I wrote this kavanah on the first night of Hanukkah in December 2025, in the wake of multiple acts of mass violence that made celebration feel dissonant and fragile.
It is offered for anyone lighting in a moment when the world feels both unbearably broken and insistently beautiful, and when simply arriving at the act of lighting feels like an accomplishment in itself.
• • •
Tonight we light for the ones who are grieving.
Tonight we light for the dissonance of
beauty and terror existing side by side —
for snow falling quietly,
for silence and stillness,
for the way the world
can look beautiful
while everything
feels broken.
Tonight we light for the way
the world keeps turning
while our hearts are still catching up.
We light on these darkest, coldest nights,
returning to the same small act
again and again.
Let the light be small.
Let it be honest.
Let it remain with us,
here, alive, in this moment —
even when the moment is impossible
to know how to meet.
