On a clear night now the growing crescent of the moon of Kislev, the month of Chanukkah, Festival of Lights, illumines the sky. Light is especially precious at this dark time of the year. Maybe that’s why each day the parting sun embraces the west in such a vivid band of burning orange, before it disappears.

Last week I was asked at short notice to stand in as Jewish chaplain for the North London Hospice’s annual Light up a Life. The streets around the building, for so many a place both of sorrow and intense loving-kindness, were closed. Hundreds of people stood quietly in the dark, each with a candle, each with memories of love and his or her intimate knowledge of the journey of grief.

I chose two short Hasidic teachings. The first is from Rebbe Tzadok HaCohen of Lublin (1823 – 1900) one of whose favourite sayings was ‘Bereisha chashocha ve’hadar nehora – First the darkness, then the light’.

Just as behind the light sometimes darkness is concealed;
so, behind the darkness is concealed the light.

 Darkness is no illusion; even the brightest light cannot always reach the shadowed and enclosed places where pain and fear, helplessness and despair lie crouching. ‘Even darkness is not too dark for you’, says the Psalmist, addressing God (Psalm 139). But for us humans, sometimes even love, courage and understanding cannot despite all their skill and tenacious tenderness penetrate the walls behind which suffering and loneliness inhabit the thick shadows.

Yet even here lies hidden light. I believe in the great endowment with which the human being is created: the capacities for love, compassion, selflessness, companionship, laughter, patience, endurance, wisdom, forbearance, reverence, wonder and creativity itself. Harsh experience may atrophy these attributes, encase them in cold hardness or even cruelty. But I do not believe that they cease to be there in potential. Thus, the human endeavour remains to help us find them despite life’s darkness, and, although we know too well that it is not always within our power, to alleviate that dark in so far as we can, for ourselves, our loved ones, our neighbours, and for the strangers and the refugees within our gates and beyond.

The second saying is from Rebbe Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter of Ger (1847 – 1905), universally known as the Sefat Emet, ‘The Language of Truth’ after the title of his collected teachings.

One can blow out a candle, but light itself can never be extinguished.

I have witnessed time and again the light and loving-kindness which innumerable people carry in their hearts and seek to share wherever there is loneliness, grief and pain. I’ve been chastened on countless occasions by the ways generous and thoughtful people try to bring light wherever it is needed: gently, not in your face; selflessly, without show; sharing what they have and what their hearts know, not by what they say but by how they listen, not by what they tell but through what they do.

I know that so long as life on earth exists light itself can never be extinguished. I’m grateful to all our teachers, to all who carry that light.