Hanukkah at the Roots: 8 Nights Healing Today’s Crises At Their Spiritual Root

by Rabbi Nate DeGroot

Tomorrow night at sundown begins Hanukkah, a festival of kindled lights, sacred resistance, and unexpected miracles. A holiday that beckons us back to source. A holiday that we at The Shalom Center invite you to join us for, right here in your email, over the next eight days.

Even before October 7th, many of us were feeling a heightened sense of super-crisis, a sense that has tragically only multiplied over the last two months. From horrific war to climate catastrophe, White Supremacy to rampant patriarchy, anti-Trans hate, callous economic exploitation, and democracy in peril, the challenges, heartache, and violence we face are enormous.

How can we possibly aim to adequately address each of these separate challenges that overwhelm and exhaust even the most ardent amongst us? Perhaps by turning to a central image of Hanukkah, the menorah, for inspiration.

If you’ve ever seen a Hanukkah menorah (like the one pictured below), you’ll know that it has nine branches stemming from a single base (like the "menorah tree" described by prophet Zecharia and elucidated by Reb Arthur).

Part of what The Shalom Center is betting on in our work ahead — and part of what keeps the spark alive for us — is an understanding that like the branches of the menorah, each of these crises shares a common root. To the extent that we’re able to heal that root, we just might be able to heal the crises that stem from it.

Now we can and should try to advocate and legislate our way to reduced harm across each of the separate issues. And we will. But if the individual crises we face are symptoms of a root spiritual crisis — like menorah branches connected to a single base — until or unless we address their common source, the symptom-crises will continue to transmute, seizing power and causing harm to us and our loved ones by any means necessary.

To actually heal the symptoms will require transforming the menorah’s base. We will need a sustained and concerted effort on the level of spirit — collective structural change to the architecture of the soul — so that the desire or willingness to harm for profit or power is replaced with an unflagging impulse for dignity and a full-hearted and non-negotiable standard of wholeness. Truly, we believe nothing else will do.

That’s why this Hanukkah, we’ve asked some of our most trusted colleagues and esteemed collaborators to share their wisdom on how to heal and transform the root spiritual crisis underlying some of today’s most pressing issues.

For each night of Hanukkah, they will address the crisis itself, share what it might look like to heal the roots of that crisis, offer a related and meaningful resource for you to read, watch, or listen to, and provide one action for you to take to help be part of the change. Plus, we’ll include an original kavannah/intention from Reb Arthur to accompany your candle lighting each night, and his translations of the blessings to say when lighting the menorah.

We hope this will be a meaningful companion for your Hanukkah observance this year, as we seek to collectively heal the world around us from the root.

With blessings,

— Rabbi Nate