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A Hanukkah Ritual to Mark the Incompleteness of Our Joy

a hanukkan menorah with all lights lit but the eighth candle
“Who can retell the things that befell us? Who can count them?” -popular English verses for Mi Yimalel 
 
This Hanukkah song has been stuck in my head for the last few weeks. Throughout my life, I have understood Mi Yimalel as about the distant past, about Jewish history. This year, it is also about the present. There are approximately 140 hostages still in captivity.  
 
How do we celebrate a time of miracles and light when they are literally underground without access to sunlight? How do we hold it all?  
 
 While we must affirm life and find ways to go on, we cannot proceed as if Oct 7 did not happen. Our joy is incomplete. At the Passover seder, we remove drops of wine from our cup for each plague. We intentionally diminish our joy in order to remember and acknowledge. This Hanukkah, on the 8th night, I will leave the final candle unlit as an expression of incompleteness of our joy.  I invite you to join me in this modification to the Hanukkah candle lighting ritual if you too want to remember and acknowledge the complications and incompleteness of joy this Hanukkah.  
 
 As a Reconstructionist Jew, I don’t understand miracles in the traditional sense. For me, God works through us, not upon us. I don’t know exactly who the “hero or sage” is who can come to the aid of the hostages and facilitate their immediate release, yet I pray that all those who have any power that could be used towards that outcome do so, speedily and with all of their might.  
 
I pray for the hostages and their families: for strength, for hope, for healing. May they know they are not alone. May they know they are counted. 
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2 Responses

  1. I am so sad when people don’t mention praying for the Palestinian families when they pray for the hostages and their families. Such heartbreak for all.

    1. There is so much heartbreak. You will find an array of prayers on Ritualwell and I hope you find the one that speaks to you.

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