Rabbi YY Jakobson - Chanukah - From Darkness to Light

Happy Hanukkah to one and all. I'm so thrilled and privileged to be here with all of you learning Torah together during this festival of lights. You know, when I think of the special work of the extraordinary Emmet organization, the work led by my dear friend Rabbi Rottenberg and his dedicated staff of teachers and mentors and lovers of the Jewish people, it reminds me of that special insight. I recently shared it. I heard it from the late British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who passed away just last month. There is a fascinating and ancient debate in the Talmud in tractate Shabbat page 22. It's a very simple question. Am I allowed to use a Hanukkah candle in order to light another Hanukkah candle? Now, usually we use the shamash. We take a foreign candle, a stranger, and we use that to kindle all of the flames. But, what happens if I don't have a shamash? Can I use one Hanukkah candle that's burning to light the other candles? Of course, there is an argument about it. It's an argument between two of the greatest Talmudic sages of the 3rd century, Rav and Shmuel. Rav says, "Ain madlikin min haner." You're not allowed to use one Hanukkah candle to light other candles. Shmuel says, "It's permissible. It's fine." The logic? Rav says, "A kshei mitzvah." If I use existing Hanukkah candle to light another candle, I may be diminishing of the first candle. Some of the oil can spill, some of the wax can get lost. You're diminishing the first flame, the Hanukkah mitzvah flame, that's inappropriate. Shmuel disagrees. He says it's fine. But what is the logic behind Shmuel? Why doesn't he agree with Rav? What is more, there's a very interesting Talmudic principle that in most issues of Jewish law, when there was a debate between Rav and Shmuel, the verdict follows the position of Rav. There are three exceptions. One of them is Hanukkah. Jewish law dictates that in this case, the verdict follows Shmuel. Jewish law says you could use a Hanukkah flame to light another flame. Why? The understanding of this ancient Talmudic debate can be clearly seen in today's Jewish world. Take two Jews. They are both burning. They are both on fire. Both of their Jewish flames are lit. They are deeply passionate about Judaism, committed to Jewish faith, inspired by their religion. But they have two different views. The first one says, "I must look out for my own flame. You cannot ask of me to go light other flames that are unlit. You know why? A kosher mitzvah. That may diminish my Judaism. That may weaken my connection with spirituality. That may ultimately diminish my holiness. I must remain in my own cocoon to look after my own light and the light of the people who are very close to me." Now, Rav was a great spiritual giant. But Jewish law in this case, embraced the vision of Shmuel. And you know what Shmuel says? Shmuel says, "When you take your light and you use it to set another Jewish soul on fire, your flame doesn't get diminished. Your flame grows stronger and stronger. When you dedicate time and space and energy to ignite the soul of other people, to inspire their hearts, to broaden their Jewish horizons, to inculcate them with a deeper sense of purpose, meaning, love, hope, to make them appreciate the infinite, priceless value of their heritage, their faith, and their own inner reservoirs reservoirs of spirituality, your light doesn't get diminished. Your light continues to grow and grow. From one comes two, and from two comes four, from four comes eight, until we flood the entire world with light. I think this is one of the greatest commentaries for the special work of Emmet. People, women and men, dedicated to ignite other flames, realizing that our greatest power lay when we care for each other, when we're connected with each other, when we reach out to each other. And when if I have a flame burning in my soul, I do not want to only keep it in my home and in my soul. Rather, I want to utilize it to illuminate and to inspire others. Every Hanukkah, I'm always inspired by that picture I saw a number of years ago. It made me so curious. Then I had the privilege of having created a relationship and correspondence with the grandchild of the person who took the photo. It's a photo that is surreal. It's unusual. When I saw it the first time, I was shocked. Take a look. A Hanukkah menorah burning and behind it a large swastika. Who would take such a picture? Who would light a Hanukkah menorah right in front of the symbol of the Nazi party? And then I learned the story. The photo was taken in Kiel, Germany on the eighth night of Hanukkah 1932. The rabbi of Kiel, Germany was a man named Rabbi Akiva Boruch Posner. He was getting ready to light the menorah the eighth night of Hanukkah, in which we light all the eight candles, and it happened to coincide with Shabbat. So, of course, the home is more rushed cuz you got to get the candles lit, then you have to get the Shabbos candles lit. So, it was moments before sunset the Friday afternoon Kiel, Germany, Hanukkah 1932. Rabbi Posner set up the menorah on his window sill as he lit all of the eight candles. Across the street were the headquarters of the Gestapo with a large Nazi swastika. So, the background of the menorah, you have this draped flag of the Nazi party. Rachel Posner Rebbetzin Posner, the wife of Rabbi Akiva Boruch Posner is getting ready for Shabbos but she observes how surreal this scene is. In the background, the swastika and on the window sill of her home, the Hanukkah candles. And she decides she must immortalize this moment. And she goes and she fetches her camera. And she takes a photograph. This is the photograph you're seeing. When she prints the photograph, she writes something on the other side of the picture, in German. This is what she writes. I'll translate it into English. Judah will die. Thus says the flag. Judah will live forever. Thus say the Hanukkah lights. Little did she realize how powerful, how tragically accurate her words would be. The Posener family managed to escape Germany in 1934. She, her husband, their three children, they made it to Israel. In fact, most or all of the community of Kiel, Germany, was saved. But over the next 10 years, the flame of the Jewish people would come so close to being extinguished. Yes, death to the Jews, that flag exclaimed and tried to execute over the next decade. Remember, only a little while later after this photograph was taken, Adolf Hitler, yimach shmo, my January 1933, was elected as the Fuhrer, as the Chancellor of Germany. 75 years have passed since the end of the Second World War. That flag that exclaimed death to the Jews, thank God, has been removed from consciousness of history besides in the minds of some deranged and dangerous anti-Semites who still yearn and crave for our destruction. But every single year, right before Hanukkah, the grandchild of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbitson Rochel Posner, Yehuda my friend Yehuda Mansabach, borrows this menorah, this very menorah that stood on the window sill of his grandparents' home in Kiel. He borrows it from the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem. He brings it to his home in Haifa. As he stands with his children and grandchildren and lights the candles in the same menorah that his grandfather used in Germany back in 1932. And as they sing the beautiful songs of Hanukkah, Maoz Tzur Yeshuati, he shows the entire family the picture that his grandmother took so many years ago. And what she wrote on the other side of that photograph. And he asks them the question we must all ask ourselves, who was right? Death to the Jews, thus the flag says. Judah will die, thus the flag says. Judah will live forever, thus the lights say. And indeed, during the original Hanukkah, the flame of Judaism, the flame of the Jewish people came so close to being extinguished. The Hasmoneans rose up in a guerrilla war which was super rational, didn't make sense. But they fought. And they defeated the Greeks. And it wasn't only the Syrian Greeks they had to defeat. This was sadly a war among the Jewish people themselves. Most of the Jews were Hellenized. Most of the Jews at the time embraced the decrees of Antiochus and even though he tortured mothers who circumcised their children who gave their children a bris, he barbarically mutilated and murdered Jews who had the audacity to violate his commandments prohibiting all practices of Judaism at the pain of death. Jews assisted him in erecting a statue of Zeus in the temple and sacrificing pigs to pagan gods in the Beta Migdash in the holy temple. Sadly, Jews looked the other way when he took Hannah and her seven children and murdered them because they refused to bow down to idolatry. Nonetheless, so many Jews were enthralled by what seemed like as progress and open-mindedness and the Greek focus on human power and prowess, the human body, the greatest athlete, and the human mind, the great philosopher. These were the crowns of creation for the Jews. For so many Jews, this seemed so enthralling. This was the future. And they were hypnotized by that vision, even if it meant bidding farewell to their deepest values, to their deepest faith, to their God, to their ancestors, to their history, to their own deepest truths. But there was a small group, a small band of Hasmoneans who understood that goodness can be eclipsed but never obliterated. That the inner jug of oil, that little jug of oil, will remain eternal. They understood that goodness, holiness, divinity, infinity, morality, Torah mitzvahs may be threatened and the challenges may be daunting, but the flame of hope is never extinguished. Truth will ultimately prevail. Reality will ultimately prevail. That is its nature because it's real. Light will dispel darkness. Clarity will defeat confusion. Truth will ultimately triumph over falsehood because reality originates in truth. You can eclipse the truth. You can repress the truth. You can run away from the truth. You can deny the truth in your own soul. You can knock it out. You can make believe it doesn't exist. But it will emerge. And just like oil, even if you mix it with many other liquids, at some point, it's going to rise to the top. It will not forever remain assimilated and mixed and forfeited its identity. This is what the Hasmonean understood. They understood that there are certain truths about reality that you cannot repress and keep them down. They're going to float back to the surface. And this is what they fought for, and they were successful. And 2,200 years later, we still have the Hasmonean. We still have those people who hold on to that flame and who will not let go of it. And even when there seems to be confusion and darkness and uncertainty and trauma and fear and insecurity and ambivalence and people who are very confused and overwhelmed by their own stress and by the stress around of them, these Hasmonean know that their job is to kindle every day a flame of faith and hope and resilience and wisdom and The flame of Torah, the flame of Yiddishkeit, the flame of mitzvahs, the flame of truth. And to kindle other flames, all waiting to be ignited, to be inspired. There's an old anecdote about a lover of antiques who threw a Hanukkah party. And he invited his family and friends, and people were sitting around, and he would always go to auctions and buy these most ancient items, you know, from the days of yore. And he points to his guests and he says, "You see this menorah? This menorah was used in Italy 500 years ago. You see this menorah? This menorah was smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War. You see this oil? This oil dates back to Israel, you know how long? And you see this dreidel? This dreidel was more than a century old. I got it from Galicia, from Eastern Poland." And he goes through every single item there on the table, and he tells them how old it is. "This is 100 years old. This is 200 years old. This is 300 years old." And there's a Jew there who's busy biting into a donut, and he says, "Sir, and how old are the donuts?" I don't know how that compliment was registered by the boss. We like donuts to be fresh. We like latkes to be fresh. But as we eat those donuts and latkes, it's good to recall that they're telling a story that is literally thousands of years old and never died. Never will die. There was once a teacher who wanted to share this message with the students. So, he had them all built a model, cardboard model of the Beit Hamikdash, of the Temple in Jerusalem, where the Hanukkah miracle happened. And they did it. They put in effort, arts and crafts, and they constructed this lovely model. They finished and he said, "And now let's sing a Hanukkah song." And they all sang a Hanukkah song, and they danced, and they cheered. It was beautiful. And then he said, "I want you all to destroy the cardboard model of the Holy Temple." Oh, that was exciting. They got matches, you know, you give kids matches and they put them on fire, and they made a fire, and the model was burnt. And then he says, "Boys, girls, I want you to destroy the song that we just sang." They said, "Teacher, how do we do that? We How do we destroy the song that we just sang?" He said, "You tell me." He said, "We can't." He looked at them and he said, "And now you'll understand something very curious about Hanukkah. If I had to ask you, what should have been the main celebration of the Hanukkah holiday, what would you say? I would say the military victory of the Hasmonean against the Syrian Greeks. This was a unique, unprecedented victory, as we say in the prayers of Hanukkah, "You have surrendered the strong in the hands of the weak. The few have triumphed over the many." Giborim b'yad chalashim, v'rabim b'yad m'atim. You're talking about a little group. It started off with five brothers. It grew to another few hundred, maybe at most a few thousand Jews fighting the mightiest army of the time, tens of thousands of Syrian Greek troops. There was absolutely no possibility for them to win. And yet, after a few years, they managed to to out the Syrian Greeks from Jerusalem, rededicate the Temple, reestablish Jewish life, reestablish religious liberty, if not for the Hasmonean, there would be no memory of the Jewish people or of Judaism. This was a historical unique achievement. By the way, there would not be no Christianity, no Islam, the other monotheistic faith wouldn't either be here because Hanukkah happened approximately 150 years before the genesis of Christianity. It happened around 200 years before the destruction of the Second Temple. So, this was a unique moment in history, this victory, the fact that they won. And yet, the Talmud chooses to focus on one individual detail, which even though it was miraculous and inspiring, doesn't seem to be so consequential and so important. And that is that they wanted to light the menorah, and they only had oil for one night, and the oil lasted for eight nights, and therefore we celebrate Hanukkah by lighting the menorah for eight nights. Wait a second, but even if that miracle wouldn't have happened, then the menorah would not burn for eight nights, the victory would have still been extraordinary. In fact, if you look at the Book of the Maccabees, which records the Hanukkah history, that is the main focus of the holiday, the victory of the Hasmonean family against the Syrian Greeks troops and the establishment of religious liberty. When you look at the Talmud, which was written after the destruction of the Second Temple a few hundred years, the Second Temple was destroyed in 70, the Babylonian Talmud was composed in the 5th century, there the focus is very different. The Talmud in tractate Shabbat page 21b says, "My Hanukkah, why do we celebrate Hanukkah? Because when the Hasmonean defeated the Greeks and they came to the Temple, they couldn't find any oil, and they found one jug of oil, and it burned for eight days." Why did that become the focus of the story? The teacher explained to his students, you see, look what you just did. The cardboard model of the temple you burnt. You can destroy it. The song you could not obliterate. The military victory of Hanukkah could be reversed. It was reversed. 100 years after the Hasmonean came into power, ultimately there was strife and civil war and terrible contention and discord, and then Rome Rome ultimately took over Judea, and this led to the destruction of the Second Temple and the long exile of the Jewish people subsequent to that. So, if Hanukkah would have just been based on the fact we won the war, we liberated Jerusalem. Now, let's go eat. Let's go celebrate. The holiday of Hanukkah would have come to an end when the Jewish people lost the war, were defeated, were exiled, were dispersed. There was no temple anymore. There was no menorah. And yet, Hanukkah persisted. Why? And that's where the Talmud tells us the military victory is tremendous and we're so grateful for it and we thank God for it every Hanukkah. It was an incredible moment. But, you know what the real achievement of Hanukkah was? It managed to ignite the flame in the human heart. It managed to rekindle the spark of hope and faith and resilience and commitment to the Jewish soul. It managed to re-inspire the Jewish people to accept upon themselves once again their covenant with the creator of the world, to change the world, to light up the world with the flame of morality, with the flame of values, with the flame of truth, with our commitment to education, to love, to charity, to faith, to transforming the landscape of planet Earth with to repair our world under the sovereignty of God, a commitment to build homes that are infused with joy and infused with faith and infused with holiness and infused with idealism and infused with the celebration of mitzvahs, of Yiddishkeit, and infused with the study of Torah, and infused with charity, and infused with prayer. That is what Hanukkah accomplished. And that could not be destroyed even when the flames burned not just a model of the Holy Temple, but the Holy Temple itself. The song of the heart that Hanukkah ignited in the Jewish psyche continues to resonate in our souls more than 2,000 years later. And you know, friends, I think there is also a very personal message for each and every one of us tonight. And that is in your life, in my life, we each have to choose whether I could become a source of light to light up others. It's so easy in our world to become victims. We just become victims of our circumstances, victims of our own inner wounds and scars and traumas, victims of our past, victims of our present, victims of our environment, victims of situations that may be challenging and difficult. And indeed, some of us have grown up with traumas that have wounded us deeply. Some of us do have to confront various ghosts and demons and skeletons. And yet, Hanukkah teaches us something very powerful. And that is at every single moment of my life I can make a choice. Either I'm going to become a source of light or a source of darkness, a source of confusion or a source of clarity. Either I'm going to be part of the problem or I'm going to be part of the solution. There's no other choice. In life, every single day you choose either you're part of the problem or you're part of the solution. Which part, which team do you want to be part of? There are problems everywhere. There are problems inside of me. There are problems outside of me. There are problems in our society, in our nation, in our world, but I can be part of the problem or I can be part of the solution. And Hanukkah tells me, become a menorah. When people see you in the store, in the supermarket, in the street, in the office, in the synagogue, in school, in your workplace, in your home, they could look at you and see just a person who's looking for validation and love and attention like the rest of us, or they could see you as a person, yes, who is looking for love and validation and attention, but also a person who's ready to be a source of love and a source of light and a source of inspiration. And don't say, I am different, I am messed up, I am not capable, I'm already an old man, an old woman, I am incompetent, I am a nerd, I am a loser. You don't know who I am. You have that little jug of oil that could never be tarnished and contaminated. It remains unscathed and wholesome because it is it is rooted in divinity. And I'm going to finally share with you a lovely incident with one of the greatest Hasidic masters known as the Sfas Emes. Sfas Emes was a Jew named Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter. He was the second Gerer Rebbe, the second spiritual master of the Hasidic dynasty known as Ger. He passed away in the winter of 1905 in the city of Ger not far from Warsaw in Poland. And in his commentary on Chumash on Sfas Emes, on that story that is being read in the Jewish world during these weeks, during the time of Hanukkah, he has an extraordinary commentary on one of those faithful verses. You remember Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery, and he ends up in the home of this man named Potiphar. He's so successful there. His master loves him, and he makes him really, you know, the chief of staff running his entire estate. But, then comes the next part of the story. Potiphar's wife, his master's wife, loves Joseph. Joseph is beautiful and handsome and attractive, and she tries to entice him and persuade him to engage in a promiscuous relationship. And Joseph refuses. And the Torah describes how she did not stop. Every single day she nudged him, she pleaded with him, she nagged him. She did whatever she can to persuade him to engage in this immoral relationship. The Torah describes one scene when Joseph refuses. He insists that he cannot do it, and he gives her an explanation. He tells her why he cannot possibly fulfill her desire. And he says, "You have to understand, my master, your husband, doesn't know anything that's happening in this home. Everything that's happening in this home he has surrendered to my control. I am the sole boss here. He has given me the authority over everything. A man who got all by by you says that me many. There is nobody in this estate who's greater than I am, who has more power than I am. There's only one thing that he did not allow me to lay my hands on. There's only one thing I have no access to, and that is you. Because you are his wife. How do you expect of me a s a rock dollar those? How do you expect of me to engage in such an immoral, broken, and destructive act? And she doesn't stop. She doesn't stop. She continues, and ultimately she accuses him of of violating her, and he's plunged into prison, where he would remain for 12 years until he'd be emancipated and ultimately become the prime Minister of Egypt, and the rest is history, as they say. Let's focus on one element. He's building up this dramatic answer why he can't sin. Now, it's wonderful words he's saying. He's saying basically, you know, my boss trusts me. He's given me He's given me his home. He's entrusted me with his estate. He's entrusted me with his bank accounts. I'm the one who manages everything. Now, you want me to take this trust and betray it. There's one thing he didn't give me, his wife. Wonderful, wonderful argument. But, one second. Let's say Joseph was just a simple slave who owned nothing in the house, who ran nothing in the house. Let's say he was just, you know, regular guy. The real issue here is when a woman is married to a man, engaging in a relationship with this woman is a violation of one of the basic moral codes of civilization and society. Judaism, known as one of the seven Noahide laws, in which Adam was already commanded. The Talmud says in Sanhedrin. This is one of the basic laws of civilization. No difference if I'm rich or I'm poor, if I'm a slave or I'm a master, if my owner trusts me or doesn't trust me, you are married. That's real basic thing here. Joseph builds up this whole beautiful argument. I mean, it's it's just an extra argument. You're really betraying his trust. But, even if he didn't Even if you were a stranger and he never trusted you with anything, you're you're not allowed to cheat with his spouse. Come on. And the spouse is not allowed to cheat with somebody else. Is this really the main crux of the argument? The Sfas Emes says something marvelous. He says Joseph was not only talking to her. He was also talking to himself. And he was not only referring to things on an earthly level. He was also referring to things on a much deeper level. When he says, "My master knows nothing that is happening in this home. There's nobody greater in this home. He has given me everything. He has allowed me to do everything. Everything. He's given me such authority. But there's one thing that he asks of me. And what does he ask of me? He asks of me to be loyal to him. Not to betray him. How can I betray him? Says this Sfas Emes, what Joseph was discussing was not just his master Potiphar. He was also discussing the ultimate master of the world. God. He says, "Let's understand this. This whole estate is his. The whole world is his. Lashamai U'laratz U'laya. He runs everything. He runs everything. It's his home. It's his enterprise. It's his resources. I don't own anything. I didn't make it. I couldn't make it. I didn't fashion it. I didn't design it. I didn't create its mechanisms. It's all run by God, who created it, controls it, supervises it. Who allowed the one cell with which human life begins to develop into 70 trillion cells operating in the most synchronized, beautiful, and organized manner moment by moment to create the miracle of human life? Who created the processes of photosynthesis in a tree? That unique ability to transform sunlight into glucose. And the other thousands and thousands of miracles of nature that allow you to take a seed, plant it into the earth, and between soil and oxygen and water and sunlight, suddenly I'm eating a plum and I'm eating watermelon. And I'm eating a piece of challah or a piece of babka or a latke on Hanukkah or a donut on Hanukkah. Suddenly I'm eating a peach or a cucumber or a tomato or a potato. How did that exactly happen? From the soil and the water and the sunlight and the air? We take these things for granted, but those are Don't take this for granted. Who allows the machinery of life to work? Do you know the atomic structure of every single thing we call matter, every single atom, working in perfect harmony with the center of the atom, the electron, revolving around the nucleus of the atom? And how about the subatomic particles? And all of the atoms working together in perfect harmony? And you're dealing here with numbers that are beyond what the human mouth can articulate. Just the amount of atoms in one drop of water. And do you know the miracle of one single cell in a living organism? And how about the DNA? If spread out as a scroll, can fill the height of the Empire State Building and probably more than once or two times or three times. And the processes of lightning which allows the nitrogen, which can't merge with the oxygen, to be absorbed in the rain and in the soil so it could become part of our diet so it can produce amino acid. And the processes of the winds that allow the clouds to be scattered and dispersed, so that when the sun acts like a pump and draws the water upwards. And if there wouldn't be winds that would scatter the clouds, the water would fall right back into the oceans and the rest of Earth would remain barren desert. And everything working in perfect symmetry and harmony to allow for life on our planet and to allow for the existence of the cosmos. And we could discuss this for approximately 90 years and still not scratch the surface of the magic that exists in one bee dance or in the productivity of a single ant, a flake of snow, a droplet of rain, a beating heart, a blade of grass, the largest or smallest galaxy or star. Joseph says, "This is all his. And he does it all." Do I even know what's happening inside of me? Am I the one who commands hundreds of billions of white blood cells to act like a police force and survey and control my body 24 hours a day to stand guard against any foreign invader? And when there is a foreign invader, as a virus or bacteria, fungi, an infection, they come for an attack. Do I even know what's going on? Does anybody know what's going on? Who designed all of this? And who designed the nine systems within my biological framework? Who? The respiratory system and the urinary system and the digestive system, etc. Circulatory system, what about that heart pumping blood? And how many highways and arteries? 60,000 miles. Joseph says, "He does it. We don't We don't even We We take it for granted." But then this God asks of me one thing. There's one arena in which God says I will abstain. Everything is in the hands of heaven besides the fear of heaven. There's one arena of life where God says it's up to you. You have to make moral choices. You're the one who has to choose whether you're going to be a source of light or a source of darkness. Are you going to live a life aligned with your infinity or you're going to live a life aligned with your trauma? Are you going to live a life that expresses your truest, deepest self, your truest, deepest values as a chemical, a coming mile, as a soul that embodies the light of God or am I going to reduce myself to pettiness and smallness and surrender to mediocrity and allow anger insecurity, fear, traumas, wounds and deep struggles to overpower me and to ultimately dictate what I'm going to do. God, who owns everything has given over this home, has given over this life to me. And he told me I ask of you one thing. I'm giving you everything. I'm giving you a world that I created and it's at your disposal. I'm giving you I'm asking you one thing. Don't touch my wife. I'm asking you to abstain from that which is immoral, which is forbidden, even if it's tempting. Joseph says to the wife of Potiphar how can I violate that? Do you understand what's at stake here? The whole world is God. But when it comes to the moral questions of life, he gave it over to me. And he says and I'm trusting you with this responsibility. This is what I need from you. I will do everything else, but this I need from you. You're the only one who can do it." I can't betray this. The stakes are too high. The responsibility is too deep. The grandeur is too profound. And as for Salome, he says he's trying to convince her, too. He hopes to help her understand. And he even adds that the sages say that she actually did it for the sake of heaven. She wanted to be with him for the sake of heaven. And he says, "Maybe after this conversation, there was something in her that was triggered that she wanted to be with him because she realized how how righteous she was, even though it didn't begin that way. And ultimately, he would end up being with her daughter. He would marry her daughter. So, my deepest friends, at this time of Hanukkah, we recall that even though we don't master the world, we're not masters of the world, but we are the partners of God in repairing the world. We are the partners of God in the work of creation. We are empowered and invigorated to make a difference. Every single day, you can choose to say, "I will become a source of light, of love, of hope, of healing, of truth, of inspiration." Thank you. Happy Hanukkah.