Recent Sermons

Hanukkah 2021

**What Lights will You Light this Year?**

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I remember that David was more freaked out by the subsequent anthrax scare than he was by the events of 9/11. I remember him saying that a person can tolerate the first hit; it’s the second one that really gets you.

This year, as we go through our second iteration of pandemic holidays, I feel the prescience of his words. It’s one thing to close out 2020 or 5780 and say, out with last year’s curses, in with this year’s blessings! תכלה שנה וקללותיה, תחל שנה וברכותיה It’s another thing to say it again a year later. In 2020, COVID holidays were something of a novelty — seder on zoom — whoever thought of it? Shofar services in the parking lot. Neilah under the stars. Lighting Hanukkah candles across America on Zoom. It was almost fun.

2021 began auspiciously. We inaugurated a new president. We had vaccines. By seder, my family, like many others gathered for the first time in a year. We didn’t have all the friends we usually have at seder, but being together, 3 grandparents, David and me, the girls and Jonathan — was more than enough. I felt that we had emerged from our cocoon, that soon we would fly again.

Who knew about delta and omicron? Who knew that so many Americans would shun vaccinations? Who knew that everything, even our very lives, would be political football? Who knew that 2021 would bring insurrection, fire, drought, flood, plague. It’s a lot to bear. Hanukkah looks different than it did last year, but it is still a pandemic Hanukkah, we are still anxious, still calculating before we leave the house, still wearing masks, still unsure whether to plan that vacation or simcha. And the death toll keeps climbing, like a drumbeat that will not cease. It’s hard to light Hanukkah lights again, at least for me, and feel as hopeful as I did last year. So much anxiety on the horizon. Who knows what is next?

We always read Miketz and the stories of Joseph during Hanukkah. You could say that this is just a coincidence, that if we are going to start the Torah at Simhat Torah we will of necessity end up here by mid-December. Why after all would there be any logical connection between Hanukkah and Joseph. But that, of course, is not how the rabbis see it.

If you think back to last week’s parasha, for a moment, it traced Joseph’s downward descent: thrown into the bottom of the pit by his brothers; taken down to Egypt, and finally cast into prison. But each descent is counteracted — his brothers lift him from the pit to deliver him to the Ishmaelites; in Potiphar’s house he is lifted up by Potiphar, taking charge of all that is in his household; and Pharaoh frees him from prison to interpret dreams, ultimately lifting him up to be his vizier, in charge of all of Egypt.

In kabbalistic terms, we call this ירידה לצורך עליה, that sometimes a person needs to go down, paradoxically, in order to go up.

Hanukkah expresses a very similar idea. It is after all a rededication of the sanctuary after it has been desecrated by the Syrians, after a statue of Zeus had stood in its courtyard, after pigs had been sacrificed on its altar. It is a rekindling of the menorah after it had ceased to be lit.

As for them, so for us. מעשה אבות סימן לבנים At the darkest time of the year, at a dark time in the history of our nation and our world, we light one candle and increase the light each night. We express our hope and our intent that we too can ascend, can emerge from this darkness, just as Joseph did, just as the ancient Maccabees did.

The question is often asked — if the oil was sufficient to burn for one day, then the miracle is that it burned for seven more. In other words, the miracle is a seven day miracle, not an eight day miracle. The first day was not a miracle at all. We know oil burns. So why do we celebrate for eight days?

There are many answers to this question but the most compelling one, I think, is given by Rabbi David Hartman, alav hashalom. “The miracle of the first day was expressed in the community’s willingness to light a small cruse of oil without reasonable assurance that their efforts would be sufficient to complete the rededication of the Temple. ..The miracle of Jewish spiritual survival throughout its history of wandering and oppression may best be described by our people’s strength to live without guarantees of success and to focus on how to begin a process without knowledge of how it would end… the miracle of the first day…[is] the miracle of human courage to build within imperfect situations.”

Like our ancestors, we too light our lights, not at all sure of what will be, or if we have enough to get through — but we light all the same — one small act of courage, a candle in the dark.

Still, we might feel hopeless. One little candle in my window in Woodbridge? What use is it? Even two or three or four? So what! One vaccine, one booster, one mask — how does it help?

But, as David Hartman said, everything begins with that one candle. The Maccabees lit their cruse not knowing there would be more oil. Ben Gurion declared statehood in Israel uncertain that Israel would really vanquish its enemies or achieve that goal. The Wright Brothers launched their plane, Apollo 11 took off for the moon, Edward Jenner injected material from the cowpox sore of a milkmaid into her son’s arm. Nothing great in history ever happened because its outcome was certain. It only happened because people had the courage to light a light in the darkness and trust that that light would kindle more light.

In Jewish sources, the Hanukkah oil is called ‘’hame’at ha machzik et hamerubah — the little that holds the much. Noah’s ark was such a place — one small ark holding all the world’s species of animals. The Mishkan, the Tabernacle in the desert, also the little that holds the much — not only could all of Israel fit in on the day of its consecration but even God himself, whom the Heavens could not contain, managed to fit into the mishkan. In astrophysics, the little that holds much is the tiny point from which the universe, the big bang, sprang. In physics, it is E=MC2, that all matter, even tiny bits, holds unfathomable energy. In biology, its DNA, the double helix which contains the master plan for all life. In human anatomy, it is the tiny pupil through which the human eye sees the vast world, the invisible breath we take which animates our very being. It is the small cruse of oil whose flame lasted, not for one day, but for thousands of years.

In reality, we don’t always know what lights we will light. I think about my teachers — K Kelly Wise and John Stableord who taught me to read and to write; Rabbi Gendler who taught me that there was a world beyond the one we see and that Judaism gives us language for it and vessels to hold its holiness; Dov Berkovitz who taught me that a Jew is a person who lives with the tension of unanswered questions and learns to ask those questions on deeper and deeper levels. I don’t think any of them knew that with their words and deeds they were transforming me, making me the person I am today. They just said the things they always say — but in me their words found a home and a listening ear.

I learned this from my friend, Micah Odenheimer, and many of the examples of *ha’meat she machzik at ha merubah* are his.

And I think of my students. Every so often I run into one of them or they send me a note and they say something like, “I will never forget what you taught about Alenu. It changed the way I see everything.” or you pointed me in the direction I took in life. Of course I have no idea what I said about Alenu or how I counseled someone about their career. But it made a difference to them.

No, we don’t know what fires we light and sometimes those fires might even go underground for a generation or two before they reemerge. But here’s what we do know. If we don’t light the fire, if we don’t have the courage to strike that match, if we get caught up believing that our light is too small, that no one will see it, that it won’t make a difference, that the situation is too grave, that one light will not suffice against the magnitude of the darkness, then, for sure there won’t be light. We can never know what lights we will be blessed to light but we can know with certainty that if we don’t light at all, if we don’t take that chance, there won’t be light.

Joseph’s descent led to his ascent. The Greek desecration of the Temple led to its renewal. How will we find our way out of darkness this year, even as we seem to descend deeper into it?

Will you have the courage to light this year? What lights will you light? What joy will you bring? What gifts will you give? Everything that is infinite is also infinitesimally small. What small thing will you do that will make an infinite difference?