I was dreaming when I wrote this; forgive me if it goes astray. By the time you read these words, these events may seem distant memories, chased away by once unthinkable circumstances that seem to follow upon one another’s heels at breakneck pace lately. Better, I hope it will have been the case that happy occasions have pushed them to far corners of your mind. But as I write, I am still struggling to absorb the cavalcade of calamities compounding upon catastrophes in just the last few days: The murders at Bondi Beach. The murders at Brown University. The murder at MIT. The murders of Rob and Michele Reiner. ברוך דיין האמת! Blessed is the True Judge! Can even our Creator comprehend the carnage His creations inflict on themselves?
On the thirtieth of December this year, as our neighbors gear up for a party, we will observe the fast of the Tenth of Tevet. ‘Asarah B’Tevet is one of the four fasts commemorating the Churban, the Destruction of the Temple; it marks the date when the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem. Although the Churban is still six months away, the encirclement of the city seems to signal that the reckoning proclaimed by the great prophets of The Destruction, chief among them Jeremiah and Ezekiel, has begun. A turning point has been passed. A Rubicon has been crossed. The verdict of true judgment and terrible punishment has been sealed.
Has the discourse of discord and division passed a point of no return in our country? Has antisemitism across the world crossed a Rubicon from ugly rhetoric to lethal violence? Can humanity not turn back from the dark path we have set ourselves?
But as I write, it is Chanukah. On Chanukah, we remember the legend that after their darkest hours, our ancestors lit the Temple menorah when there did not seem to be enough oil to finish the job. And so, we too light a candle. And then two. And then three. Each night, a little more light – until a great miracle happens. We add a tiny, insignificant, insufficient bit of light to the world; a tiny light, but growing a little each day. And soon, slowly, the daylight begins to grow again as well. Every year – so far, at least – the light beats back the darkness, beginning with the tiny lights of our chanukiyot.
You see, friends, the message of our prophets was never that we were doomed to destruction. The opposite! The message of our prophets was and is that the time for constructive change is now. As much as our history forewarns us to be aware of and responsive to the dark currents that swirl around us, our tradition entreats us to remain hopeful, to share our light even when it seems clearly insufficient, to stimulate the miracle that brings a new spring every year – so far.
P.S. The Mishnah teaches that proper attribution brings redemption; that first line above is a Prince lyric.