Much of this d’var Torah was also posted last year.
This year Chanukah begins at sundown December 2 and ends at sundown December 10.
In the Northern Hemisphere much of winter is lived in the dark. I remember when I lived in New England, I would wake up and leave for work in the dark and it would be dark again when I left to go home. Here in Arizona it's not so bad, partly because of the latitude and partly because we don't have Daylight Savings Time - but it still affects us. Since I no longer work and seldom have morning appointments, I wake up with the light. In summer, it can be as early as 5 AM; this time of year, it’s more often 8:30 or thereabouts.
So it's no surprise that winter holidays all over involve light. Even when I was a Jewish child and Christmas was still a religious holiday, my father would pack us into the car to drive around to look at people's Christmas lights - in New York City. Chanukah is called the Festival of Lights and although it is a minor holiday, we not only are commanded to light candles, but to put them in our windows for all to see. And I always love to see when people put their Christmas trees in their windows so passersby can enjoy the lights. The primitive holidays celebrating the solstice, from which we all borrowed customs, involved lighting the dark.
Seasonal affective disorder is a hazard of winter as our bodies and spirits react to insufficient daylight. We gravitate towards light and warmth, one reason for lights in windows and for holiday gatherings. We speak of a child's face "lighting up" upon opening a special present so that giving presents can also be a way of adding to the light. Families gather, supposedly in the light of love, and when darker feelings predominate, it can feel even worse than at other times.
It's no wonder that the rabbis several centuries after the Maccabbee rebellion changed the story of the triumph of a band of rebels over an occupying empire to the story of a miracle of a small light burning for eight days. And it's no wonder that early Christians, seeking a time of year to celebrate Jesus' birth, chose the winter solstice. These miracles speak to something fundamental to our being - the need to light the darkness.
But that story of rebellion, of resistance to an occupying power, also feels especially relevant this year. A friend years ago said it was interesting that the Jewish holidays that he and many of our other friends celebrated, Chanukah and Passover, were political, about defeating tyranny. I chose the photo at the top of this diary because in the face of an administration intent on undoing whatever is good in this country and sowing prejudice and dissension, we have seen a resistance coming together, different groups supporting each other — immigrants, women, Muslims, Jews, gays, the disabled — to fight for justice for ourselves and for each other.
This year we see the fruits of that resistance in the results of the mid-term elections, with the most diverse group ever of new members of Congress set to take office next month. This group includes the first two Muslim women ever to serve, including the first Palestinian-American; the first two Native American women in Congress; the youngest member ever to serve (also a woman); the first African-American women to represent several states; and several survivors of gun violence who are working not only to fight hate, but to fight the insanity that protects guns over people in this country.
Hate and guns converged in Pittsburgh when a gunman entered the Tree of Life synagogue and killed 11 people attending Shabbat services. So many people came together in grief over that, but even in the immediate aftermath of that tragedy there were people seeking to divide the resistance by “both sides do it” arguments about antisemitism meant to divide Jews from Muslims and African Americans. We must not allow this to succeed.
We must all fight to light the darkness of this time. And the photo, taken in Kiel, Germany in 1932 by the rabbi’s wife Rachel Pozner — the menorah is a defiance, like the student in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square. Not much later, the Pozners moved to Palestine. The menorah now resides at Yad Vashem except during Chanukah, when their descendants use it.
Chanukah is a holiday of resistance, which is sometimes necessary to counter darkness.
And although Chanukah is a minor holiday compared to Christmas and other Jewish holidays, we have our own Handel oratorio, Judas Maccabbeus. Listening to it over the week-end helped light the darkness of the past week for me. Here’s an aria that talks about preparing the feast of lights. (I don’t think they served latkes.)