוך שהחיינו וקיימנו והגיענו לזמן הזה."

Shared with permission from @rachelteachestorah