November 26, 1999/17 Kislev 5760, Vol. 52, No.13
Light the lightEditorialIt is perhaps fortuitous that Hanukkah this year comes on the heels of both Thanksgiving and Jewish Book Month.On Thanksgiving, we celebrate the bounties we enjoy as Americans: the security of home, the joys of family, the blessing of freedom. The hallmark of the holiday is plenty - not just sweet potatoes but mashed, not just one kind of stuffing but two, not just pumpkin pie but apple and pecan and maybe lemon meringue. Often the day after we regret the overeating and overdoing, even as we contemplate a refrigerator full of leftovers awaiting a family who has had its fill of the traditional holiday bird. Yet inherent in the post-holiday guilt is a reminder that even as we over-indulge, others do without. Some we see - standing on street corners, their shoulders hunched against the cold, often holding clumsily lettered cardboard signs asking for help. Some we don't see - bedded down in local shelters, living in bare apartments, camping out under bridges that cross the dry Salt River. Their needs become more apparent as the bonhomie of the season elevates not only our sense of good fortune but also our feelings of good will. So what does this have to do with Hanukkah and Jewish books? The byword of Hanukkah is rededication - rededication to the ideals of the Jewish people, those precepts that have sustained us for the past 4,000 years. And it is our books, our sacred texts, that contain those precepts and teach us of our responsibilities and obligations to others - to reach out to the poor, to visit the sick, to provide for the hungry, to welcome the stranger. It is said that such deeds of loving kindness have the capacity to change the world. So as we revel in our own good fortune and prepare to light the first candle on Friday, Dec. 3, let's resolve to share that glow with the rest of the world, through our actions and deeds in the year ahead. |
