Tonight's the first night of
Hanukkah, or Chanukah or however you'd like to spell it - just mix and
match Ks Ns and Hs!
So happy hanukkah for a start! Grab a doughnut
and a coffee and come sit down!
Hanukkah's
basically all about the power of light vs dark. Specifically about your
power to create light and all that it stands for. And
how that light does battle with darkness and all it
stands for.
The
Hanukkah story is about how a bunch of Jewish scholars
and idealists, seemingly weak and hopeless, did battle with the mighty,
invincible armed forces of the Greek Empire. And won.
It
could be that
the biggest miracle here is that they actually did battle in the first
place. Once they did that their victory was always on the cards.
Rabbi
Bahaye Ibn Pakuda (11th Century Scholar and Philosopher) writes: A drop
of truth conquers a good deal of falsehood in the same way that a drop
of light takes away a lot of darkness.
It's
true, there's a world of difference between a pitch black room and
a room with even one little candle burning. But it's still a far cry
from having all the lights on in the house.
So
here's what I'm
wondering: how did those Maccabeans manage to take on the Imperial
forces?
And
in our own personal battle of light vs dark, how do we go
from lighting a drop of candle light to getting all the lights in the
house switched on?
I
think we can find the answer in the halakhah
- rules - of lighting Hanukkah candles. (Yes, there are rules about
everything!)
The
halakhah here is all about a
concept called pirsoom ha-ness - literally
advertising or publicising the miracle.
So
for example, you have to
position your candles in the optimum way for visibility for passers by,
either by the front door or in a street facing window. Even the time of
lighting is dictated by the need to maximise attention - you should
ideally light candles at the time when there's the highest volume of
traffic on the roads.
If you ask me, the great sages of ancient Israel
who legislated the Hanukkah celebration were teaching us how to use the
power of good old word of mouth communication to cook up a storm
and change the world while we're at it.
They wanted to
show that communication was the essence of the Hanukkah miracle.
This
power of communication turned individual idealists into an organised
revolution that was capable of seizing power from a world superpower.
And this power of communication embodied in the pirsoom
ha-ness today turns 10s of 1000s of individuals lighting a
candle for Hanukkah into a unified movement that's trying to chase the
darkness away with a drop of light.
So here's the take home if you want:
It's obvious but I'll say it anyway - you can
make such a difference by just doing a small kindness. A smile, a word
of encouragement, a donation for someone who needs, sometimes just
being there quietly is the biggest kindness. There's so much need right
now that it's tempting to throw your arms up in despair but you know
that's just a lame excuse. Do it.
Taking it a step further, figure out a way to
do the pirsoom ha-ness. In Hebrew, amazingly
enough the word ness means both miracle and
banner! This isn't a coincidence - what we take from it is that the
whole point of a miracle is what we do with it, how we amplify it's
message to change the world.
So if you are doing something important to
change your world, or you want to and you have ideas, please, please,
find a way to get the word out to people who want to hear it.
You're
not limited any more by foot traffic passing by for pirsoom
ha-ness. You've got tools at your fingertips literally that
can get your message wherever it needs to get.
That doesn't mean you should start spamming
with bulk emails. Because there's another lesson the Rabbis taught us
from Hanukkah. If the goal was just to publicise the
miracle they could have told us to stand on street corners and shout
about it!
But they wanted us to publicise it by telling
a story to each other that builds relationships as well as spreading
the word. They taught us that the medium for transmitting the message
has to have value in itself.
The candle itself is a drop of light.
That's how it tells a story of a far greater ness
- a total vision for humanity.
The comments are open below but what I'd
really love you to do is blog this on your blog (you better hurry up
and get one if you don't) and add to it. What are you doing to shed a
drop of light? How are you trying to turn it into a movement?
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