Light in Darkness

This short piece was written for the newsletter of Babson College’s Office of Religious &
Spiritual Life, who requested a post on the subject “creating light at dark times.”

I was invited to write a short piece about “Light in the Darkness.” Well, there is a sequence of ideas sprinkled throughout the Torah that leads us, I think, to a provocative and timely conclusion.

Hang on tight and follow my logic:

(1)  The Torah opens with darkness. The second verse of Genesis reads: “…darkness over the surface of the deep, and wind from God sweeping over the water…” before any act of creation came into being.

(2)  And then, the first act of creation: “And God said, ‘Let there be light.’” (Gen. 1:3). Divine creativity commences by pushing away darkness with light.

So far, so good. Except for one dilemma. A seventh-grader reading Genesis for the first time can spot the obvious quandary: the sun, moon, and stars do not come into being for a few more paragraphs, not until the 4th day of Creation! So what kind of light was this on Day One?

The Zohar, the preeminent book of Kabbalah, suggests that the divine light of the 1st day of Creation—this primordial Light, by which one could see from one end of the universe to another—was withdrawn for a variety of reasons. Its replacement, the light of the celestial bodies, is something qualitatively different.

But that’s not the end of the story, for there continue to be periodic glimpses of the divine Light.

(3)  Noah, says Jewish lore, had a radiant jewel in the midst of the ark that radiated the Light, so that the remnants of life could survive the flood.

(4)  Similarly, when the infant Moses was born into the slave-house of his parents, the Rabbis said that the house was flooded with Light.

(5)  Presumably, this is the sort of Light with which the burning bush glowed, not to be consumed.

 And so on.

But after a while, the Torah doesn’t take up the idea of the Light again, not for a long time. You could be forgiven for thinking that the Torah forgot all about the subject, for the sake of other things: creating families, freeing slaves, giving laws, etc.

(6)   Then, a couple of dozen books later, a thousand pages ahead (1,633 pages in the Hebrew-English Bible I’m looking at), there it is, the great secret:  “The human spirit is the lamp of God” (Proverbs 20:27).  That concealed light from Day One was hidden away - in each human soul, including your own. Human beings have the potential to illuminate the world with the divine Light of Creation. People bring light to the darkness. This is what it means to be God’s partner in completing Creation, an important Jewish theological idea.

If you followed the trail this far, you can draw the logical conclusion:  If the world seems dark, due to ignorance or cruelty or barbarism or selfishness… then you’ve gotta be the light.

The Secret of the Seventh Light

Tonight is the seventh light of Chanukah, which is also Rosh Chodesh: the new moon in tonight’s sky heralds the start of the new month of Tevet.

(To be technical about it, this month has a two-day Rosh Chodesh, which happens occasionally; the new moon is on the second night, Monday night. Here’s more.) 

I think this night holds one of the secrets of the Chanukah.

Chanukah, ritually speaking, is very simple. For eight nights, starting on the 25th of Kislev, we light menorahs and place them so they can be seen by passers-by. We begin with one light and we increase incrementally until the final night, when the menorah is fully lit with eight flames.

This is the key symbol of Chanukah. Chanukah always falls during these eight days around the new moon that is most closely situated to the winter solstice—that is, days with the least amount of daylight (in the northern hemisphere) and most darkness: the sun is at its most distant point from earth’s axis and the moon is at its most obscured.

During that darkest time of the year—that’s precisely when we have our festival of lighting lights. And light, of course, is a pregnant symbol. It can mean justice, love, faith, peace, hope, wisdom (“enlightenment”), hidden mystical Truth. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Lyady (1745-1812) taught that while other festivals are celebrated with symbols that are inherently physical (matzah, sukkah, shofar, etc.), only Chanukah is celebrated with a symbol that is inherently spiritual: light.  

And Beit Hillel in the Talmud famously taught that in matters of holiness, our task is to always increase light, and never to decrease it (Shabbat 21b). 

Yet here’s the thing: during the first six nights of Chanukah, we stubbornly light the menorah—even while the world gets darker and darker. We add flames while the light of the moon keeps diminishing.

But tonight there’s a change. Tonight the moon starts to emerge and wax larger. It’s as if to say that our efforts have started to pay off:  The world is starting to follow our persistent lead, inclining towards light rather than darkness. 

Look, the world these days can seem pretty dark—no matter what darkness connotes for you. Things seem hopeless? Nations seem to be careening towards corruption and war instead of integrity and peace? People who said they care about you seem heartless? Feels like greed and materialism are winning out? I know the feeling—I’ve been there.

But the aspiration of Chanukah is that hope wins out in the long term. Keep using a spark to light more lights—and the world slowly, inevitably, will start to incline towards the light.