Tonight, we gathered together, a community of Light Seekers (Darshei Ohr), a collection of communities and individuals… searching out the blessing of Shabbat and the promise of Hanukkah miracles. We prayed, in the decolonizing way of the Chavurah Collective, starting from the prayers for the dead (kaddish) and working our way to the kindling of Shabbat Light (candles). We prayed our way backwards through the tradition (which normally starts with candle lighting and ends with the kaddish prayer), because we live in an upside down world (olam hafuch). We started with grief because we live in a world filled with reasons to grieve. Grief is our starting point. We have to acknowledge what is before we can embrace what might be. The way to healing is by becoming mindful and aware. We must awaken to open ourselves up to becoming vessels of healing in this world.
We are the Light Seekers (Darshei Ohr). We are the ones who are learning to look deep into the darkness and through the darkness, into the Light. We are training our spiritual muscles to seek Light: to transform darkness into Light. Despite a world that keeps trying to condition us to reenact intergenerational trauma and to avoid feeling our feelings, we are committed to healing. This is the Hanukkah miracle that keeps growing, the little spark of Light that should not have been enough for even one day, but that instead lasted for eight days… We are the vessels for miracles… the ones who face the darkness and remember how to kindle Light and how to shine brightly into the world. We are the ones who keep seeking, even when it seems impossible.
Tonight, our little community kept growing. We had multiple communities across Turtle Island join us, livestreaming our services, as we did things differently, translating our tradition into something that could bring healing… figuring out how to make it work… some of us joined while we were driving home… some of us joined while lying in bed… some of us joined while sitting at a table or on our sofa, and some of us joined while walking on the beach in a different time zone as the sun was just setting… some of us joined, livestreaming the service, gathered in a community center and some of us joined crowded into someone’s living room and some of us gathered around vegan doughnuts in a coffee shop, lighting candles and creating new community… and all of us found a new way to connect with each other and with tradition and with ourselves and with Spirit… we who too often feel isolated and alone…
And tonight, in the midst of the darkness and the sadness and trauma, we reaffirmed our faith that miracles are possible… we prayed our way backwards through the traditional order of the prayerbook, sometimes with new songs and translations and insights, often with ancient teachings translated into ways that resonate for those of us who may not yet know our ancestral language of Hebrew because of the colonial trauma that has caused us to forget who we are at our core… for this is the truest healing that we need: to remember who were created to be.
And tonight, we bore witness to the miracle of two Jewish souls that were born into non-Jewish bodies, but that found their way back home to their Jewish family, after years of searching and study and seeking a community that would welcome them because they lived in remote places where there were no rabbis or synagogues or options… and yet they studied and prayed and found ways of celebrating their faith and anchoring it into Jewish tradition… we welcomed home two more Light Seekers, two more Jewish souls, to replenish the diminished ranks of the Jewish people who were almost destroyed by Hitler, but who nonetheless, continue to seek out Light and advocate on its behalf.
What a miracle it is, that so many of us continue to seek out Light… and yet we do… all humans do… and their many paths to Light… but as a rabbi and as a second generation Holocaust survivor, it is especially poignant to me to bear witness to those who seek out Light through Judaism… those born Jewish and committed to living a Jewish life, those of us born Jewish but alienated from it for so any reasons, those of us born Jewish but who did not even know it because their parents hid it from them because of the antisemitism of this world, and those of us whose Jewish souls were born into families that were not Jewish and did not raise them Jewishly (for more on how Judaism believes that those who “convert” to Judaism, were always Jewish, click here). And so it is, that we will be starting, in 2024, a new Darshei Ohr (seekers) group, where we will gather to study and learn and discuss and seek together… it will be for all those seeking… without labels…
It has been said that in our day and age, every Jew is a Jew-by-choice. Those who “convert” to Judaism are returning to their soul’s essence, and those who ran away from a Judaism that estranged them are also returning to their soul’s essence, and those who were born Jewish and raised Jewish are still learning to be true to their essence, because we live in a world with many options about how to live and how to be, and many reasons to choose not to be Jewish. Every day, we are choosing who we will be and how we will live: will we live in such a way as to be true to our soul’s Calling? Will we live in such a way as to reflect the Torah’s values of sanctifying life (pikuach nefesh) and healing the world (tikkun olam)? Stay tuned or contact me for more information!
Meanwhile, please click on the video below to enjoy our Shabbat and Hanukkah service from wherever you are and whenever it feels like Shabbat might be ready to descend upon your heart.
Emerging Torah as Rabbi Nachshon emerges 