We've just finished celebrating the beautiful Holiday of Chanukah, which commemorates the triumph of the Jewish spirit, and the twin miracles of the oil and the military victory over our Greek enemies. It focuses on the achievements of the valiant Jewish family, the Chashmonaim who, under the leadership of Matityahu, the Priest, and of Yehudah HaMaccabee, the leader of his five sons, saved the Jewish People and prevented the forgetting of the Torah.

Yet, despite the greatness of Yehudah, as Rabbi Shimshon Rephoel Hirsch writes in an essay comparing the "Culture" of Greece with the Torah, "It was not Yehudah HaMaccabee, the valiant hero, who defeated Antiochus; rather, it was the "Lamp of Judaism" that defeated the external shine of Greek arrogance…"

And despite their great accomplishments, when their later generations attempted to establish a ruling dynasty, that Family was doomed to oblivion because, according to the RAMBAN, the great Thirteenth Century commentator on the Written and Oral Torah, that Priestly Family attempted to usurp the right of Kingship promised by Yaakov to his son, Yehudah, and to his descendants, when he said "The scepter shall not depart from Yehudah," the Jewish version of "Separation of Church and State."

In Vayigash, this week's Parshah, we meet Yehudah, the son of Yaakov, rising to confront Yoseph and plead for the freedom of Binyamin, and thereby complete his Process of "Teshuvah," Repentance, for leading his brothers into the tragic error of selling Yoseph into slavery. For at that time, he'd uttered the fateful and hateful words, "Mah Betza …," "Of what profit to us is the killing of our brother; let us rather sell him to the Yishmealim."

He begins his "Teshuvah" when he spares the life of his daughter-in-law, Tamar, with his "Viduy," Confession, "She is more righteous than I." He continues it when he says to Yoseph, robed in the garb of the Assistant to the Egyptian Pharaoh, "What can we say to my master, how shall we speak, and how shall we justify ourselves?" And he completes the process here, when he offers to become Yoseph's slave, selling himself to redeem his brother, in order to fulfill his vow to his father, "I will put myself in his place, from my hand may you seek him; if I do not bring him to you, presenting him safe and sound before you, I will have sinned against you for all the days," meaning in this world and the next.

Psalm 30, "Mizmor Shir Chanukat HaBayit LeDavid," "A Song for the Inauguration of the Temple, by David," is a central Chanukah psalm. It was written, as the name would imply, by King David, a descendant of Yehudah, known as the "sweet singer of Israel." In it we find a far different "Mah Betza" than that uttered by his ancestor at the pit! King David, from whom will come forth "Mashiach ben David," cries out to G-d, "Of what profit is my blood, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust acknowledge You? Will it declare Your Truth?"

David also has a heightened sense of sin, "For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is before me always!" But he also believes in Renewal, "Create in me a pure heart, O G-d, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."

In the merit of our great leaders, who sinned and then rose to do "Teshuvah" with their whole hearts, may Hashem open for us the Gates of "Teshuvah" - if we only open ourselves to him the width of the "eye of a needle" - "as wide as the gates to the palace."

Rabbi Pinchas Frankel

Rabbi Frankel is an Educational Coordinator at the OU