By the Grace of G-d 8th Chanukah Light, 5733 Brooklyn, N.Y.

Blessing and Greeting:

This is to acknowledge receipt of your letter and enclosure and may G-d grant that each one of you should be able to report good news in all matters, both personal and general, particularly about advancement in the study and dissemination of Yiddishkeit, including the above mentioned study, the kind of study that is translated into action, as our Sages define it.

In as much as your letter was written, and is answered, on Chanukah, it is only right to emphasize the role of Jewish daughters and women in helping bring about the Miracle of Chanukah. Indeed Rashi, Chief of the Exegetes, notes (ועל יד אשה נעשה הנס (שבת כג, א ד״ה היו. Also the Rambam, Head of the Codifiers and the Guide of the Perplexed in all generations, notes in his code (beg. of Hilchos Chanukah) that before entering the Beth Hamikdosh פשטו ידם בממונם ובבנותיהם. In other words in the attempt to alienate the Jewish people from Torah and mitzvot the enemy used two methods: economic pressure (to make the Jews dependent upon them), and to demoralize the Jewish women.

Being a shrewd people and foremost in philosophy and science in those days, as is well known, the Greek rulers must have devised their methods with due deliberation. As to the effectiveness of these methods in alienating Jews from Yiddishkeit, suffice it to look around even nowadays. If the Rambam tells us about those Greek methods, it is in order that we should know how to counteract them and telling it to us in his Code of practical halocho, means that it is of practical consequences to us, halocho L'maaseh, meaning that it is up to our Jewish daughters and women to stop the enemy from entering and defiling our Beth Hamikdosh.

Needless to say, this has to be carried out in conformity with כל כבודה בת מלך פנימה. Indeed, in the very concept of tznius there was a cardinal difference between Judaism and Hellenism. But the lesson is an eternal one, as the Rambam quotes the Midrash at the beginning of Behaalos'cho: הנרות הללו אינן בטלין לעולם, including also the lessons of these Lights, Or, to quote my father-in-law in the name of his forebears מען דארף זיך צוהערן וואס די ליכטעלעך- נרות חנוכה דערציילן. “We must listen carefully to what the Chanukah Lights tell us.”

With blessing for Hatzlocho in all above