By the Grace of G-d Chanukah, 5724 Brooklyn, N.Y.

Greeting and Blessing:

This year’s Annual Dinner, coming just a few days after Chanukah, will surely find all the participants amply imbued with the spirit of the Festival of Lights. The Beth Rivkah Dinner offers an excellent opportunity to translate this inspiration into action.

The message of the Chanukah Lights contains three basic points which are applicable — in an immediate and practical way — to the crucial problems of our day:

(a) The Chanukah Lights (symbolizing the light of the Torah and Mitzvoth) have to be kindled after dark. This indicates that one should not be discouraged by the prevailing “darkness” outside, for even a little light of Torah and Mitzvoth can dispel a lot of darkness.

(b) The Chanukah Lights are required to be kindled in such a way that their light should be seen outside. This indicates that it is not enough to illuminate one’s own home with the light and warmth of Torah-true Yiddishkeit, but that it is necessary to spread it also — outside, in the neighborhood and in the community at large.

(c) The Chanukah Lights are kindled in a growing number each night of Chanukah, teaching us to make a steadily growing effort to spread the light of the Torah and Mitzvoth, and that these efforts contain in themselves the assurance of ever-growing success.

Our Sages of the Talmud declare that the Mitzvah of the Chanukah Lights must be shared by the women no less than by the men, because women also contributed to the miraculous deliverance “in those days at this season.”¹ The Jewish women are particularly credited with the self-sacrificing determination to safeguard the sanctity of the Jewish home and the chastity of Jewish womanhood.

Nowadays, more than ever before, Jewish girls must be educated and trained to carry on their historic role in the preservation of the Jewish way of life and the preservation of our people. It is precisely for this purpose that the Beth Rivkah Schools for Girls were founded by my saintly father-in-law twenty years ago. I hope and pray that everyone will realize the personal responsibility and privilege to support the Beth Rivkah Schools in a growing measure, all the more so as such support is also a channel to receive G-d’s blessings with increasing abundance, in all one’s needs, materially and spiritually.

With the blessing of utmost success,