This post is dedicated in memory of my father, Yaacov Zeev Yisrael ben Shmuel.
When I was a kid, I liked Chanukah but I was alway weary of lighting the candles. You always needed help from a parent to make sure the candles would stay in place and I hated the dripping wax. For many years now I (and most of my family) have switched to lighting plastic cups of oil, which not only burn longer and has no mess, it allows us to fulfill the mitzvah in what most consider a preferred way (with oil as the original Menorah was lit). In Israel, it’s really easy to do, you can buy a package (box set) of 44 cups with oil (sold even at many supermarkets before Chanukah) and each night pop off the lids and light the plastic cups with oil.
In the early years, we used to buy from a specific company, Ptilor, maybe because they were the only brand on the market. In recent years many other brands appeared on the shelves and they were CHEAPER, as much as 20-30 NIS less than Ptilor.
So, the last couple of years I bought for myself (and my mom) the other (cheaper) brand as I figured what’s the big difference. BUT, there was a huge difference. With the other brands I found that the cups were very hard to open, a slight shake of the box and the oil would spill, the oil in the cups would not burn all the way, some of the wicks in the cups were not good and more.
In short, I saved money, but I regretted it.
This year I bypassed all the other brands and bought Ptilor. The brand had even improved since I last bought them several Chanukahs ago. And you know what happened? The cups were easy to open, no oil spilled, all the cups burned for a really long time (like 3.5 hours). No mess, no stress. It was great!
What’s the lesson? Well, like the Maccabees in the Chanukah story, they found just one jar of pure olive oil (stamped by the High Priest) to light the Menorah in the Temple. Our sages ask, why didn’t they just use any kind of oil due to their circumstances. Why did it have to be the pure oil? The answer is that when rededicated the Temple, they wanted to do it right, so only the best (pure oil) would do. And then the miracle happened and that one little jar of oil lasted not one day, but eight days (till they could produce more pure olive oil and continue the lighting).
The lesson I learned is that even if it was more expensive (a Ptilor set cost 69 NIS each, while others are much less, and a box of way Chanukah candles costs just a few shekels- all perfectly acceptable ways to perform the mitzvah of lighting Chanukah candles), if you want to do something in the best way possible, you can’t be cheap!
My late father Yaacov taught this to us Sredni kids by example. I recall excitingly going to baseball games with his at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park and we’d get to the box office and be buying tickets outside the stadium and my dad would always ask for the best seats available (which were more expensive of course) where we could see better and enjoy the game better. The same was for concerts, plays or anything else. He believed that if you want quality, you need to be willing to pay more and the experience will be better – and it always was.
Now after having such a positive experience with Ptilor – I should not go back to those other (inferior) brands.
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I suppose I should add a few words about this week’s Torah portion, Miketz, which continues the story of Yosef in Egypt, his rise to second in command to Pharaoh, and the arrival of his brothers to Egypt (they don’t recognize him, but he sure does recognize them).
At the beginning of the portion, Yosef is brought to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh, who tells him his dreams:
And this is Yosef’s interpretation:
In a short essay I found here, Rabbi Dr. Avraham Twerski writes:
The Torah relates that Pharaoh told his dream to his soothsayers, but they could not interpret it for him. Rashi says that Pharaoh did not accept their interpretations. They told him that he would conquer seven countries and lose seven countries; that he would have seven daughters and seven daughters would die. Yet he accepted Joseph’s interpretation that there would be seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. Why was Joseph’s interpretation more acceptable to him?
The soothsayers gave him a prediction of good and bad, but offered no solution of how he could mitigate the bad. Joseph predicted seven years of famine, but gave him a suggestion of how he could survive the famine.
When you’re confronted with a problem for which there is a solution, you can see the problem clearly and proceed to deal with it. If there is no evident solution, you go into a defensive denial, and you don’t even see the problem at all.
The words of Rabbi Dr. Twerski also remind me of my late father, as he was a consultant to industry and in fact, would often teach the Joseph story to his students at whichever company he was hired to consult for about how to solve problems. The first lesson was to not just offer suggestions (as the king’s wise men did), but to offer a practical solution and course of action – which was what Yosef did.
So, in short, I learned two lessons from my father, this week:
- When you want to do something the best way possible (and have the best experience), don’t be cheap.
- Everyone can off ideas and theories, but if you really want to solve a problem, offer a solution!
Chanukah Sameach & Shabbat Shalom!
yonatansredni 