Remembering Ron Gvili: Hanukkah’s Light for the Still-Waiting

During Hanukkah, our prayers insert Al HaNisim, a text that names what we celebrate and when we celebrate it:

“וְאַתָּה, בְּרַחֲמֶיךָ הָרַבִּים, עָמַדְתָ לָהֶם בְּעֵת צָרָתָם…
“And You, in Your abundant mercy, stood by them in their time of distress…”
…and afterward Your children entered Your house and purified Your Temple and kindled lights.”* (he.wikisource.org)

That verse is striking: God does not simply deliver after the danger has passed. God “stood… in their time of distress.” This is not only a description of the Maccabees’ experience, it is an ethical challenge for us today.

The Maharal, in his reflections on Hanukkah (Ner Mitzvah), teaches that the meaning of the holiday is not only to recall victory after the fact, but to recognize how human beings and communities are tested and shaped through distress—that character, courage, and spiritual readiness are forged not when all is well but in the crucible of struggle itself. Hanukkah is about the inner work required to transform mere survival into meaningful redemption, and how lights are lit even when reality remains dark. (etzion.org.il)

This year, as we kindle the Hanukkah lights, our hearts are heavy.

Ron Gvili is still being held hostage.
Still not returned home.
Still waiting.

We have taken off our yellow pins.
We have folded our flags.
Our collective attention has been pulled toward tragedy after tragedy—most recently the deadly shooting at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia, where a festival of light was shattered by violence. In that same society, political gestures—like rushed recognition of a Palestinian state—have coincided with a surge of antisemitic incidents, leaving many Jews feeling exposed, hurt, and unprotected.

It is precisely here, amid this still-unresolved distress, that Al HaNisim speaks to us. Hanukkah insists that we do not only thank God for miracles after they happen, but that we stand with those in the midst of their suffering, even while the outcome is uncertain.

There is another Hanukkah image that feels unavoidable this year.
We light one candle from another. Flame is not created alone; it is received and then passed on. Each light comes from a prior light—a chain of transmission, values handed carefully from person to person, generation to generation. That is how Judaism imagines moral inheritance.

How stark the contrast with what we witnessed in Australia, where violence itself was transmitted—where a father passed to his son not restraint or reverence for life, but cruelty. That, too, is a legacy. And it is a devastating one.

Itzik Gvili has spoken about how he raised his son Ron: to protect life, to help others, to run toward danger in order to save, not to harm. Ron lived those values. He did not inherit hatred; he inherited responsibility. He did not learn to destroy; he learned to protect.

That is the difference between lighting candles and lighting fires.
Hanukkah asks us not only what kind of world we want, but what kind of values we are handing down—fear or care, rage or restraint, forgetting or memory. Ron Gvili must not be forgotten, because the light we pass on is who we are.

This is why Al HaNisim does not rush to gratitude. It first reminds us that God stood with our ancestors in their time of distress—b’et tzaratan. Not after the danger had passed, but while it was still unfolding.

Ron is still in that time of distress.
And so our task is not to move on, but to stand—to remember, to speak his name, to refuse the erosion of moral attention.

May the lights we kindle this Hanukkah keep faith with those still waiting. And may we merit the day when standing in distress gives way to return, healing, and peace.

Hanukkah Sameach.