O

ne of the great unheralded
heroes of the Holocaust was
Rabbi Avraham Grodzinsky,
the spiritual leader of the Kovno ghetto.
Until the outbreak of the war, he had
been the Rosh Yeshiva of the famed
Slabodka Yeshiva and was
one of the leading sages
of his generation. He had
entered the yeshiva at the
age of 17, and, under the
tutelage of the legendary
Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel,
the “Alter of Slabodka,”
devoted himself to both
intense Torah learning and equally
intense character refinement.
Later, amid the horrors of the Kovno
Ghetto, people would attest to the open,
friendly countenance Rabbi Grodzinsky
carried at all times, perfecting the
trait of “receiving every person with a
friendly face” (Pirkei Avot, 1:15), which
was a source of hope and great comfort
to all those who encountered him.

In the years of the ghetto, when the
situation was most dire, he formed a
group of 10 of his former students from
the Slabodka Yeshiva, who would meet
every Shabbos to discuss what spiritual
and physical actions they could do to
improve the plight of those around
them. This eternal optimism in the face
of hopeless odds — this faith in the
power of the few — is an idea that goes
right to the heart of Chanukah.
Actually, Rabbi Grodzinsky took
his initial inspiration from an earlier
source than the Maccabees. In the
Torah portion a few weeks ago, we
read of Abraham’s tireless negotiations
with God to save the cities of Sodom
and Gomorrah. After a few rounds of
negotiation, God eventually agrees to
save the cities if 10 righteous people can
be found within them. From here, the
Talmud learns the foundational spiritual
principle that 10 righteous people can
have a decisive impact on an otherwise
hopeless situation (Sanhedrin 99b). The

Talmud goes even further, stating that
a person who doesn’t believe in the
power of 10 righteous people to save the
world is guilty of heresy. In other words,
the belief in the power of even a small
group of people to change the world
and overturn the natural order of things
is no less than a fundamental principle
of Jewish faith.

POWER OF THE FEW
We see a powerful illustration of this
principle in the story of Chanukah.
The mighty Greek empire that had
conquered most of the known world at
the time had invaded the land of Israel
and was pursuing a relentless campaign
to remove all vestiges of Torah living
from society. The situation seemed
hopeless. There were many Jews at the
time who were abandoning their faith
due to both the existential threat and
the enticements of Greek society. It
was at this point that a small group of
people banded together — Matisyahu

Chief Rabbi
Warren
Goldstein

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

Chanukah:
The Multiplier Effect
— The Power of the Jewish People

42 | NOVEMBER 25 • 2021