“A Matter of Spiritual Importance,” Rabbi Elaine Zecher’s Shabbat Awakenings

December 26, 2025 | 6 Tevet 5786

Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection, as we make our way toward Shabbat. You can also listen to it as a podcast.

Though we are almost a week past Chanukah, its light remains with us. On the very day we lit all the candles on the chanukiyah on the darkest day of the year, the light of the sun turned toward growing in its presence for the next six months.

We should not take this confluence of events as a matter of fact, but rather as a matter of spiritual importance.

Light makes small progress each day. We learned this from Chanukah with the way we add light with a new candle each night rather than take a candle away. These holy lights, as our Chanukah special prayer instructs us, “these lights are holy” and so they are. Holiness means distinguished, set apart, differentiated. As the light grew stronger last week in what felt like extraordinary darkness, their appearance and our opportunity to light them lifted us.

As I have already shared, on one of the nights of the holiday, I attended a street fair (in a warmer place than home). There was a communal lighting of the candles of Chanukah. Though we stood out in public, open and exposed, and was ever mindful of potential danger, the joyous voices singing the blessings filled me with light and hope. We might have been strangers to one another but the familiarity of the ritual and the songs we sang wove a beautiful thread of holiness between us and among us.

We may still be in the midst of darkness, yet holiness still weaves its way around us, slowly and surely, the light gets stronger and so can we. Being in community, celebrating Shabbat, learning, praying, singing, engaging in lovingkindness, sharing gifts and experiencing joy together are the ways we bring light into our lives. In these days, let’s not underestimate the importance of the way the light of holiness goes and grows into our lives.

Feel its warmth as it surrounds you into the new year.

Shabbat Shalom! שבת שלום

I welcome your thoughts and experiences here.

Rabbi Elaine Zecher