Asking the Clergy: What is the 2020 message of the Hanukkah miracle?

This year’s celebration of Hanukkah, the wintertime Festival of Lights, will be like no other in recent memory as precautions to stem the spread of COVID-19 affect such ancient traditions as nightly Menorah lightings. This week’s clergy discuss how the message of the eight-day festival beginning Dec. 10, might generate light and hope in what is expected to be a dark winter.

Rabbi Ari Saks

Huntington Jewish Center

The holiday of Hanukkah is also called the "Festival of Lights" because of the commandment to light candles during the darkest time of the year. With the pain and suffering many of us are experiencing this year, I’m wondering if it’s possible for the little lights of what I call this year’s "Covid-nukah" to banish the intense darkness of our COVID-19 reality? Or as Chaim Potok wrote in "Miracles for a Broken Planet," an essay published in "The Hanukkah Anthology" (The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1976), will the "darkness mock their light"?

One Hanukkah in Auschwitz, the Nazis decided to mock their Jewish captives with a "good holiday meal" of a single loaf of bread and a little margarine. However, the Jews turned their meager resources into a small Hanukkah candle and lit it in full view of the Nazis’ derisive smiles. In that moment the Jews rejoiced in scoring a victory over the chimneys of the great crematoriums, and even over death itself, with their flickering Hanukkah light.

Thankfully, our days are much brighter than those dark days in Europe, but stories of flickering lights scoring victories against intense darkness remind us that however dark this year may be, the lights of "Covid-nukah" can give us faith that we can expel the darkness around us, one little light at a time.

Rabbi Mendy Goldberg

Lubavitch of the East End, Coram

The Hanukkah story happened more than 2,000 years ago, however, its message and miracle are timely and applicable for every time and place, especially today. The triumph of light over darkness, good over evil and the righteous over the wicked is a message that reverberates in every person, and it is especially pertinent this year. A year when everything was upended, a time when no one can predict the next day and uncertainty continues to baffle young and old, poor and rich, from the high offices in Washington to the laymen on Main Street.

The message of the menorah and Hanukkah: Faith that the oil will light, notwithstanding the dark time, and with just a little bit of oil. As the adage from the founder of the Chabad philosophy Rabbi Schneur Zalman goes: "A little bit of light dispels much of darkness." Faith in the one above and the persistent desire to increase every day with more light, goodness and righteousness in the world will never fade away and will get us through even the darkest, most uncertain times.

Like the flames of the menorah, with a desire to make an impact and illuminate, an ever persistent desire to reach higher. We too can do the same, and be a beacon of light to all.

Rabbi Jaimee Shalhevet

North Shore Synagogue, Syosset

We teach our children that the miracle of Hanukkah involves a tiny flask of oil that lasted for eight days instead of one. Oil was a precious commodity in those days, making the miracle even greater. As a modern-day joke goes, "Think of it this way. Your cellphone only has enough battery to last for one day, and it lasts for eight days instead!"

Well, I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but in the actual story of Hanukkah, the oil doesn’t make even a cameo appearance. The real miracle is the voicing of the voiceless: The small band of Jews who managed to overtake those who were trying to silence them. They reclaimed their Holy Temple and their ancient culture. They did not fall to bigotry and intolerance. And while God helped, it would not have occurred without the dedication of human beings. That is our message for 2020.

While some may have, in past generations and even sadly, recent times, believed that their voice was doomed to remain silent forever, the miracle is slowly occurring that those voices be heard. May we continue to listen to those whose voices have been silenced in the past and make sure that all are heard, respected and loved.