{"id":564,"date":"2008-12-29T12:02:24","date_gmt":"2008-12-29T17:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aharon.varady.net\/omphalos\/?p=564"},"modified":"2019-09-05T17:49:57","modified_gmt":"2019-09-06T00:49:57","slug":"byadeinu-ohr-va-esh-in-our-hands-are-light-and-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aharon.varady.net\/omphalos\/2008\/12\/byadeinu-ohr-va-esh-in-our-hands-are-light-and-fire","title":{"rendered":"B’yadeinu ohr va esh | In our hands are light and fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is the eighth and final day of Chanukah, Chag Urim<\/em>, festival of lights. It is the day after the world comes to grips with the latest horrible spasm in the terrible saga playing out between Israel and Hamas-led Palestinians in Gaza. Gershom Gorenberg of South Jerusalem<\/a>, always conscious of terrible ironies, shares this:<\/p>\n

Last week I received a press release from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel about a sharp increase in child burn victims in the Gaza Strip. This was before the Israeli air campaign began. After what’s happened in the last couple of days, PHR’s email now seems like a message from another historical era, a time so calm that it was a major concern that<\/p>\n

“In December alone, 16 Palestinians were hospitalized who were burned while trying to heat their homes. Most of the cases reported to the NGO were of children playing with fire, following attempts to light bonfires for heating and cooking and lighting candles in order to illuminate homes.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The fires, that is, were the result of the siege of Gaza, which included fuel shortages and power outages. The head of the burn unit at Shifa Hospital in Gaza reported that his unit was collapsing under the strain. I can only guess that Dr. Nafed Abu Shaaban is having a much harder time this week. [read the full post<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This news hits home for me. This weekend I learned that my youngest nephew, a resident of the occupied West Bank, received first and second degree burns after his clothes caught on fire, the result of his grasping for a Chanukiah<\/em> (chanukah menorah) candle. Everyone is in shock, exhausted, and thanking God that at least he wasn’t wearing a polyester shirt<\/span>, oy, he was wearing polyester Tzizit. Thank G!d he wasn’t hurt even worse than he was.<\/p>\n

For all the negative attention given over to the Cult of Molokh<\/a> in the Torah, one would think that any fire ritual in Judaism be undertaken with many precautions to preclude even the possibility of fire related injury, especially of children. According to M’lachim Bet (2 Kings 23:10<\/a>) and Sefer Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah 32:35<\/a>) the fire ritual of Molokh seems to involve the passage of the first born male child through fire. The Jewish tradition finds it obscene to create situations in which children, any children, are subjected to such danger.<\/p>\n

Hatzalah<\/a>, an international volunteer emergency response organization serving mostly Orthodox Jewish communities provided a safety guide<\/a> this year to help prevent Chanukah related accidents. It reads<\/p>\n

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