With Hanukkah on the horizon, and the gift-buying season upon us, it is easy to focus on the material elements of this time of year. We face a deluge of commercials – on TV, on our social media feeds, and beyond – trying to convince us that if we buy one more thing, we will have the perfect holiday season. Even Hanukkah, with (slightly) less emphasis on gift giving than Christmas, is not immune to this pressure. While I am an absolute sap for anything even slightly Hanukkah-themed that HomeSense puts on the shelf, at its heart, Hanukkah is ultimately about gratitude for what we already have, not about acquiring more. Our ancestors celebrated their military victory over their Assyrian army, using our oldest gratitude text, the Psalms of Hallel, to express their joy. We increase the number of candles that we light each night, helping us to attune to all that we have, to all of the myriad sources of light in our own lives.
I’m in the midst of reading Eli Sharabi’s memoir of his months in captivity in Gaza, Hostage. Although his is a story filled with darkness, pain, and grief, it is also a story filled with light and gratitude, even in the depths of Hamas’ tunnels. He recounts listening to one of his fellow hostages, Ori Danino z”l, recite Birkat Hamazon, the Grace after Meals. Everyone listens with rapt attention to these ritualized words of gratitude. Sharabi and and his companions created a ritual of ending each day, no matter what, with going around and sharing one good thing that had happened to them that day, whether it was a little extra food, a cup of tea, or the absence of a particularly cruel guard. Sharabi remembers that “Slowly, this routine begins to affect our whole day. We find ourselves searching for the good things for which we can express gratitude in the evening.” Even in the worst situation imaginable, Sharabi and his fellow hostages were able to orient themselves towards gratitude, towards seeking out the good rather than focusing on its absence.
I invite each of us, even in these snowy, wet, dark days, at a time of year when it can be easier to notice what we don’t have and need to buy, rather than the abundance in our lives, to seek out those sparks of light, of gratitude, of hope in our lives.
