Finally, the night came – our first Chanukah in our new building. But everything went wrong. That’s when we discovered the miracle of Chanukah.

We spent years trying to build a building for our congregation, and finally our dream came true. Our first service was on Kol Nidre. And as fall turned to winter, the youth group kids decided to do something to celebrate their new home – they would host a dinner on Shabbat Chanukah.

The kids planned everything – the tables, the menu, the linens. But at the last minute, everything went wrong. Fifty people RSVP’d and two hundred came. The microwave broke. There was total chaos. An hour went by, and no one had been fed. There was a line out the door – hungry people waiting for dinner. As you walked through the social hall, you could hear the adults grumbling about “irresponsible” teens.

We delayed the service and added a second seating, but the lines kept getting longer. How could it be, I wondered. I knew those kids. They were bright and organized, and they were good, Jewish kids. How could they be having so much difficulty? So I walked into the kitchen, and asked if I could help. And that’s when I saw the miracle of Chanukah.

In the middle of the kitchen, I saw a girl who had disappeared right after her Bat Mitzvah. She was a great kid, but she came from a difficult home, and started using drugs. For years, her classmates had supported her, calling her to check on her, inviting her to events, urging her to get treatment. This was the night that she decided to return..

There she was – still strung out, dropping food, confusing orders – the cause, it seemed” of all the chaos. The kids could have ignored her or pushed her aside. But our tradition says that “he who saves a single life saves the entire world”. And that’s what the kids decided to do. They held her and comforted her, and welcomed her back. And perhaps, through their love, they saved an entire world.

The Talmud teaches that when the Maccabees went to rededicate the Temple, there was only one jar of pure oil with the high priest’s seal on it. But a miracle occurred, and the oil lasted for eight days. But Sefat Emet, one of the great Chassidic masters, teaches that the miracle is even greater in our times. It’s been thousands of years since there’s been a jar of oil with the high priest’s seal on it, and still the light of Judaism is burning.

How proud Sefat Emet would have been to walk into the kitchen, to see the light of Judaism burning in the hearts of those teens. Those teens are the true miracle of Chanukah.