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Festival of Freedom ...

Every night of Hanukkah we light the candles in two hanukkiahs; one is left sitting on the table while we eat, the other we take upstairs and put on the windowsill of the tall window that overlooks the main street outside the front of the house. We turn the lights out in the landing and leave the hanukkiah to burn, for all who pass the house to see. You walk upstairs half an hour later and three candles still burn, casting an almost unbelievable amount of light. You peek outside into the pitch dark and wonder what it must look like from out there - What do people think as they glance up and see the candles, those little pin-pricks of light just visible through the tree on our front lawn?

Proverbs says, "For the mitzvah is a lamp, Torah is light ... The human spirit is a lamp of Adonai; it searches one's inmost being." (Proverbs 6:23a; 20:27) When people walk along the road in the deep blackness of the cold winter night tonight, when they look up and see those nine candles burning, will they just see nine little candles in a pretty holder, or will they also see the light that shines from performing a mitzvah, as those who persecuted our ancestors did when they struggled to perform this self-same mitzvah? "For it is the God who once said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' who has made His light shine in our hearts, the light of the knowledge of God's glory shining in the face of the Messiah Yeshua. But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it will be evident that such overwhelming power comes from God and not from us." (2 Corinthians 4:6-7)

When we light the hanukkah candles tonight, for the last time, what will you think about? Will you wonder yet again at the miracle of the oil lasting for eight days; will you remember all of our ancestors who died in their attempt to celebrate Hanukkah, rejoice at the knowledge that we can celebrate Hanukkah without that fear of persecution ...

This is the festival of freedom - are you grateful for the freedom we have? Have you realised, are you aware of the responsibility we have to keep alight the flame of freedom that was lit by the Macabee's thousands of years ago; are you prepared to accept the responsibility of remembering, of rejoicing in that freedom, to reach out and grasp the flaming torch that represents our people, our faith, our Torah? Our heritage and very existence has been threatened for all these centuries, yet still we have had the courage to continue and to survive - is the flame that has ignited the courage and perseverance of all our ancestors burning in your heart?

Naomi Allen, Tevet 5768