“Chanukah Illuminated,” Rabbi Elaine Zecher’s Shabbat Awakenings
December 27, 2024 | 26 Kislev 5785
Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection, as we make our way toward Shabbat and continue the celebration of Chanukah. You can listen to it as a podcast here.
Tonight we light the third candle of Chanukah. The candles bring more light each night just as the days have continued to do the same following the winter equinox.
This year, we ask the question: Should the candles of Chanukah bring light or create fire? The question is a worthy one as we reflect on the story of Chanukah, the fall of the Temple In Jerusalem many years later, and the perseverance of the Jewish people into the next millennia to this day. How we thrive depends on the answer.
The interplay of fire and light have been around since creation. God differentiated light from darkness on the first day. It did not come from the sun, moon, or stars. That happened later. The sequence set in motion that light has tremendous sacred power. The Jerusalem Talmud (PT Ber 8.6, 12b) shares the midrash of the first human’s fear when light turned to darkness. As the story goes, God helped Adam to create fire to ease his distress. This teaches us that God created light, but humans have the capacity to create fire.
In another midrash (Bereisheet Rabbah 39:1) about Abraham, there is an illuminated castle in the distance. The Hebrew word, דולקת, doleket, could mean both aflame or aglow? Was it on fire or full of light? The sight caused Abraham to ask, who is the owner of this castle? The story is meant to associate the Divine as the owner as Abraham would come to realize when Abraham heard God exclaim, “I am the owner [of the castle/world].”
But there is another layer to this story lifted up by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory (The Letter of the Scroll, 58) about the relationship between fire and light and between God and human beings:
What haunts us about the midrash is not just Abraham’s question but God’s reply. God gives an answer that is no answer. God says in effect, “I am here,” without explaining the flames. God does not attempt to put out the fire. It is as if, instead, God was calling for help. God made the building. Human beings set the fire, and only human beings can put out the flames. Abraham may have asked God, “Where are you? But, God asked Adam, “Why did you abandon me?” So begins a dialogue between earth and heaven that has no counterpart in any other faith, and which has not ceased for four thousand years. In these questions, which only the other can answer, God and [humanity] find one another. Perhaps only together they can extinguish the flames.
It is with this relationship in mind that I draw your attention to a wonderful piece in the New York Times by Abigail Pogrebin and Dov Linzer. This Hanukkah, Choose Light Over Heat (We will have the opportunity to learn directly from them when they join us at Qabbalat Shabbat on March 21, 2025.). I encourage you to read the entire article, but I share this part of it here:
…This year we are paying closer attention to the less celebrated aspect of the Hanukkah narrative: that of the struggle inside our own people. And we are embracing the idea that the story we tell about ourselves can help shape who we strive to be.
The ideological war… is not simply a story of the ancient world, but one we also might tell today. Those modern divisions intensified in the aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023, the war in Gaza and in this era of hardening partisan discord. The internecine rifts of the moment feel especially distressing at a time of escalating antisemitism. All the more reason to revisit the wisdom of our ancient sages, who pointedly decided not to make Jewish civil war the core narrative of Hanukkah.
Shlomo Yosef Zevin, the Russian-born 20th-century rabbinical authority, wrote in a 1979 book that the rabbis had a choice to make regarding the message of Hanukkah: Should the eight flames represent fire — the destruction of our enemies [even from within] — or light, working together toward a better world? The rabbis chose light.
They did not want future generations to glorify extremism or the vilification of ideological opponents. As moderate voices writing after centuries of sectarian discord, the rabbis sought a more inclusive form of Jewish life.”
We, in our day, have inherited the power of that light that illuminates our Judaism, even as we continue to have the ability to create fire. It is one of the greatest gifts from our ancestors, a present we unwrap every day of our Jewish lives we live together in community.
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Chanukah!
שבת שלום! חג שמח!
I hope you have a wonderful holiday and I look forward to hearing your thoughts and impressions here.
***
Rabbi Elaine Zecher