Dear Orchard,
- It is early morning and I can still see a sliver of moon- the left side, the waning moon. I watch it fade and reappear as clouds slide by, until it dissolves into day. Chanukah is a celebration of the winter moon, its disappearance into the longest, darkest night of the year, and its reappearance as the tiny crescent of the newborn moon.
The Chanukah candles we light are small, not meant to overpower the dark, to run from death, stillness and grief-- for they emerge from the same place as creativity, idealism, trust and love. The dark of death and the dark of the womb are just two sides of the moon’s journey. The little candles remind us that to cut ourselves off from endings, is to cut ourselves off from beginnings too.
But what do dreidels have to say about these weighty matters? Rebbe Nachman says “This world is a spinning wheel like a dreidel, and everything turns around.” I watch our world dreidel spin knowing that this time there are no surprises. It falls on Shin. This is a time to put one in. It is a time for generosity, reciprocity, for offering what we can from our little piles of gelt. There is something settling for me in this knowing. A bunch of ugly things are heading our way- we know the fascist playbook. Our peoples have been here before. It is on us to resist in a thousand acts of defiance, and to build the kind of communities we know we need- the kind that sustain life, that care for each other, and that connect with other communities also based on life and love like a mycelium network or a starry sky.
What did Rebbe Nachman mean about the world being a spinning dreidel? He says that in one lifetime we have one appearance, one place on the wheel of life—in another we may be something totally different, perhaps a tree, a stone, a star. Believing we are separate --disconnected and isolated from each other is folly. It may seem practical to just take care of our own, but what if the dreidel falls another way next time? Then where will we be? Why not follow our neshamahs, our souls, that long for love, for life, for community, for joy?
On Chanukah, we mimic the waxing winter solstice moon which changes steadily but almost imperceptively from dark to light. We urge our spinning dreidel of a planet to not just spiral out into endless winter, but to tilt back toward summer, interweaving darkness and light, night and day, oneness and multiplicity. On Chanukah, we do the simple act of lighting one candle the first night, two the second, three the third. This is how we can grow our souls, nurture our families and heal our communities- one simple doable step at a time. Turning off the lights, resting in the infinite darkness of possibilities and then lighting one candle. Then another and another.
with much gratitude for you dear friends and Orchard!
Happy Chanukah!
love, Zann