Hanukah Challenge: Kindness 101
This week I found myself thinking about a man many of you may know from his “Kindness 101” series on CBS—Steve Hartman. I heard him speak recently at NYSSBA, the New York State School Board Association conference, and I walked away genuinely moved. There is something disarming about the way Steve notices people. He has a gift for finding small acts of courage, generosity, and hope in places the rest of us might overlook. He finds every day people, people like you and me, and in interviewing them, he finds diamonds in the rough, stories of heroism and extraordinary actions of ordinary people.
One story Steve shared at NYSSBA was the story of Robbie Gay from Florida who had experienced a hard beginning in life. Robbie entered the foster care system after being abused and neglected. Once he was adopted into a loving family, something remarkable happened. Because he understood what it feels like not to be loved, he made it his mission to care for those who are often overlooked. Robbie began visiting his local animal shelter and choosing to adopt the oldest, least adoptable dogs, the ones others usually passed by, because he knew they needed love too. His example inspired many others in his community to adopt older pets as well, and he even began volunteering regularly at the humane society, advocating for animals that many had written off
One story of thousands Steve tells and collects online. Stories where ordinary people suddenly become teachers, and everyday choices become moments of moral uplift.
His talk and our conference was back at the end of October, and I have been carrying his work with me in deep reflection ever since. I realize that we are approaching a minor Jewish holiday built entirely on the same premise: that a little light, held with care, can change far more than we expect. Hanukkah is coming. And like every year, it invites us to pause and ask what it means to bring light into a world that does not always feel especially bright.
The Talmud asks this very question in its own way. Mai Chanukah? What is Hanukkah? Why do we light these flames year after year?
The Bavli, the Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 21B answers:
When the Greeks entered the Holy Temple, they defiled all the oil. When the Hasmoneans regained the sanctuary, they searched and found only one small sealed jar, just enough to last one day. But they lit it anyway. And a miracle happened: it burned eight days. The next year, the Sages established these days as a festival of Hallel and Hodayah, of praise and thanksgiving.
What always strikes me about this text is that it begins not with victory, but with desecration. The Greeks have entered the sacred space. The oil is ruined. The darkness is real. Hanukkah does not deny that. Instead, it teaches us what to do next.
The Hasmoneans could have said: “One jar? One day? What difference will that make?” They could have waited for a perfect solution, for enough oil, for certainty. But they didn’t. They took what they had, small, insufficient, fragile, and they lit it. And it illuminated the world far beyond any reasonable calculation.
Steve Hartman’s stories work the same way. They remind us that kindness rarely arrives as a sweeping transformation. More often it shows up as a single gesture, a single brave decision, a single human being refusing to let cynicism dictate their next move. A person sees someone standing in the shadows and thinks: I can offer a bit of light. And that light travels.
Hanukkah is not only about the miracle that happened once. It is about the discipline of committing to what we can do now, even if it feels small. It is about spiritual self-defense, choosing to resist despair by acting with hope. It is about noticing that miracles do not begin with the oil lasting eight days; miracles begin when we choose to strike the match.
As we approach Hannukah this week, I want to suggest this: each of us can strike that match. Maybe it feels insufficient. But Hanukkah teaches that when we strike that match, when we light the first candle, we never know how far that light will reach.
This week, inspired by Steve Hartman’s work and by our ancient text, let us practice finding the light in others, let’s find 8 days of stories of ordinary people, stories that we realize are extraordinary. We have 8 days of Hannukah, 8 days to go up to ordinary people and ask them to tell us a story of something they have done, when they were able to do one small thing that was a universe for someone else. I cannot wait to hear the hundreds of inspiring stories, of people in this room, of our neighbors, of members of our community, as we gather stories.
Let us practice being the light and collecting the light around us.
May our small flames join with one another so that, collectively, we illuminate far more than any one of us could on our own.
Shabbat Shalom and a Hanukkah filled with wholehearted light.
