A Letter from the President

This year, as with all other Jewish festivals, Hanukkah appears early on our secular calendar. Just as we conclude the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, we begin to kindle the first Hanukkah lights. Although the winter solstice is nearly a month away, the shortened periods of daylight have already descended. The radiance of glowing candles in the menorah offers a welcome break from the shadows of evening that have come to shorten our day too soon.

The legendary story of Hanukkah, our eight-day festival of lights, recalls the miracle of enduring  light that would illuminate and liberate a people whose culture, religion and customs were suppressed and forbidden. While there is certainly more to the back story, including martyrdom and guerilla warfare, it’s the miracle of light that has powered Hanukkah’s celebration in modern times. I am reminded of another Hanukkah miracle told in a 20th Century short story by Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, who fled Poland four years before the Nazi invasion, and became a prominent international figure in the Yiddish literary movement.

Singer wrote about a young man and young woman who discover that they are among the very few to have escaped the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto following its destruction by Nazi bombs. Amid this unfathomable darkness, the man was able to salvage a single candle and some matches.  He remembered that it was the beginning of Hanukkah, and together with his companion, lights the candle and recites the Hebrew blessings recounting the miracle of light. The couple delights in the splendor of the warm glimmer. They interpret the tranquility and brilliance of the solitary candle as a symbol of hope that would inspire them to persevere and overcome extraordinary obstacles. Together, encouraged by the powerful Hanukkah light the couple makes a treacherous journey that takes them through the ruins, around barbed wire, past armed guards, through sewers, forests, farms and onto a boat that ultimately takes them to their new home in pre-state Israel.

This allegory of the Holocaust belies the horrors of history’s darkest time, but it does present us with an opportunity to consider how we might find powerful light in the turbulence of our world. Our lives have been challenged by more than a year of a global pandemic, exacerbated by more infectious variant strains. We encounter the threats and effects of climate change on an almost daily basis. We witness the incidents of divisive politics and hate that give rise to incidents of racial inequity, anti-Semitism, and injustice. Yet, every day we see so many indications of powerful light in our world and in our CMI congregation. Our commitment to the Jewish value of tikkun olam—repairing the world is strong. We are a community that thrives through its connections amongst ourselves, with those who share our values, and those who need our support.

May you find the blessing of powerful light this Hanukkah season.  Chag sameach!