Light, Dark and Blind Spots

Tonight, the last day of Chanukah traditionally is referred to as Zot Chanukah – this is Chanukah. The name simply comes from the first words of Torah reading for the last day of Chanukah, from Numbers 7:84, “Zot Chanukat Hamizbeiach, this was the dedication offering for the altar.” Nevertheless, I think there’s more here.

With all the flames lit, we can finally say – this is Chanukah. A full Menorah feels complete. It does indeed remind us of days long ago. The light seems full and satisfying. And…truly at odds with how we are all still feeling. Our Menorah is not complete. We are missing branches, upon branches of our People; those killed in the war and those still being held hostage. We are on day number 453, fifteen months of anguish. We dare not become complacent. We cannot look at the Menorah and feel satisfied.

Of the central themes of the holiday is the contrast of dark and light brought emphatically into our youthful consciousnesses with the song, “Banu Choshech L’garesh – we have come to drive away the darkness.” The song, written by Sarah Levi Tannai, born, 1910 in Jerusalem to a Yemenite family that had made its way by foot to the Holy Land from Ethiopia. She was a creative force and founder of the Inbal Dance Theater. The words of the song dramatically convey what’s at stake here –
We came to drive away the darkness
in our hands is light and fire.
Everyone’s a small light,
and all of us are a firm light.

Photo taken by: Rivy Poupko Kletenik

Fight the dark!
Fight because of the light!

Levi-Tannai spares us no ambiguity. Our tradition is the light, our morals, our teachings and all that we hold dear.

Our lit Menorah represents, according to the Abarbanel, (15th cent.) in his introduction to Parshat Terumah, “the seven branches of wisdom which are found in the Torah. The flames incline toward the middle flame which was opposite the Holy of Holies. This is to indicate that all the other wisdoms defer to the one true wisdom of the Torah resting in the Holy of Holies. The menorah was fashioned from pure gold to indicate that God’s wisdom is pure and unadulterated by false ideas.”

Light though is no simple matter. From the very beginnings of Creation dark existed first in a chaotic form until the creation of light. Rashi explains that it was not good for light and darkness to function together in a combined manner, therefore the Almighty limited one’s sphere of activity to the daytime, and the other, dark, to the night. Midrash here is heavy with a Star Wars-like categorical differentiation. Israel is the light, our enemies the dark. Comon parlance links light to knowledge, while “being in the dark” is indicatory of ignorance.

But is it all so clear and simple? After all, the Jewish day begins at night. As the sky is cleared of the sun’s blinding light, the stars are revealed, and we humans can see way into the beyond. Stretching our sights past the domain of human action, into the vast infinity of space is how we initiate a new day – beginning with repose and reflection.

Ironically though it is lights that we see in the darkness of night. The darker the night and the less city lamp pollution, the more twinkling stars we can see in the heavens above. Might there be revelation in the light that is nestled in the dark?

It is our Chassidic masters who begin to play with the dynamics of light and dark and their complex coexistence. The Tanya teaches that “Divine light is the integration of opposites, and it is the source of all creation.” Hence, we have notions of kernels of truth in ideas that may mask themselves in the absolutes of what we disdain – light and dark, not always simple.

One area of darkness that hovers infuriatingly is the darkness within each of us. The self-knowledge that at times eludes each of us. During this holiday disdaining of all things Greek, dare I quote Socrates? He departed this world a bit shy of the events of the Chanukah story and postulated famously that, “to know thyself is the beginning of wisdom” – to know anything we must first know ourselves.

And thus, I wonder not only about our individual but about our communal blind spots – what a population chooses not to see or to acknowledge. Take for example the photo of the sign spotted on the streets of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, chained to a playground’s fence. How unknowledgeable, uniformed and unenlightened must one be to paint these words? And how so far from the truth?

Unfortunately, when I speedily did a U-turn and parked, I discovered that my can of spray paint was parked in a garage in Denver. Easily remedied. After stopping by the hardware store I am going back today to paint it over with a light grey splash of clarity.

Happy Chanukah.