I see the lights of Chanukah reaching out into the darkness. Chanukah is a festival of hope, courage and inspiration and we, and the world, urgently need them all.

But now, not only after Bondi Beach but at the close of a cruel year, that darkness feels deep indeed. My Christian friends speak similarly as they approach the celebration of Christmas. We, and the Muslim colleagues who sent words of sorrow and solidarity, share the simple prayer: ‘May the light prove stronger than the darkness.’

It’s a prayer addressed to each other, ourselves and our governments, as much as to God. We need light.
That doesn’t mean that we can ignore the hatred, cruelty and contempt abroad in our world. But I won’t detail them here. I will focus on the light, because we need it so badly.

On a personal note, the second day of Chanukah is the Yahrzeit for Raphael’s and my mother, Lore. She left us a collection of stories, Maerchen in German, fables in poetic prose. One of them concerns a little boy who is terrified of the dark and gets lost in the forest in the pitch-black night. Yet coming, panic-stricken and exhausted, upon a clearing, he sees the bright moon and stars and hears the swaying of the trees. He stops, breathes in, and stands still in wonder: ‘I always knew it,’ he says to himself, ‘beyond the darkness there is light.’ I think now that, knowing she was dying, our mother wrote this story as a message to her two young boys, and to herself.

Returning to Chanukah, the date marks the repossession of the Temple by the Maccabees. Who knows what they actually thought as they contemplated the ruined precincts? Their battles weren’t over. Right next door stood a fortress still in enemy hands.
Yet the Talmud chooses to tell us that the first thing they did was look for light. Whoever the editors of the Talmud were, they wanted this to be the message of Chanukah for future generations: Seek light! Whatever the darkness around you, seek it out! And when you find it, even if it’s just one tiny jar, even if you think, ‘This won’t last. It’s a mere nothing! It’ll be out before it’s lit!’ – go ahead and light it.

That, taught Rebbe Yehudah Aryeh-Leib Alter of Ger, is where the miracle of Chanukah’s eight days begins, not in heaven, but on earth. Eight, he wrote, represents transcendence, seeing beyond. In kabbalah, the eighth sacred quality if we count upwards, is binah, intuition. It’s the insight that beyond, and within, everything, even in the heart of darkness, resides God’s spirit. There is an inalienable holiness, and inextinguishable point of light, at life’s core.

On Chanukah that or haganuz, that hidden flame, is kindled on our Menorah and placed not in secret, but overlooking the highway, in the public square. Hope and light must be ‘out there,’ a call to courage and the strength of collective goodness.

The Talmud asks, and then confirms, that ‘we may light one candle from another’ directly, flame to flame. This represents the truth that one person’s light, creativity, kindness, bravery inspires others, who inspire yet others about whom the individual who lit the first flame will never know.

So we must never say: ‘It’s too little. The darkness is too thick.’ Despite everything, let the lights of courage, inspiration, creativity, companionship, goodness, kindness, determination and hope shine forth into the coming year.