December arrived very quickly this year and, with it, the countdown to the holidays. I am used to digesting Thanksgiving before turning my attention to the coming combinations of dark days and decorative lights, cold weather and warm joy.
In a way, I am also used to this season reminding me of all that is beyond my control and consequently of the need to express hope. December is a time for deterring nightmares and kindling dreams.
This year, the Hebrew month of Kislev started when December did. Kislev is known best as the month during which Hanukkah begins, but it is also a month of hopes and dreams. The rabbis calculated that Noah saw the rainbow, promising the world would never again be destroyed by water, at the start of this month.
All this month, the Jewish liturgical cycle also has us reading the stories of Jacob’s dream of the ladder connecting heaven and Earth, Joseph’s dreams, and the dreams of the butler, baker, and Pharaoh that Joseph goes on to interpret. Joseph’s dreams include the luminaries that fill the sky – sun, moon, and stars.
The Jewish mystical tradition gives even more meaning to Kislev. They break the name into two parts: kis (meaning “covering”) and l”v (the Hebrew letters lamed and vav which together have the numerical equivalent of 36). In this way, they find that Kislev represents 36 hidden lights. One version of these lights is the 36 total appearances of the Hebrew words for “light,” “candle,” and “luminaries” in the Torah (Bnei Yissaschar, Kislev and Tevet 1:6:1). Another version, though, takes us into one of my favorite Jewish fantasies.
Interpreting Isaiah 30:18, the Talmudic sage Abaye teaches that “the world has no fewer than thirty-six righteous people who greet the Divine Presence every day” (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sukkah, 45b). These righteous people become known as the LamedVavniks. Jewish literature throughout the centuries explores who might comprise the 36 and what might happen if they are killed before their replacements are born. These stories often ask: what would happen to the world if we didn’t have all 36 LamedVavniks?
That question is a great deal bigger than whether a child (of any age) has been naughty or nice. Even the Jewish version of “Elf on a Shelf,” also known as “Mensch on a Bench,” comes up short as “mensch,” which means “good person” as in a “respectable person.” The notion of the LamedVavnik gets to the deeper question of where we find goodness and what it does for the world.
I think it is not surprising that the Jewish mystical tradition calls our attention to where we find goodness and light, to where we find righteousness, right when the world is darkest and coldest and right when we endeavor to hope and dream. The mystics are telling us that we can do better than being good or nice. Hopes and dreams take flight when we embody light in our actions, in our goodness, and in our souls.
Somewhere, somehow, Jewish tradition imagines 36 people upholding the world with souls of light. That tradition asks us now to go beyond imagination and to do more than bring a smile to someone’s face as a way of bringing light. The LamedVavnik tradition asks us to be the light, to radiate light from our souls in keeping with Proverbs 20:27 “God’s light is the human soul.” This December, let us dig deep within ourselves and uncover the light of Kislev.
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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