This year, the first night of Hanukkah is Thursday, December 7th. It is hard to keep track of when Jewish holidays fall, although they always begin at sundown. Why do they keep moving around is a common question that I receive. The answer is that they don’t: Hanukkah always falls on the same day: the 25th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev. To learn more about the Hebrew calendar, please click here.
It seems like Jewish holidays move around all the time, because we live in a non-Jewish world. Once upon a time, thousands of years ago, Jews lived in our own country and followed our own calendar and spoke our own language. We had a religion and a culture and a way of living and being that helped us to make meaning of the world. But then, we were conquered and our Temple was destroyed. For over two thousand years, we have been subjugated to the will of non-Jewish rulers who have tried to kill us or convert us or expelled us from their land again and again and again. To learn more about how many times we have been kicked out of every country where we sought refuge, please click here.
When I talk about decolonizing Judaism, I am not just talking about the complexity of the current Israel-Palestinian war which has made the use of this term very confusing for many. Colonization begins in the mind, and it is a mindset that is reinforced by global forces. When I use the word decolonization, I am talking about the much larger and even more complex history, not only of the Middle East, but this planet… that continues to shape much of our current reality, and that is internalized in our brains. To read about neurodecolonization, please click here. It is in everything we do and think, and the ways that intergenerational trauma and intersectional bias continues to haunt us and impact the way we treat ourselves and one another.
There is no country on earth that has not somehow been impacted by colonization. Colonization has affected different people and different countries in unique ways. For Indigenous people of Turtle Island (=this is the Indigenous name for North America), their land was stolen from them, along with their way of living and making meaning. For people of African descent, they were uprooted from their land and forced into slavery. Colonization means something different for each continent and each nation state. But while these details are unique, the mechanisms and patterns are similar. The goal is always the profit of a few through the exploitation of the many, and religion tends to be weaponized.
When we compared colonial narratives, we begin to unlock the code to healing. For example, the notion of a binary gender is a colonial construct: Indigenous cultures around the world have a notion of gender-fluidity or of two-spirit individuals. Judaism talked about eight genders in our sacred text of the Talmud almost two thousand years ago. To read more about this, please click here. The notion of language is another powerful example. Unlike English, which is the language of British colonization and that is noun-based, Indigenous languages, like Hebrew, tend to be verb-based. Noun-based languages promote the idea of objectification and status quo, while verb-based languages emphasize the relationship and fluidity of all things. To learn more, please click here.
Losing our ability to speak our language is a profound way that we lose our culture and values, but it also has neurological implications, because brains are hard-wired to think and express in ways that are reflected in our Indigenous language. To learn more about the neurocognitive architecture of language, please click here. The consequences of English becoming the “lingua franca” are far more significant than many of us understand. It is why Indigenous communities are healing themselves by re-learning their language, and why Hebrew is described as the language of our soul. The story of Hanukkah can be read as reflecting the story of reclaiming our ancestral languages and ways of making meaning, so that we can heal from the trauma of a colonial war that was waged in the shadows of an earlier war that was waged on an even earlier war. This colonial pattern can be traced back much further than Constantine, and it is effective, because of its impact upon the mind of the oppressed, as South African activist, Stephen Bantu Biko explained. While details are different, for each of us, healing begins by remembering who we are, and working to become more authentically reflective of this Truth.
Even our notion of time has been colonized: the Gregorian calendar we use is based upon the year of Jesus’ birth: BC means Before Christ. Jews try to ask non-Jews to use the less traumatizing term “BCE” which means Before the Common Era, but that is just a euphemism. Similarly, we use CE for Common Era, instead of AD, which means Anno Domini, which means the year of our Lord and refers to Jesus. The reality is that the common era is the Christian era and erasing this truth is one of the ways that the unique colonial traumas of the Jewish people are often forgotten, which means that the larger context of this current war is often missed or misunderstood. The truth is that Christianity has been weaponized ever since Constantine, and it has been a primary tool of colonization, traumatically impacting diverse populations across the planet in unique ways. To learn more about how this happened, please click here.
There is a sad joke amongst Jews that every Jewish holiday can be summed up in the same way: “They tried to kill us. They did not succeed. Let’s eat!”. The intergenerational trauma that is our tragic legacy of colonization continues to haunt us to this day. It is possible to look at the holiday of Hanukkah and focus upon the violence and war that is contained in the story. However, the rabbis through the centuries, recognized that focusing upon this pain and trauma was counterproductive. What has sustained the Jewish people for thousands of years is our ability to remain hopeful, despite the odds. We have translated (or tried to translate) our trauma into lessons that are life-giving: when we think about Hanukkah, our tradition calls on us to focus on the miracle of the Light, rather than the military exploits. Even those military exploits, our kabbalist/mystical tradition has reinterpreted to focus on the battle to stay positive. To learn more about the mystical teachings of Hanukkah, please click here.
Fundamentally, the rabbis explain that the story of Hanukkah is about rededicating ourselves to the service of Light after the trauma of war. Sadly, this message is especially relevant this year, as the Jewish people are once again rocked and shocked into traumatic responses, as a result of the attack of Hamas and the silence of many, with echoes of Holocaust trauma pushing most of us into survival mode and neurological trauma. To read more about how this intergenerational trauma has been re-activated by the current situation, and why I believe that we need a trauma-informed therapeutic perspective more than a military and political one, please read this article. While all animals (humans included) are hardwired for survival in such a way that our first response to trauma is to lash out and fight, the deeper rabbinic wisdom calls upon us to respond to the darkness by kindling light and becoming light.
In the same way as our rabbis taught that the ancient Temple that was destroyed in 70 CE is being rebuilt, not on land, but inside of our hearts, so too is Hanukkah a story about rededicating ourselves to Light after a time of war and darkness. The war is continuing to rage, and I invite everyone that would like to transform our grief, rage, terror and trauma into a prayer for restorative justice, healing and a comprehensive peace, to consider signing this prayerful petition. We are commanded to do everything we can to protect life- in times of war, we are commanded to protect even the lives of fruit trees (to learn more about the Jewish commandment to protect even fruit trees during a time of war, click here). Therefore, we Jews must focus on healing ourselves and our world as an expression of our faith.
Focusing on healing is itself an expression of hope and faith. One might think that we should wait until things calm down to do this, but in fact, Jewish tradition teaches the opposite. It is precisely at the darkest time of the year that we are commanded to kindle light and celebrate Hanukkah. It is when night falls that we are commanded to light candles. It is when darkness descends that we must shine even brighter. This is the Hanukkah miracle. We might think that the light we have inside of us is too small to make a difference. We might think that the darkness is too overwhelming. We might be tempted to give up. But the story of Hanukkah, as retold by the rabbis, is a story of indomitable hope and unrelenting optimism. We are reminded that we have survived far worse, and that even the smallest drops of oil are sufficient for miracles.
May this Hanukkah be the season when a miraculous healing shines brightly in our hearts and in our lives. May we do everything we can to transform darkness to Light, fear to faith and war to peace. May we not only kindle physical lights, but metaphorical lights. May we reach out to our elected representatives and share with them our thoughts: perhaps it is about the wars in other countries, and perhaps it is about the tragic injustices that our tax dollars are supporting right here. There are so many people dying due to greed and violence, misinformation and prejudice. There is so much darkness and pain, grief and rage, fear and numbness… everywhere we look.
But Hanukkah asks us to look at the darkness and remember that we were put on this earth with the commandment to be the Light that is missing in the world around us… May this brief candle lighting service and meditation be a source of healing and the catalyst for miracles.
Please join us this Friday night, December 8th, at 5:45 PM Eastern/6:45 PM Atlantic/7:15 PM NFLD for a full Shabbat and Hanukkah service to kindle light for the second night of Hanukkah. To register for the Zoom link, please click here and please note the time change!
Emerging Torah as Rabbi Nachshon emerges 