Light in a time of darkness by Ruth Neuwald Falcon

I spent the evening messaging friends and family, feeling the need to connect on this first night of Chanukah even more strongly than usual. Happy Chanukah, I wrote to many of them, despite it all. As the evening went on, I felt that I wanted to connect with you, my online community, as well.

We are reeling even more than usual today, which is saying something. Near the end of her Politics Chat on December 9, Heather Cox Richardson said, “Man, it’s rough. You wake up every morning, you look at that ‘expletive’ (her word) phone, and you think, Really? Are we really gonna do this again today?“

Yesterday’s shooting at Brown was horrific. And then we woke up to news of the slaughter at Bondi Beach in Australia. One friend is on an extended visit there. “Everyone here is in complete shock,” she wrote. “Mass shootings are completely anathema to the culture, making me realize how inured I’ve become to them.”

Another friend wrote, “I have family living across from Bondi Beach, fortunately all at home during the shooting. In shock.”

Another sent me a photograph of the murdered rabbi with his family, as well as one of the Holocaust survivor murdered as he shielded his wife from gunfire.

Still, all over the world, we lit our Chanukah candles and sang the blessings. Here in the States, people ate latkes and apple sauce. In Israel, it’s jelly donuts, or sufganiot. Both foods are deep-fried in oil to commemorate the miracle of the cruse of oil that lasted eight days, long enough to keep the Temple light burning until more oil could be prepared. It was a miracle because, however large a cruse is, it should only have been enough to last a single day.

We are now the ones whose task it is to keep the light burning. As one friend said in response to my text: May the light chase away the darkness. Another wrote, Yes. Light for all, especially those for whom the Light seems far off. One sent wishes for peace and sanity, and from another came blessings yet unimaginable. And from another, We have to remember to see light and meaning in these dark times.

Heather Cox Richardson didn’t end with the “Really?” She went on to offer us educated hope, as she so often does. “But despite that,” she said, “it does feel like an era is ending and a new one is beginning. And while certainly that could end up horrible, the opposite is also true. And at this moment in our lives, and in the life of the United States of America, we still get to choose.”

May the light of hope and perseverance strengthen us each day.