A Chanukkah Wish

Originally posted:  December 14, 2014

One of my all-time favorite lessons about Chanukkah, from the Talmud Shabbat 22:  The rabbis discuss whether the real mitzvah of Chanukkah is to light the candles or simply to place the Chanukkah menorah in the window. The Chassidic text Kedushat Levi teaches that these two possibilities reflect different spiritual moments in a Jew’s religious experience. Sometimes the spiritual fire is alive in us, and sometimes it’s not.  I love how honest the original Chassidim were about the ebb and flow of our spiritual and emotional lives.  The Kedushat Levi reads the rabbinic debate as a message that sometimes it’s enough just to show up, just to place our menorah and to have the faith that the kindling– the revival of spiritual light– will come.  It seems to me that’s the whole message of the holiday itself.  Light will come, even in the darkest moments.  May each of us experience a renewed faith and a renewed spiritual energy as we light our candles in the coming week.  See you in January!