Each year, my synagogue joins with another congregation to light the Hanukkah menorah on one night of the holiday. Jews have lit Hanukkah lights together for two thousand years in places as mundane as private homes and as hellish as concentration camp barracks. Our annual celebration takes place outdoors at the entrance to Albany’s Buckingham Pond. Under dim streetlights and distant starlight, the flames of our communal Hanukkah menorah illuminate -howbeit faintly – the sky darkened early in the evening around the time of the winter solstice. According to Jewish law, our outdoor observance is the ideal way to celebrate Hanukkah: in a place where anyone passing by can be a witness to the miracle of the lights in the ancient Jerusalem Temple.
Our recent lighting was unique because it also took place on the eighth and last night of the holiday. On the eighth evening of Hanukkah, Jews worldwide brighten their homes and the skies with eight lit candles or oil lamps. However, this was not always the universal practice. Two schools of ancient Jewish scholars argued about the proper procedure during each night of the holiday. One ruled that we begin the holiday with eight lights and diminish the number each night by one. The other school ruled that we begin the holiday with one light and add one each night. This latter approach is our practice today. Gathered along Berkshire Drive, our little group braved a bit of cold and wind to increase the candlelight as the holiday wound down in the darkness for another year.
It seems counterintuitive to light an increasing number of candles as the eight-day holiday wanes. The initial excitement of the first night gives way gradually to the weariness that accompanies the ongoing celebration. Think of the way you might slow down and sit out the last dance at a party, as you grow tired toward its end. In like fashion, it makes more sense to begin Hanukkah with an explosion of eight lights, then diminish them as the festival days trudge forward. And yet, Jewish tradition tells us to do just the opposite: make more light, more flame, as we leave more and more days of celebration behind us.
Standing apart, watching our festivities, I thought about this paradox, which expresses in ritual the miracle that Jewish legend records: as the eight days of kindling wore on, the more darkness the ancient Jews expected, the greater the light the ancient menorah projected. Yet the legend and the ritual also share this paradoxical feature with all other winter solstice festivals; they respond to the basic human terror in winter that the sun is dying, and we are being plunged into interminable darkness. For centuries, on Hanukkah, Christmas, Diwali, and more recently Kwanzaa, we humans have confounded this deepening winter darkness by burning fires and turning on lights: we symbolize our hope that the physical darkness is temporary, a mere blip on the calendar as we move toward Spring and, as it were, the sun’s rebirth. Paraphrasing Dylan Thomas, we ritually rage against the dying of the sun’s light by adding illumination to the world, not diminishing it.
As with human rituals, so too with the human spirit. Recently, I have found myself brooding excessively about the metaphoric night enveloping American political life and culture, extinguishing too much light of reason, and too much warmth that could radiate from simple decency. It is so easy and tempting to meet this darkness with despair. Yet at best, despair leads to entrenched apathy, then emotional and moral paralysis. At worst, despair causes some people to lash out violently against others, deepening cycles of hatred and violence. Could we meet this darkness with something much more redemptive than despair? What if we did more than symbolize our hope with solstice rituals of kindling more and more light?
What if we became the light we wish to increase in the ever-darkening world?
To do this requires the extraordinary leap of faith that the little bit of good we perform in our small spaces is actually very big, that its tiny flame casts the proverbial giant shadow. To do this demands that we enter the paradox of Hanukkah’s eighth night: that we work harder, act more courageously, and celebrate more joyously our ability to make a difference even as we grow less energetic, less able to celebrate, less secure about humanity. To do this, we must be those menorah candles on the eighth night: a band of brothers and sisters enlightened and enlightening together the gloomier corners of our communities.
Each year, my synagogue joins with another congregation to light the Hanukkah menorah on one night of the holiday. Every moment, you and I are handed the opportunity and the obligation to be the growing light in the world. As we enter the new year, let’s gather to burn the great flame that is the best of the human spirit, before our last lights flicker out.
Dan Ornstein is the rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom and a writer living in Albany, NY. He is the author of Cain v Abel: A Jewish Courtroom Drama (2020, The Jewish Publication Society.) Check out his writings at danornstein.com
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