Speaking of Religion: Hanukah and the Hidden Light
We are all familiar with the opening creation story in Genesis. God says, let there be light, and there was light. But eleven verses later on the fourth day, the text says that God created lights in the sky - the sun and the moon - to tell time by. When we stop to consider this, we might ask: if the sun and moon were created later, then what was that first light? One tradition in Judaism says that first light created is the ‘hidden light:’ light that is stored up for us and that we can find only in those darkest moments of our lives. There are many verses in Psalms and the books of the Prophets about light rising out of the darkness, or about those who are walking in the darkness and come across a great light. The tradition says that this light is the first light in the creation story, and that strangely enough, it is only visible in times of great darkness.
Hanukah and Christmas are descendents of the winter solstice, the celebration that marked the longest night of the year (and the fact that each day afterwards there would be a little more light). As the days grow shorter and the nights grow longer, humans have banded together from time immemorial to celebrate light, and to pray for its return. Essentially, all the winter holidays are about this work: finding, creating, and recognizing light in the darkness. In our different faith traditions, we call this light by different names.
On Hanukah, which begins on the evening of December 4th, we light the menorah for eight nights, each night adding another candle, each night witnessing more radiance. The Hasidic teacher, the Sfat Emet, writes that the light that the Hanukah candles give off is precisely the hidden light from the first day of creation, the light that shines only from within the great darkness, when we need it most.
The Jewish tradition has long argued about what the true miracle on Hanukah actually was: the oil lasting eight nights when it was supposed to only last for one, or the Maccabees and their successful revolution against their Syrian-Greek occupiers. Perhaps another way of describing the miracle of Hanukah is like this: when one candle lights another, the light from that first candle is not diminished - there is simply more light. My teacher, Norman Fischer, has said that we are in the candle-lighting business; meaning that we are put here to give light to each other. When we give to another, it does not diminish our light, but makes the overall light more brilliant.
This holiday season, one way of being in the candle-lighting business is supporting the Interfaith Council’s Food and Fuel Fund, which provides basic support to those in our Bennington community who most need it. You can send a donation to the Fund c/o Congregation Beth El on 107 Adams Street – and you can also go to hear Rabbi and Stand-up comedian Bob Alpert perform a benefit for the Food and Fuel Fund on Sunday, December 16th at the Mack Performing Arts Center at the Arlington Memorial High School. And finally, we are having our annual Hanukah party at Congregation Beth El on Friday, December 7th at 6pm featuring the Wholesale Klezmer Band, which the whole Bennington community is invited to.