
Today, in the middle of Channukah, I’m thinking about how we engage with the experiences of the people who came before us.
Sometimes there are tales that we hear as our grandmothers stir their soups and sew our buttons, our grandfathers sitting at the head of the seder tables. Sometimes they are woven into our mother’s lullabies or our our father’s prayers in shul. We can learn them in our aunt’s letters and our uncle’s jokes. The storied Judaica we inherent that lives on our shelves. The yellowing sefarim on our bookshelves, passed down to us.
Sometimes they come as whispers, warnings, and hushed tones. Other times they are dramatic calls to action, banners, and signals - given with a demand to heed the messages of the lives they lived.
We make meaning from well-practiced myths that can roll off our tongues, truths that swim in our bloodstreams. Legends that form our world perspectives, where we come from, and where we are going.
So too, the moment we are living in right now. The story of Channukah is echoing so energetically through our celebration of the holiday this year.
The story of a military battle for the sake of holding on to our homeland and the values of our people- - it’s a war that we are living through right now.
A time of challenging odds, of miracles and dedication to the land of Israel and our people- we are living so many parts of that narrative as we speak.
When we find parallelisms in our present from the past we have the opportunity to allow them to educate us, lead us, and guide us to how we want to engage in our current lifetime.
Consider the stories from your own national narratives or family history.
What stories do you connect to?
Where do you hear echoes of the past in your present?
What lessons can you distill from what they experienced?
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