D’var Torah – Miketz & Chanukah: When the Oppressed Gain Power
Parshat Miketz opens with a miracle that doesn’t feel like one at first. Joseph wakes up in prison and, by the end of the day, he is second only to Pharaoh. From the pit to the palace in a single moment.
We know this story so well that we sometimes miss what the Torah is actually asking us to notice. Not that Joseph rises to power—but what he does once he has it.
Joseph has suffered enormously. He was abused by his brothers, sold, imprisoned, forgotten. And now he controls food, access, survival itself. He saves Egypt from famine—and in the process, he centralizes power so completely that the population becomes permanently dependent on the state. The Torah reports this without commentary, without judgment.
Which leaves us with an uncomfortable question:
Does suffering automatically make someone compassionate?
Or does it sometimes teach them how to survive—and how to control?
That tension sits at the heart of Miketz.
And it sits, quietly but unmistakably, at the heart of Chanukah as well.
Chanukah begins with a story we love to tell: a small, oppressed people resisting a brutal empire. The Seleucid Greeks desecrate the Temple, suppress Jewish practice, and attempt to erase Jewish identity. The Maccabees rise up—not for conquest, but for dignity, covenant, and survival.
It is one of the great moral victories of Jewish history.
But Jewish history, like Torah, refuses to end the story there.
Within a few generations, the Hasmonean dynasty—the very family that led the revolt—begins to change. Power consolidates. Kingship and priesthood are merged in ways our tradition warned against. Political opponents are no longer debated; they are silenced, even killed. Under rulers like Alexander Jannaeus, Jews persecute other Jews with a brutality that echoes the empires they once resisted.
The tragedy is not that the oppressed became powerful. The tragedy is that power was exercised without remembering what oppression felt like.
This is not unique to ancient history. Torah is pointing to a painful pattern: if we don’t reflect on what it felt like to be mistreated, we may end up repeating those behaviors when we’re in charge.
And yet, the story doesn’t stop there.
After Alexander Jannaeus dies, his wife, Salome Alexandra, takes the throne. Her reign is an attempt at repair. She restores legal balance, curbs violence, and shifts authority back toward learning and law rather than force. Her leadership reminds us that decline is not inevitable. Even late in the story, different choices are possible.
But after her death, her two sons turn on each other. Instead of resolving their conflict within the community, they appeal to an outside power—Rome. What started as a fight between brothers ended up giving an outside empire control over the Jewish people.
Joseph goes to Pharaoh.
Salome’s sons go to Rome.
In both cases, short-term rescue creates long-term bondage.
Which brings us back to Chanukah—and to the candles we light.
Chanukah is often described as a holiday of light driving away darkness. But perhaps it is also about light that reveals. Light that forces us to look honestly at what we do when we finally have power, safety, and choice.
The candles are lit slowly, one by one. Not all at once. Growth is gradual. Responsibility accumulates.
And we are commanded to place the light where others can see it—not hidden, not congratulatory, not private. Because memory is a moral obligation.
Miketz and Chanukah together ask us a hard and holy question:
What do we pass down—healing, or harm?
Memory, or resentment?
Wisdom, or control?
This is not about blaming our ancestors. Jewish history preserves our failures so we don’t have to repeat them.
Redemption is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of responsibility.
May the light we kindle this Chanukah help us remember not only where we came from—but who we are called to become.