There’s quite an advantage to saying al hanissim at least 29 times over a span of 8 days: Eventually one begins to actually focus on the words and gain new insight into them. In extolling the Ribono shel Olam for making us victorious in our battles we say “masarta giborim b’yad chalashim v’rabim b’yad me’atim [You gave over the mighty into the hands of the weak and the many into the hands of the few].” And in purely physical terms the Jews certainly were the weak and the few.

But is that to say we regard weakness per se as a virtue? Surely not. Rather the mishnah in Avos (4:1) teaches us that gevurah — strength or fortitude — is praiseworthy and an important goal to strive for but the nature of true gevurah is the conquest of self. Vanquishing others however is a bogus form of might that only masks the weakness and inadequacy lurking underneath — it is bravado not bravery.

The same can be said it would seem of the accompanying reference in this prayer to the Jews as me’atim — small in number. Again in the simple numerical terms in which limited human beings are accustomed to thinking we were and are the few ranged against the many and that makes our victories miraculous. “Lo mei’rubchem me’kol ha’amim choshak Hashem bachem … ki atem hame’at me’kol ha’amim [Hashem did not desire you because you were more numerous than the other nations … for you are the fewest among  the nations] said Moshe Rabbeinu (Devarim 7:7) long ago and nothing has changed in the intervening millennia.

And to be sure the fact that we as Hashem’s Chosen Nation are a small select cadre of Divine ambassadors is a distinction we bear proudly as can be. That’s true by the way of any group that has a mission that they and they alone are specially equipped to fulfill. Just think of the Marines’ motto: The Few. The Proud.…  

Looking around at the world it becomes evident in fact that almost every area of human endeavor from carpentry to cardiology is the province of a relatively small group of people who possess the knowledge training experience or aptitude to excel in their respective fields and to benefit the great majority of people who lack all of these. It just so happens that our field the one in which we Jews have been entrusted with specialized information and training is the one most crucial to the human experience: how to achieve moral excellence and draw near to our Creator thereby achieving the purpose of our existence in this world.   

And yet it would seem that the sense of us as a tiny vastly outnumbered minority within a larger sea of humanity ought to be balanced with another equally true perspective. In this an episode from Melachim II (6:15-17) can be instructive.

There the story is told of how the king of Aramsought to capture the prophet Elisha. Learning that the latter was in Dosan the king dispatched a large military force to apprehend him. The servant lad of Elisha seeing the city surrounded by these vast troop formations accompanied by horses and chariots exclaimed frightfully “My master what shall we do?”  Elisha said to him “Fear not because those that are with us are more numerous than those that are with them.” And at that he davened to Hashem to calm his servant by opening his eyes to behold that which otherwise only a navi could see. Hashem opened the lad’s eyes and he beheld the mountains outside Dosan filled with fiery chariots and horses.

We have many battles to fight in our role as conveyors of Hashem’s often-inconvenient messages to humanity at large and lately as the moral fiber of the surrounding society seems to wear thinner with every passing year it seems as if these struggles have only grown in number. And fight we must with all our strength. But as we go about doing so is there anything to be gained — is there perhaps something to be lost? — in conveying to those who look to us for instruction and inspiration the sense that we are a small beleaguered group surrounded by forces more powerful than us in numbers and resources? Ought we not to convey to our precious children and students our lads that as Elisha told his lad rabim asher itanu mei’asher osam.

But how so? The writer G.K. Chesterton had this to say in his book entitled Orthodoxy (not precisely our kind …):

Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.

Powerful words Chesterton’s are and so very important for people to hear in a world where a whole set of values that until just decades ago were universally held have been consigned to the societal dustbin often bringing ridicule and censure down upon those still holding fast to them.

Support for egregious moral travesties like termination of unborn life and degenerate relationships are now litmus tests for membership in good standing in the Democratic Party and other quarters of society although within recent memory even liberal stalwarts like Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson publicly expressed disgust with them.  But even on the simple level of public comportment to look at photos from the 1950s of men at a sports stadium every single one attired in hat and jacket is to register shock not at the decline but the virtual disappearance of once-society-wide notions of decency. But along comes the idea of the “democracy of the dead” to say rabim asher itanu mei’asher osam; we simply won’t allow the discarding of the collective wisdom of a hundred generations on a whim.

But for us the concept is actually far more powerful than Chesterton could possibly have conceived. Tzaddikim even after leaving this world are alive and together their neshamos and ours form one indivisible Klal Yisrael. They are connected to our struggles and we in turn learn their words and explore the details of their lives every single day. The avos and their families the multitudes of prophets and the “simple” Jews who lived as their contemporaries the Tannaim and Amoraim the Rishonim and Acharonim and all their disciples all these incomparably brilliant and exquisitely righteous people in their millions they really are “with us.” And together we make those that are “with them ” with all their vaunted media government and academic apparatus shrivel into insignificance.

Shouldn’t the young soldiers whom we are training to do moral battle go to the front nourished by the knowledge that they too are surrounded by innumerable fiery chariots these bearing the likes of Abaye v’Rava the Rambam and Rashi Reb Akiva Eiger and the Ketzos Hachoshen?