Seasonal Musings
Cantor Sarah J. Sager

       I am constantly awed and amazed by the insistent relevance of the Jewish calendar to our lives.  Even as the cycle of nature takes us from one season to another, as the circumstances of our lives take us from one experience to another: from celebration to illness, from discouragement to accomplishment, from rejoicing to grieving, so Jewish time transports us from one insight to another, from one dimension of our spirits to another, from a vision of what we can be to what we must yet accomplish and back again.  Thus, the solemnity and introspection of the High Holy Days yield to the joy, thanksgiving and abandonment of Sukkot, the strength and determination we feel at the end of Yom Kippur, finds fulfillment in Simchat Torah, in the beginning again of learning, of seeking wisdom from constantly renewing our study of Torah, our source of Jewish growth and sustenance.  As the days become shorter, as the air becomes colder, we approach Chanukah with its message of light and hope. 

This minor holiday in the Jewish calendar has taken on enormous significance and yet we seem to relegate it to the children, to a night of family gathering with latkes and dreidels, gifts and candle lighting when we are in desperate need of its deeper message.  This year, in particular, I feel a pang – of recognition, of gratitude, of relief that Chanukah is here again to remind us: the few can defeat the many, the weak can outsmart, outmaneuver and outlast the strong, the glimmer of a single idea – if it is honest and true, can not only light the darkness, it can illuminate the world.

            Our news is uncomfortably full of accounts of unrest in the world.  Stories that should have died over fifty years ago are current again.  In every European country, demonstrations, vandalism and violence have been perpetrated against Jews.  Everyday I receive emails encouraging me to boycott French products, to avoid travel to most of Europe, and to support the Israeli economy by purchasing Israeli goods via the Internet.  We find ourselves asking millennia-old questions:  Why the Jews?  Why are we such an irresistible target?  The questions are ultimately unanswerable, but the response must be the response that Chanukah brings to us.  As Irving Greenberg points out in his book, The Jewish Way, this is not the first time that we have feared there is no more oil left to burn.

            In addition, each of us must contend with our own personal darknesses of fear and uncertainty - as we visit the bedside of a beloved family member, as we try to guide, support and nurture a child on his/her path to maturity, as we deal with frustrations at work, as we face the demands of intense, hectic and even frantic lives. 

            At this time of the Jewish year we are reminded that we Jews have struggled eternally to bring order out of chaos, to bring light into the dark corners of the human soul, to guard the flames of faith and freedom against the forces of darkness and, whatever the cost, to hope, to do, to dream, to believe:

“Not by might and not by power

But by My spirit

Says the God of heaven’s hosts.”