 | It's telling that Hanukkah is one of the Judaism's most popular holidays: more than any other ritual, Jews light candles for the Festival of Lights. Amidst so much darkness it's tempting to think that the candles we light can't do much – and in truth, wee candles can't do much. They certainly don't automatically dispel the world's darkness. But that's not the point. The candles aren't the point. We ourselves must be the light. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Mikeitz 5785 (2024)
Click here for last week's Dvar Torah on this pareshah, Power Tools for Building.
It's Hanukkah. After a year filled with so much anxiety, darkness and despair, the holiday light comes at just the right time.
I love when Hanukkah comes just after the literal lowest light of the winter solstice, as if to propel the "return of the sun" by spiritual light. And I especially love when Hanukkah's first light coincides with Christmas and the start of Kwanzaa, as it does this year. How beautiful – and instructive of our common humanity – that different cultures' festivals of light coincide.
It's tempting to shrug it off, to play the rationalist card. After all, how much light can the candles of Hanukkah really shed? Do the candles actually transform the things that brought so much anxiety, darkness and despair?
No, of course not. But that's not the point. Too often we miss the point.
Hanukkah always coincides with Parashat Mikeitz in Torah, in which a jailed Joseph suddenly is catapulted from darkness to light. From forgotten prisoner, Joseph becomes Pharaoh's unlikely prime minister, saves Egypt from a famine, and becomes a world power broker based on carefully stocked food supply he oversaw. Suddenly his starving brothers – who long ago sold Joseph into slavery – appear before Joseph groveling for food, but they don't recognize him. Joseph stages an elaborate test to see if his brothers have changed.
Nothing in Joseph's ascent and triumph pretended away the great wrong his brothers did him, or the darkness that Joseph endured by their cruelty, or the famine unfolding around him. The light Joseph experienced did not change Joseph's past – but it did change him.
It's much the same with Hanukkah. Hanukkah doesn't pretend away the great suffering of Hellenist conquest and the Maccabee rebellion that restored Jewish autonomy in the mid-160s BCE. Hanukkah also doesn't pretend away the religious zealotry that followed Maccabee victory. (One might be forgiven for seeing similar excess zealotry ascending in society.)
Instead, Hanukkah is the Jewish people's celebration and resolve that no circumstance however dark and defiling need take us down. In the words of Yehudah Aryeh Lieb Alter (1847-1905), the candles of Hanukkah are not mere external sparks of light but reminders of and catalysts for our internal sparks of light. We ourselves – our souls – are the candles of divinity. As Proverbs 20:27 puts it:
Mikeitz 5785 (2024)
Click here for last week's Dvar Torah on this pareshah, Power Tools for Building.
It's Hanukkah. After a year filled with so much anxiety, darkness and despair, the holiday light comes at just the right time.
I love when Hanukkah comes just after the literal lowest light of the winter solstice, as if to propel the "return of the sun" by spiritual light. And I especially love when Hanukkah's first light coincides with Christmas and the start of Kwanzaa, as it does this year. How beautiful – and instructive of our common humanity – that different cultures' festivals of light coincide.
It's tempting to shrug it off, to play the rationalist card. After all, how much light can the candles of Hanukkah really shed? Do the candles actually transform the things that brought so much anxiety, darkness and despair?
No, of course not. But that's not the point. Too often we miss the point.
Hanukkah always coincides with Parashat Mikeitz in Torah, in which a jailed Joseph suddenly is catapulted from darkness to light. From forgotten prisoner, Joseph becomes Pharaoh's unlikely prime minister, saves Egypt from a famine, and becomes a world power broker based on carefully stocked food supply he oversaw. Suddenly his starving brothers – who long ago sold Joseph into slavery – appear before Joseph groveling for food, but they don't recognize him. Joseph stages an elaborate test to see if his brothers have changed.
Nothing in Joseph's ascent and triumph pretended away the great wrong his brothers did him, or the darkness that Joseph endured by their cruelty, or the famine unfolding around him. The light Joseph experienced did not change Joseph's past – but it did change him.
It's much the same with Hanukkah. Hanukkah doesn't pretend away the great suffering of Hellenist conquest and the Maccabee rebellion that restored Jewish autonomy in the mid-160s BCE. Hanukkah also doesn't pretend away the religious zealotry that followed Maccabee victory. (One might be forgiven for seeing similar excess zealotry ascending in society.)
Instead, Hanukkah is the Jewish people's celebration and resolve that no circumstance however dark and defiling need take us down. In the words of Yehudah Aryeh Lieb Alter (1847-1905), the candles of Hanukkah are not mere external sparks of light but reminders of and catalysts for our internal sparks of light. We ourselves – our souls – are the candles of divinity. As Proverbs 20:27 puts it:
| נֵר יְהו׳׳ה נִשְׁמַת אָדָם חֹפֵשׂ כָּל־חַדְרֵי־בָטֶן׃ | The candle of YHVH is the human soul, finding every inward room. |
The room inside you that is always light, that is made of light – for the soul itself is light – is what the sacred seeks. And it's the part of us that seeks the sacred, the ultimate rightness and goodness of things, the ultimate meaning of it all, the Source of Light.
So when you light up this Hanukkah, light more than your candles. Light up your spirit, your soul. We ourselves must be the light. We needn't pretend away the darkness but rather live knowing that something more transcends it.
And if that's too big a wick to light this year, know that our people have been light workers for nearly 2,200 years – and the light never has gone out, no matter what.
From my heart to yours, here's wishing you and your loved ones a חג אורים שמח / hag urim sameah – a happy Festival of Lights.
So when you light up this Hanukkah, light more than your candles. Light up your spirit, your soul. We ourselves must be the light. We needn't pretend away the darkness but rather live knowing that something more transcends it.
And if that's too big a wick to light this year, know that our people have been light workers for nearly 2,200 years – and the light never has gone out, no matter what.
From my heart to yours, here's wishing you and your loved ones a חג אורים שמח / hag urim sameah – a happy Festival of Lights.
RSS Feed