Calendric Proximity
Sometimes, topics for Lead Tidbits are chosen because of the title. Well, not really, but it is fun sometimes coming up with a catchy title like this week's. You have to admit that Calendric Proximity has a ring to it.

What the title means is that events that have nothing to do with each other, that happened centuries apart, can be viewed almost as related to each other because they are near each other on the Jewish Calendar. Having just finished with the enjoyable holiday of Chanuka, with the taste of latkes and/or sufganiyot (or Herby's Chanuka donuts) still with us, it is hard to approach the commemorations of the 8th, 9th, and 10th of Tevet with- out making a connection. So too for the events of Parshat HaShavua, which occurred 1100 years before the Babylonian siege, 1200 years before Ezra and Nechemia brought the early Nefesh b'Nefesh groups to Eretz Yisrael, and 1400 before Chanuka happened.

When you put them all together because of the small part of the calendar they share, a variety of thoughts pop into your head. How could brothers do what they did to a brother? How can their tearful reunion in Vayigash not have been the end to strife between brothers - Jewish history has demonstrated that we are too often our worst enemy? How can the people sink to such betrayal of G-d that He allowed the Mikdash to be destroyed? How come so few responded to Ezra's call to return to Eretz Yisrael?

Chanuka is filled with hope. Hope that did not bear everlasting fruit at the time, but whose message continues to give us hope. So too does the reconciliation of the brothers point us in that good direction, even though we continue to stray from our goals. We'll get it right one of these days.

This week's haftara gives us the promise, the hope, and the challenge - Jewish unity, total acceptance of Torah, return to Israel, everlasting Mikdash.