By Joyce Zonana,
It’s the simplest of rituals, the most basic, the most easily taught and passed down: During the dark of winter, on one of the longest nights of the year, we light a candle. Then we use that candle to light another, placing each in a candelabra. The next night, we light an initial candle again—called the shamash, or helper, in Hebrew—then use it to light two more. Now we have three candles burning. The night after that, we light three candles with the shamash. And so on, night after night, for a total of eight nights, until our candelabra—known as a menorah—holds a total of nine candles.
The menorah I’ve used for more than forty years, carrying it with me from place to place, was a gift from a friend, the daughter, it was said, of a Nazi. She’d noticed me admiring it in a neighborhood shop window, and surprised me with it one December morning. I’ve treasured that menorah, with its brass candle-holders shaped like a rollicking klezmer band, cherishing it as a symbol of reconciliation. In recent years, I would bring it along to Chicago, where my husband and I regularly celebrate Christmas with his family. During Chanukah, I would faithfully light the candles, inviting my in-laws to join in. Although we won’t be traveling this season, we will observe Chanukah all the same.
As we light our candles, we sing songs of praise, hymns lauding the magnificence and beneficence of the Divine (psalms 113-118, known as the Hallel, as in hallelujah, “praise be to our God.”)
The light from our candles increases each night, but we use their shimmering glow not to illumine our homes but to brighten our souls. We take time apart from our ordinary activities to watch the candles burn, marveling in their splendor, celebrating the re-emergence of light in darkness. If we have children, we tell tales of the miracle commemorated by our ritual—consecrated oil that should have lasted only one night lasted eight, allowing our ancestors to rededicate their temple after a bitter battle.
Of course there is another miracle that occurs at just around the same time, every year: the return of the sun that had been seeming to disappear into darkness. I see it as entirely fitting that the word for our initial candle, shamash, is also the Babylonian word for the Sun God, dispenser of divine justice.
Chanukah commemorates the rededication of our temple. And isn’t that what all rituals invite us to do? Return to the source, remember our origins, reclaim our divine heritage. Mircea Eliade tells us that ritual brings us into sacred time and sacred space, the time and space of eternity, the time and space of our true home. When I light my Chanukah candles every year, I rededicate my temple, re-entering sacred time and space. I invite you to join me.
Joyce Zonana is a regular contributor to the blog, Feminism and Religion. A writer and literary translator, she is the author of a memoir, Dream Homes: From Cairo to Katrina, an Exile’s Journey. Her most recent translation is Tobie Nathan’s A Land Like You.
“Sunrise Menorah,” Digital image, 2020. Reprinted by permission of the artist, Deborah Saltz Amerling.
