The Blogs: From the Inside Out: Chanukah in a Noisy World

Chanukah 2025 will stay in the collective consciousness for many decades to come and will be much spoken of. I have no doubt it will govern how events are planned and managed going forward.

Chanukah arrived this year carrying more weight than usual.

As Jews around the world prepared to light candles, news broke of the horrific events at Bondi Beach. Once again, a place of ordinary life — sun, sea, families — was ruptured by violence. Once again, Jewish grief folded into a global atmosphere already thick with fear, anger, and exhaustion.

And yet, something else was happening too.

Across cities and towns, Chanukah was being marked louder, brighter, and more visibly than I can remember. Public menorahs. Gatherings. Singing. Defiant joy. An insistence on presence. Certainly driving around London, one sees more and more public Menorahs.

For some, this felt like resistance.
For others, survival.
For many, simply necessity.

This piece was shaped, in part, by my rabbi’s sermon this past Shabbat — the first delivered in our community after the tragedy in Australia. It was not a sermon that tried to explain away horror or rush toward answers. Instead, it acknowledged the rupture, the fear, and the disorientation that violence leaves behind, while gently returning us to the question of how Jews respond when the world feels unsteady. That framing stayed with me as Chanukah approached — not as a call to noise or spectacle, but as an invitation to think carefully about what our light is actually for.

Light does not begin in the street

Chanukah has never really been about public display.

The mitzvah is deceptively small: a candle, a flame, a windowsill.

Jewish tradition is clear. The light begins inside the home and only then travels outward. We do not flood the streets with illumination. We tend a fragile flame and allow it to speak for itself.

That feels especially important right now.

This year, my Chanukah unfolded quietly, across Yorkshire and London. Curry on the stove. Candles on the table. Friends crowded around. Conversations that wandered. Laughter that wasn’t forced, but wasn’t naïve either.

We did not gather to make a statement.
We gathered to be Jewish together.

And in that ordinariness, something profound happened.

Defiance, but not the kind people expect

There is a temptation, especially after violence, to turn Jewish celebration into performance. To prove we are still here. To show strength by volume.

I understand that impulse deeply.

But Chanukah offers a different model of defiance.

Not shouting.
Not spectacle.
Not escalation.

Instead: consistency. Continuity. Light, repeated nightly, whether anyone is watching or not.

The candles do not argue.
They do not explain themselves.
They simply burn.

And they insist that Jewish life continues — not because it is loud, but because it is rooted.

A quieter memory

Years ago, I lit Chanukah candles in a place not designed for ritual.

There was no menorah as such — just improvised candles, placed carefully, reverently. I remember explaining Chanukah to someone standing beside me who did not share my faith. I spoke about resistance, yes — but not the kind people often imagine.

Not conquest.
Not triumph.
Not power.

Chanukah, I explained, is about holding on. About preserving identity when it would be easier to dissolve. About refusing to let darkness have the final word.

He listened quietly and then said something simple:

“So it’s about keeping faith alive when it’s almost gone.”

That has stayed with me.

From the inside out

This is what Chanukah teaches me every year, but especially this one.

Light does not work from the outside in.
It works from the inside out.

It begins in the private space — the kitchen table, the borrowed room, the temporary home. Only then does it become visible.

That is why Chanukah has survived empires, expulsions, pogroms, and modern terror. It does not depend on safety. It depends on practice.

In a world that feels increasingly volatile — where violence erupts in places once thought ordinary — Chanukah reminds us that Jewish resilience has never relied on certainty.

It has relied on ritual, memory, and stubborn hope.

Loudness and quiet both belong

This year, I have watched Jews celebrate Chanukah in very different ways.

Some have taken to public spaces, lighting boldly and visibly, refusing to shrink.
Others have drawn inward, protecting what feels fragile, marking the days quietly.
Some have gathered in joy.
Some have marked the nights with grief.
Some have struggled to light at all.

All of that belongs.

Chanukah does not demand a particular mood.
It does not prescribe how loudly faith must be held.

It asks only that the light be kindled — even briefly — and then guarded.

Why we light anyway

We do not light candles because the world is safe.
We do not light them because fear has passed.
We do not light them because we are certain of outcomes.

We light them because Jewish life has always been sustained by practice in the absence of guarantees.

We light them because continuity itself is an act of faith.
We light them because memory needs tending.
We light them because hope, unattended, does not survive.