A Hanukkah Miracle — Vaccine Style
Do you know the story of Hanukkah? Did a new version of the Hanukkah miracle just occur?
Every year our family celebrates Hanukkah, the festival of lights. This holiday is based on the story of a miracle in ancient times. The story goes something like this:
The Jews of Judea were ruled by an evil Roman king, Antiochus, who tried to force them to worship the god(s) of his choice. But Jews are stubborn, especially about who they are going to worship, and fought back against this religious persecution.
A band of rebel Jews (yes, even in ancient Judea there were rebels), Judah and his gang of Maccabees, rose up against these evil, idol worshiping goyem and chased them out of Judea.
The Romans, however, had left a terrible mess behind them. They had even trashed the holy temple and its most holy of holy, the ark. The Jews were pretty angry about this but they set to cleaning things up including re-lighting the eternal flame that was lit at the entrance to the ark.
To this day, a Ner Tamid, or eternal light, burns perpetually in Jewish synagogues before or near the ark of the Law, the cabinet holding the Torah scrolls. In ancient times there was no generator backup, olive oil was the fuel of choice, and the Jews at the temple had…
