Hanukkah: Seeing Your Light Within
Rabbi Tom Samuels
Rabbi Ed Feinstein tells a story about a young boy meeting the great mystic and civil rights leader Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel on Rosh HaShanna:
During the ritual of Duchenen (the ceremony where the Kohanim, Jews of priestly descent, recite the traditional Priestly Blessing upon the congregation thus bringing the Shechinah, the Presence of God in this world, into the congregation) Tradition holds that during this time the congregants are forbidden to look directly at the Kohanim. Of course, like almost any child, the boy, Levi, stole a glance at the Kohanim while the ceremony unfolded. He then turned to his father and said, “Pappa, you told me that I was forbidden to look because I would see God, but instead all I see are a bunch of old people hiding in their prayer shawls. Where is God?” The boy’s father directed his son to Rabbi Heschel who sat nearby in deep thought.
“Where is God?” asked Levi. Rabbi Heschel responded, “Levi, if what you want to do is see God, you need to look in the mirror. But you have to look beyond your face. You have to look deep within yourself. And if you do, you will see that there is a Nitzotz, a spark of God’s holiness that is there. And when you look at your father and mother and your sisters, and when you look at all the people you encounter both within the congregation and throughout the entire world, each one is created in the image of God, and there is a spark of holiness present in every single one of them.”
And then Rabbi Heschel quickly added, “However, the problem Levi, is that most people forget this truth, and the spark of God that is there remains Nistar, forgotten and hidden. Your task, Levi, is to uncover those sparks that are hidden. Then to take them, and make them revealed in the world. To remind others that they are created in the image of God.”
Our lives, our world, Rabbi Feinstein concludes, is so full of darkness. Who does not ask themselves when the monopoly of darkness overwhelms: Am I safe? Am I loved? Am I needed?
For some of us much of the time, and for all of us some of the time, darkness suggests peril and instability. The sense that life is fleeting, tenuous, random and senseless. It is dark, and I am alone and afraid.
Judaism does not ask us to ignore this sense of doom. This cosmic fear. On the contrary, it asks us to face it squarely, and then, ultimately, to defy it.
But how?
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks asked us to think of the nature of the stars in the heavens. Stars do not eliminate the darkness, but rather they can mitigate it. The same with the Hanukkah candles. We light a small fire. One candle the first night… two the second… and so on for eight consecutive nights. We do not pretend to be the sun, Rabbi Sacks taught, but only stars.
A human being is indeed created to light up this world. One little candle at a time.
Wishing you all and your families a Happy and Healthy Hanukkah.
Rabbi Tom Samuels
Rabbi Tom Samuels
Rabbi Ed Feinstein tells a story about a young boy meeting the great mystic and civil rights leader Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel on Rosh HaShanna:
During the ritual of Duchenen (the ceremony where the Kohanim, Jews of priestly descent, recite the traditional Priestly Blessing upon the congregation thus bringing the Shechinah, the Presence of God in this world, into the congregation) Tradition holds that during this time the congregants are forbidden to look directly at the Kohanim. Of course, like almost any child, the boy, Levi, stole a glance at the Kohanim while the ceremony unfolded. He then turned to his father and said, “Pappa, you told me that I was forbidden to look because I would see God, but instead all I see are a bunch of old people hiding in their prayer shawls. Where is God?” The boy’s father directed his son to Rabbi Heschel who sat nearby in deep thought.
“Where is God?” asked Levi. Rabbi Heschel responded, “Levi, if what you want to do is see God, you need to look in the mirror. But you have to look beyond your face. You have to look deep within yourself. And if you do, you will see that there is a Nitzotz, a spark of God’s holiness that is there. And when you look at your father and mother and your sisters, and when you look at all the people you encounter both within the congregation and throughout the entire world, each one is created in the image of God, and there is a spark of holiness present in every single one of them.”
And then Rabbi Heschel quickly added, “However, the problem Levi, is that most people forget this truth, and the spark of God that is there remains Nistar, forgotten and hidden. Your task, Levi, is to uncover those sparks that are hidden. Then to take them, and make them revealed in the world. To remind others that they are created in the image of God.”
Our lives, our world, Rabbi Feinstein concludes, is so full of darkness. Who does not ask themselves when the monopoly of darkness overwhelms: Am I safe? Am I loved? Am I needed?
For some of us much of the time, and for all of us some of the time, darkness suggests peril and instability. The sense that life is fleeting, tenuous, random and senseless. It is dark, and I am alone and afraid.
Judaism does not ask us to ignore this sense of doom. This cosmic fear. On the contrary, it asks us to face it squarely, and then, ultimately, to defy it.
But how?
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks asked us to think of the nature of the stars in the heavens. Stars do not eliminate the darkness, but rather they can mitigate it. The same with the Hanukkah candles. We light a small fire. One candle the first night… two the second… and so on for eight consecutive nights. We do not pretend to be the sun, Rabbi Sacks taught, but only stars.
A human being is indeed created to light up this world. One little candle at a time.
Wishing you all and your families a Happy and Healthy Hanukkah.
Rabbi Tom Samuels
