Tonight, a child will defeat all the darkness

December 21, 11:46 AMSpiritual Life ExaminerRabbi Ben Kamin

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Why do we believe, after all these centuries of bestial treatment by so many of the strong of so many of the weak, after countless wars in which men ordered the slaughter of children in the name of their gods, after Munich and now Mumbai, that Hanukkah’s little songs are worth singing, that its little candles are worth lighting?

Why do we so heartily delight in the calendar coincidence of Christian children lighting candles this week as well, even as the arrival of Hanukkah tonight sheds further light on the culminating Advent?  Why do we rejoice particularly this year, when the first of the eight lights of Hanukkah will break through the December 21 solstice itself, sending a beam into the darkest night of the entire year?

Why did the rabbinic tradition try very hard to actually downgrade the military aspect of the original Hanukkah rebellion in 165 BCE against the Greek Syrians—in favor of a spiritual celebration that embraces miracles, parents blessing their children, and putting a candelabrum in the nighttime window?
 

We feel this way, about a little festival that sheds star shine on all the others, of all the faiths, because the Jewish people have always defeated brutality with the power of ideas. 

We believe that the best interpretation of the nasty little war that took place in Judea back then, during which Jewish volunteers threw out the Hellenistic-spouting despots who denied us the right to practice our faith, who defiled our temples with pig statuettes, who banned our liturgies from the land we had inherited biblically, who made the speaking of Hebrew a capital crime—all this we vowed to remember not in military terms but in small games, miracle-loving canticles, the sharing of potato pancakes, and the spinning of dreidels.  We eschewed the necessary blood of Hanukkah in favor of the veneration of holy oil.  We removed the tyrants from Israel and made little children the royalty of the world.

That’s what Hanukkah really is, and that is what happens tonight when a child lights one candle.  What that child feels in his or her heart, that complete innocence and pure trust, and the attendant beam of light shattering the solstice—is there any power truly greater than that?

Happy Hanukkah to every child and every grown-up who ever gave up hope!