The Chanukah Wave

Photo courtesy of Flickr.com user Isolino


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“How’s Chanukah going?” my friend asked me in the market yesterday.

In Israel, children are on vacation from school for most or all of Chanukah. And that means that I have spent most of Chanukah feeling like I did as a child when I was jumping in the ocean waves on the New Jersey shore. Sometimes, during those sunny and sandy hours of jumping, I would get sucked under and tossed around so thoroughly inside a huge wave that for a few panicky seconds I feared I would never ever find my way back to the sunshine again.

And that stuck-in-the-wave feeling is how Chanukah feels to me.

Chanukah is a tidal wave of kids crying for apple juice and fighting over a skirt “borrowed” without permission and exploding with laughter over a song they made up and blasting “Maoz Tsur” on recorder in my ear and a house that is turned upside down almost as soon as I finally manage to turn it right side up.

I looked at my friend and said, “I feel like I’m drowning in Chanukah.”

She nodded and I smiled, and then I returned home for my favorite part of Chanukah.

I chose my candles, and lit my menorah. And then, as I try to do every night of Chanukah, I sat for half an hour just watching my candles.

And for that half an hour I just sat back and enjoyed being stuck inside the Weisberg family Chanukah wave.

Rabbi Nivin taught us in his pre-Chanukah class that the lesson of Chanukah is that EVERYTHING is from God. And so that is what I have been thinking about every night sitting in the darkness on my living room sofa, surrounded by my family.

I look at my children. Laughing. Crying. Playing. Being.
Everything is from God.
I look at the flames of the Chanukah candles stretching up towards Heaven.
Everything is from God.
I look at the wave that swirls around and around and has swallowed me whole.
Everything is from God.

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2 comments

  1. bs”d

    Beautiful! Thanks for sharing!

  2. so much to be thankful for!

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  1. What’s Inside Your Drawer? « The JewishMom.com Blog - [...] you read A Chanukah Wave you know that Chanukah is a real struggle for me. But over the years,…

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