Rabbi's Chayva's Chat

Tomorrow night we will light the first Chanukah candle, the little light that will grow each night, stubbornly dispelling the December darkness. 

The kabbalistic tradition says that each holiday is a workshop for the soul. Let us take these eight nights of Chanukah to honor different parts of our soul. We honor our Jewishness, we honor our interfaith-ness, we honor our gender or sexuality, we honor the family we came from, and we honor the people we choose to become our family. Each night, let’s shed new light on a different part of ourselves.

Let us dispel the darkness with pride, putting our chanukiot in our windows, coming together for candlelighting in South San Francisco on Thursday and at Am Tikvah on Friday and Saturday. Our flickering flame, the very symbol of Am Tikvah, symbolizes our hope, our unity, and our beautiful Jewish joy. Happy Chanukah!