Leslie Gordon's Chanukah Message for 2025

Every Sunday school child is taught the basics of the Hanukkah story, celebrating the victory of the Jewish freedom fighters the Maccabees, who forced the Syrian-Greeks from the Holy Land and restored the Temple service. A small bottle of oil, only enough to fuel the Temple menorah for a day, miraculously burned for eight instead.

The Hanukkah story is the ultimate illustration of how light can conquer darkness. The Jewish people, of course, know this equation well, recurring as it does throughout the pages of our brave history.

The light of hope was resilient even during one of modern civilization’s darkest chapters, the Holocaust.

“I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us, too,” Anne Frank, 13, wrote in her diary in 1944 while hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam. “I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return.”

This year, at the 60th Annual Community-wide Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) Commemoration at Greenwood Cemetery, I heard echoes of that mix of foreboding and optimism in speeches by eight Holocaust survivors. Even those too fragile to stand gave strong voice to the light in response to the dark face of reemerging antisemitism.

“It isn’t easy to be a survivor but it’s a great joy being able to be one,” said Czechoslovakia-born Ilse Reiner, “because it means you survived, you’re alive, and that’s the greatest gift.”

Light isn’t limited to Holocaust survivors, of course. Other Jews feel it, too. Atlanta actress Galen Crawley shared in a recent ArtsATL story that the Alliance Theatre-Atlanta Opera fall coproduction of “Fiddler on the Roof,” in which she appeared, “closely mirrors” the story of her mother’s family.

Performing in the play, she said, made her “reflect on the lessons of Yiddishkeit and the need for Jews to foster vibrant, joyful communities wherever we live in the world. Where I am, I belong. L’chaim!”

For Hanukkah 5786 in Atlanta, I second that “l’chaim” — cheers to rejuvenating light, an essential part of our Jewish story!

Leslie Gordon is Executive Director of The Breman.