Light in the Shadows — A Chanukah Reflection
Prefer to listen? Listen to the audio version.
Chanukah is upon us. It is the darkest time in the Northern Hemisphere and its eight days always fall on the sliver of the moon as it wanes and begins to wax again. Often when I write or speak about Chanukah, I invite us to notice the darkness, to step into the shadow parts of us that we often overlook, and to embrace the places that don’t feel comfortable.
This year as I prepare to light the candles, I am thinking about shining light in the places that need it rather than my usual teachings.
I spent most of last week, the week before Chanukah, singing with amazing humans at Hadar Rising Song Institute. Singing does not fully explain what happened there: I prayed, I chanted, I connected to myself, I connected more fully to my understanding of the Divine, and I connected to incredible humans. I cried, I laughed, and I danced. There were moments of silence after a particular song had been sung where awe engulfed me and words became unnecessary.
Since I left the chassidish community over 25 years ago, I have been searching for singing devotionally in community. I have found it in some places where it worked for a while for me and then for one reason or another it didn’t. Then in 2017, I got injured and being in groups of people, although helpful for my soul in singing, actually hurt other parts of me (especially my brain) and so I stepped back from groups.
As my injury heals, I thought I might be ready to step in. I stayed close enough to the conference that when I needed to, I left and napped in the middle of the day.
Standing in the back of the room this week, singing and chanting some new melodies and some chassidish ones I grew up with was special in ways that words will never capture. I even had an opportunity to teach one of the niggunim (wordless melody) that I grew up with.
I have a friend who grew up Mennonite and we often talk about how singing in community creates harmony not only in voice but in our nervous system too; how it helps us co-regulate together; how it invites a deep sense of peace. How it brings us to an understanding of self and community in a way where words often get in the way.
One of the classes I took was with Elana Arian and one of the songs she shared was her oseh shalom. She repeats the words v’al kol (and on all) over and over again before she adds the words Yisrael (Jewish people,) and Yoshvai Tevel (all who dwell on this earth). So it sounds like, “Bring peace to all, to all, to all, to all of Yisrael and to all, to all, to all, to all of the inhabitants in the world.”
She makes it clear in this song that peace will come when we all, and I mean all of us, those who vote differently than us, those who worship differently, those who believe differently, those whose very existence makes us feel anger, resentment, overwhelm, and threatened. ALL v’al kol - really ALL need to come together in peace.
Something powerful happened to me as I chanted with the group over and over. I realized that all includes my family of origin, my community of origin, they aren’t changing and probably never will and neither will I. So the prayer and the request as we pray is the question is how do we step into peace with them?
How do we step into peace with all of humanity, even those we adamantly disagree with?
I don’t have the answer but today I am willing to pray and live into the question.
As we prepare to light the Chanukah candles tonight, I invite us all to notice the places in the world that need song, healing, and light. To notice our loved ones and those in our community who are not the ones we think of when we imagine peace. To acknowledge the world and its divide and send light into it, hopefully guiding us all to a place where peace can coexist despite our differences.
Happy Chanukah.