Hanukah begins this year at sundown on Thursday, December 21. As we move through the nights of Hanukah, we increase the light, kindling the slender candles that are lit only for praise, not for any practical purpose. We set our hanukiot, our Hanukah menorahs, in a window, to broadcast the miracle we remember and to help dispel the darkness. At Pesach, we enumerate the wonders God performed for us when we went forth out of Egypt. So too at Hanukah, we number the lights and praise God’s gifts.

The National Center for Jewish Healing is preparing a new publication called “Guide Me Along The Way: A Jewish Spiritual Companion for Surgery.” Written by Rabbi Simka Weintraub, it is a gentle guide, filled with prayers, stories, personal experiences, and other resources. I was delighted to have a number of my psalms included in its pages. This one is taken from Chapter III: During Surgery.

Sixty-Two

Second Night

Sixty

A Song for Chanukah

How can we describe God? When we ascribe God with human images and human emotions, we are using the only vocabulary we have to try to grasp what is infinite. Does this diminish God? Or does it place God into the context of our lives, giving us the chance to verify a living relationship with our Creator. When I write psalms, I think of all the ways to describe God. I cannot embrace them all, for God is beyond all. But each word gives me the opportunity for an intimate conversation.

I’m taking a course on-line offered by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America’s Distance Learning Project. It’s called “Talking About God,” and in the first two weeks, we’ve started to learn and discuss some basics of theology and belief. We’re talking about our perception of God and how God’s presence can be known to us.

I can hardly stand to listen to the news these days. It seems that each morning as the radio comes on, the report is from Jerusalem. More shootings, more injuries and deaths. I feel like my head is constantly shaking, “no!” This morning, a car bombing in the Mehane Yehuda market. When will it end?

Summer has slipped to autumn, with unseasonable warmth during the day belying the colored and falling leaves that are accumulating all around. Cheshvan is a holding time. It is the time to begin to make manifest all the dreams and hopes we have just made during the cycle of holy days.

My synagogue’s new Torah scroll will be dedicated on Simchat Torah. A procession will bring it joyfully into the sanctuary and the next day it will be unrolled for everyone to see its beauty. For me, there is a visceral reaction when the Torah is chanted. My Hebrew is rudimentary, so while I can follow along and I can read the trope, I will only be familiar with a word or two. But I hear with my heart as I am connected with all of my people.

The rustling quiets in the sanctuary and there is a moment of anticipation before the voices rise together. Do we pause to read the spaces in the makzor as well as the words, to sigh as well as to sing? All our longing in this season leans to our hopes for wholeness, for closeness to people and to God. May we all be sealed for another year of strength.