Vayimaen - We're Coming Home | Rabbi Fischel Schachter

Short Summary

Main recommendation: Keep the spark of the Chanukah lights alive within you, no matter how far you have strayed, and return to Hashem as a child returns home to a parent. Rabbi Fischel Schachter illustrates this through the story of a father who searched for his daughter during the Holocaust and was reunited with her through the memory of the pink Chanukah candles.

Key Points

• The story begins with Aharon, who braves cold Vienna to light Chanukah candles, and his daughter's insistence on pink candles leads him to return for them.
• The father's return for the pink candles shows that small acts of devotion can matter greatly, even in the face of hardship.
• During the Anschluss, the family flees Vienna and hides on farms; a former colleague who owns one farm tells them to leave his property but offers to keep the child behind, and they are forced at gunpoint to leave her there.
• Years later the father finds his grown daughter, and she recognizes him only when he mentions the pink candles, after her adoptive father (the farmer) initially tries to drive him off with a shotgun.
• The speaker uses this to teach that the Chanukah lights hold an inner spark that cannot be extinguished.

Details Worth Noting

• Concrete instructions: Place the Chanukah lights by the door facing outward, at the bottom, and look at the lights, because the Sefarim teach that gazing at them kindles a pilot light within you that stays with you.
• Concrete instructions: Remember that this inner spark persists regardless of how badly you have failed, how far you feel from Hashem, or how much pain you are in.
• The farmer's refusal to keep the child is a key detail, since the family was forced to leave her behind in that moment.
• The reunion turned on a specific memory, the pink candles, which the speaker presents as the bridge back to the father's identity for his daughter.
• The speaker closes by inviting the listener to cry out, "Abba, we're coming home," as a personal call back to Hashem.

Bottom Line

Returning to Hashem is always possible, because the light of Chanukah keeps a spark within us that can be rekindled no matter how far we have drifted.