I count myself lucky that I was not further north for my Thanksgiving road trip; 1,500 miles was quite enough with three kids and no snow. While they were watching the Star Wars movies in order in anticipation of episode IX later this month, I was attuned to how little daylight we had for them to even see something out the window. Add a rainy day and there was even less to see. By the time we got home, though, we could already see many homes lit up for the season. I plan to add my own this weekend.
With echoes of “the dark side of the force” in my ears, I thought about light and dark balancing each other. I have written before about our times of struggle as opportunities for rebirth or reorientation. I have written before about Chanukah and Christmas being used to brighten the winter solstice and carry us into lighter, longer days. While I appreciated the place of both dark and light, I undervalued their interplay.
In my school, one of the students’ favorite Chanukah songs is Banu Choshech. Mostly, I think they like the energy, but I see they are probably also drawn to the feeling of the message:
We are coming to chase away darkness
In our hands are light and fire
Each individual is a little light
And together we are a mighty light
Flee darkness, further away blackness
Flee darkness in the face of the light
It is as if we have given them lightsabers to fight against the dark. In fact, students in our Chanukah play wave flashlights aggressively during the singing of this song. In the context of the Maccabees fighting the Syrian Greeks, it is hard to argue with this spirit. A small band of rebels have to overcome a mighty empire and its army on elephant-back. Of course, we should sing strongly about light as freedom from tyranny.
And yet, as I drove, I was conscious of how the early onset of night meant I had to plan how to make more use of the day. I was conscious of how Thanksgiving was all the more poignant and filled with gratitude because we acknowledged who was not with us. I was conscious that Darth Vader is not all bad. In our divided times, it seems all the more important to see how these opposites coexist, especially in ourselves.
We cannot banish darkness without diminishing the impact of light. We will not enjoy this holiday season if we are focused only on our way of adding light and not also on how others have light and all of us some dark, too. There is enough actual war without us inviting more.
Perhaps, I would have been better off driving in the snow that hit those further north than I. That white cover, while terrible for driving, is another reminder that a dark, dreary world can light up with a shimmering blanket of individually-shaped flakes that together bring some peace and quiet. Winter works in tandem with light and dark interwoven all around us; we would do well to see the same in ourselves and others.
About Rabbi Jeremy Winaker
Rabbi Jeremy Winaker is the executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hillel Network, responsible for West Chester University, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and other area colleges. He is the former head of school at the Albert Einstein Academy in Wilmington and was the senior Jewish educator at the Kristol Hillel Center at the University of Delaware for four years. Rabbi Winaker lives in Delaware with his wife and three children.
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