Tonight we lit the first Chanukah candle, and it’s no secret that this holiday hits home harder than most. At least to me.
It’s the Jewish Festival of Light, and for each of the holiday’s eight nights we light one successive candle, until by the end of it all we risk burning the house down.
In the end, though, it’s worth it. Because these are dark times for Planet Earth in general and for Jews in particular, and it’s impossible to ignore the poignancy of miraculous light banishing threatening darkness.
We’ve always been hated well beyond our tiny-percentage-of-the-global-population’s size. We’ll leave the whys for another time, but suffice to say it gets tiring after a lifetime of wondering how much of your background you want to share, and how to respond when you know you’re being targeted.
Even here, in my own feed, I debate whether I should even raise it at all lest I awaken the trolls. Or maybe the professionals who might hire me for my next role or contract until they realize I’m “that” kind of Jew, or a Jew at all.
After all, the silent kind of hatred is everywhere, too, and eventually you learn how to detect the subtle signs.
I used to suck it up - even pretending to laugh at an employer’s jokes because, well, he paid my salary, and calling him out, despite his assurances that he “loved Jews”, felt somewhat risky given the relative power imbalance.
But silence is no longer an option - it didn’t work out so well for the appeasers in the 1930s, and it won’t work now - so we’ll take any opportunity to shine the light and strive for better.
It doesn’t matter who we worship or what we believe: we all deserve to live free of that kind of worry. May this season of light, in so many forms, inspire us to do better.
I doubt a single post from an ordinary guy like me will make much of a difference, but we have to start somewhere. So consider this my start.
#ldnont #london #ontario #canada #chanukah #hannukah #howeveritisspelled #jewish #holiday #stilllife #photography #apple #apple #iphone #iphone16 #shotoniphone
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