JOINING THE MARINE [PARK] CORE!

BS”D

Joining the Marine [Park] Core!

On Being Hip about Roses on Chanukah: Na’asah Neis Lashoshanim

By

Rabbi Hillel L. Yarmove ©

Although I am writing this article in the middle of November—well over a month before Chanukah—I can already see hints of the upcoming Festival of Lights if I look carefully enough.

For example, take the rosebushes which grow in front of our municipal building here in Lakewood, New Jersey. A few small roses have outlasted the autumn chill, but by far most of the plants seem barren of anything interesting.

Except, of course, the rose hips, those smooth globular “false fruits” of the rose plant.

Inside the reddish cover of each small sphere (which was once the ovary of its respective former flower) resides the actual dry fruit of the rose, known botanically as an achene, literally crammed with vitamin C.

Am I serious? Such a rich source of vitamin C—from a rose?  It can’t be, you’d like to say. But it is! And you can be sure that the commercial vitamin-pill manufacturers know all about it!

So the rose’s outstanding array of color and fascinating smell—ranging from a lightly fruity scent to the overpoweringly heavy aroma of a damask rose—are only part of this emblematic flower’s vast appeal? Gevaldig!

Such being the case,  what has the rose, the shoshanah (as it is often rendered in Hebrew) got to do with Chanukah? 

In the quintessential Chanukah hymn “Maos Tzur,” Klal Yisroel is epitomized as roses: “na’asah neis lashoshanim.” (In a similar vein, on Purim we refer to the Yidden by the epithet “shoshanas Ya’akov.”) Now since we have just learned that there are two aspects to the rose (its physical appeal and its nutritional value) we might be able to assert—homiletically, of course—that ideally every Torah-oriented Jew exhibits two aspects of his own: an adherence to the 613 mitzvos and the 48 means through which he may acquire the requisite Torah knowledge needed to perform these mitzvos where possible (the Kinyan HaTorah described in the sixth (beraisa) chapter of Pirkei Avos (verse 6).

Wait a minute! 613 plus 48? Doesn’t that add up to 661, the gematriya of “shoshanah: rose”?

It sure does! Have a very rosy Chanukah, dear readers!

“To my great surprise I discovered this particular rosebush, known variously as Large-Hip, Rugosa, or Wrinkled Rose, growing in front of the Lakewood Municipal Building. This species produces the largest hips of all the roses in our area.”

_____________________________________________________________

Questions or comments? Please send these to me at hillyarm@yeshivanet. com.