“And may G-d Almighty give you mercy before the man…” (Bereishis 43:14)

RASHI: A Midrashic explanation is: He who said to the Universe, “Enough!”, may He say “Enough!” to my troubles. I have had no rest since my youth — trouble through Laban, trouble through Esau, the trouble of Rachel, the trouble of Dinah, the trouble of Joseph, the trouble of Shimon, the trouble of Benjamin (Genesis Rabbah 92:1).

Imagine the following: Klal Yisrael had a large army, went to war against the Greeks, and won the war! After the war was over, the Priests from the Holy Temple returned to the secret hiding place where they had hidden all the pure oil, and lo and behold, all the oil was intact and ready to be used immediately for the rekindling of the Menorah in the Temple. If all this had happened, would we be celebrating Chanukah now? We understand that the miraculous nature of the many into the hands of the few, the strong into the hands of the weak, etc. brings us to realize what we should know and feel all the time, which is that Hashem is running the world. When things just seem to work out as we expect naturally, we often fail to see that Hashem is also the orchestrator in these mundane situations.

I saw a parable on this subject by Rabbi Shimshon Pincus which I believe really hits the point.

A child goes to the store with his parent and asks his parent to buy him some kind of a treat that costs a few shekels. The parent responds, “It’s too expensive!” How does the child feel when he hears this response? He feels that he is not even worth these few shekels, for the child knows that for these few shekels he would be pleased, and yet his parent is not willing to spend this money on him. We adults then tell the child, “No, your parent loves you, and you should not judge your parent based on the fact that he said this treat is too expensive.” Even with this statement of reassurance, many children would not be certain that their parent really loves them, or how much that love is really worth.

A few days later, this same child is in desperate need of something more, not just a treat. The parent takes off a day of work, spends an enormous amount of time with the child, and lavishes his love on him. Now the child is certain that his parent loves him. Unfortunately for the small child, catastrophe had to almost strike in order for him to appreciate that which was obvious to others.

Our appreciation of Hashem would have been lacking (like the boy before he was in the desperate situation) had the war against the Greeks been won in a natural way.

When Hashem created the world, the process was set in motion in a way that it would complete itself to the fullest. The Daas Tevunos explains the gemora, which teaches us that Hashem had to say dai! (enough!), for since He wanted Man to complete the world, He had to place him in an incomplete world. Hashem wanted us to complete ourselves and the world. This means that inadequacies are actually a blessing in disguise. Based on this, Rav Pinchas explains that this is why Hashem made this world incomplete: So that we should see His hand and His love for us through that which we have to accomplish. Regarding the prayer which Yaakov offered in the source verse above,  Yaakov was davening that we should be in a position where Hashem’s salvation brings about a realization of Hashem’s love for us and therefore we should no longer need bad things to happen in order to feel this.

Every year on Chanukah we have an obligation to not only commemorate, but to relive the euphoria of our victory, as we say in the brocho, Bayamin haheim bazman hazeh. Just as in those times, so too in our times. Though we are spared the physical tension of having to go through this test, we are expected to share the same feelings of closeness to Hashem that they felt andto be grateful to Hashem for all the miracles that happen day in and day out (whether we see them or not).