Lamplighters This Chanukah

This week, as we lit our Chanukah candles, our hearts were heavy with news of antisemitic attack in Sydney and a mass shooting at Brown University—communities connected to our own through colleagues, friends, the Jewish people, and the bonds of shared humanity.

Ten years ago, when I first began at Beit Rabban, I would send an email after every mass shooting or attack that felt close to home. I'd outline how we were approaching these tragedies with students, offer guidance on age-appropriate conversations, and provide support as you navigated discussing the unspeakable with your children.

I didn't send that email this week.

Not because these tragedies matter less, but because they have become so devastatingly commonplace. Security protocols in schools are now routine. Gun violence is no longer shocking. Antisemitic attacks feel almost expected. The unspeakable has become, somehow, ordinary.

Instead—and I'm genuinely not certain this was the right choice—we continued our week as planned. We celebrated Chanukah with an emphasis on spreading light. We embraced the rabbinic teaching of pirsumei nisa, placing our chanukiot in the window to proudly proclaim the miracle. We discussed standing up more visibly and courageously when our identity is under attack, just as our ancestors did in the story of Chanukah.

In some ways, it feels like we jumped straight to tikkun—to solution and repair—without fully acknowledging the brokenness. This troubles me. We believe children can handle complexity. We know that, depending on their age and development, they need us to bring up even the most difficult topics so they have the space to process, question, and understand.

And yet, more than ever before, I feel the weight of responsibility to protect the cocoon of safety and joy that is our classrooms—not as an escape from reality, but as a taste and reminder of what the world should be.

This week, watching children and adults arrive dressed in their brightest colors for our annual Light It Up Shabbat celebration—in sparkles and Chanukah crazy clothing—dancing and singing together at assembly, reading Torah, singing the anthems of Israel and America, our home and homeland, felt profoundly right. We weren't ignoring the darkness. We were choosing, with intention, to orient ourselves toward what should be rather than what is.

The Kotzker Rebbe taught: "A little bit of light dispels a lot of darkness." Not that the darkness doesn't exist. Not that we pretend it away. But that even one small flame has power beyond measure. And the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, often spoke about being "lamplighters." He taught that when you light a candle for someone else, your own light isn't diminished—in fact, it grows brighter. A lamplighter doesn't wait for the darkness to disappear before acting. A lamplighter moves through the darkness with purpose, kindling flame after flame, person after person, until the accumulated light transforms everything.

This week, we practiced with our children, who are learning to be lamplighters. They're learning that being Jewish isn't something to hide or diminish when the world feels frightening—it's something to place in the window. They're learning that singing, dancing, and celebrating aren't frivolous in dark times; they're acts of defiance and hope. They're learning that they don't have to wait until they're older, until the world is fixed, to begin the work of spreading light.

I'm not sure we struck the right balance this week between addressing the pain and celebrating the light. Perhaps there is no "right" way to navigate a world where violence has become background noise. What I do know is that our children are watching us—learning not just from what we say about the darkness, but from what we do with our lights.

May this Chanukah bring renewed strength to stand proudly, increased courage to be lamplighters in our world, and the wisdom to know when to name the darkness and when to simply light another candle.