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This week’s Torah portion, Vayeishev, is a juicy one. It’s the one where Joseph takes center stage, sharing his dreams of superiority with his brothers and parading proudly about in his amazing technicolor dream coat. It’s the one where some of his brothers plot to kill him, but cooler heads prevail, and they settle for faking his death and selling him into slavery instead. It’s the one where his master’s wife wants to take a piece of him until, shunned and bitter, she has him thrown into prison under false pretenses. It’s the one where Tamar marries two of Judah’s sons, the second after the death of the first, only to see the second son die and to be denied her levirate right to marry the third. It’s the one where Judah lies to her, promising to call for her when the third comes of age. It’s the one where Tamar tricks Judah into sleeping with her, then reveals her deception, forcing him to admit his responsibility in the whole affair. Hot damn. Where to start?

If you were to plot these stories onto a graph, it would be a rollercoaster of highs and lows, contrasting moments of light (“I had an amazing dream!” “My dad gave me this beautiful coat!” “My boss gave me a promotion and put me in charge of his household!” “I got married!” “I got married again!”) with moments of intense darkness (“My brothers want to kill me!” “My favorite son is dead!” “I’ve been enslaved!” “I’ve been thrown in prison!” “My husbands have both died!” “I broke a promise and slept with someone I should not have!”). While this might make for some dramatic storytelling, I’m guessing that most of us would take a hard pass on these extreme highs and lows for our own personal narrative, perhaps opting for a little more balance in our lives. As I sometimes tell my children, “Save the drama for someone else’s mama!”

For all our best intentions, we don’t always get to choose our ups and downs, our periods of light and darkness. Also, we might find our periods of light tempered by the knowledge that others are steeped in darkness at the same time. In these days leading up to the winter solstice, when periods of sunshine are getting shorter and the physical darkness is at its longest, we enter our celebration of Hanukkah, our festival of lights, often with a mix of emotions, our own combination of highs and lows. On the one hand, we may have bittersweet memories of celebrations past, lower levels of vitamin D, colder temperatures combined with worries about warming icebergs, news items that make our blood boil or our bodies freeze. On the other hand, we may feel warmed by celebrations with family and friends, presents we hope to give and receive, candles that we will light, songs that we will sing, mitzvot that we will undertake to bring light unto others…

One of the beautiful things about candles in the darkness is that they are impossible to hide. If you try to cover them, they will either consume the covering or be put out entirely. As we move through the eight nights of Hanukkah, adding a new candle each night and allowing each to burn completely, our light grows progressively stronger, a symbolic victory of all that is good over all that seeks to extinguish. In the midst of the literal and metaphorical times of darkness in the world, we are affirming our belief in the power of light, in the power of miracles, in our capacity to fight back against all that would obscure and diminish us.

With this in mind, fellow miracle workers, I wish you all a Hanukkah full of light, love, and abundant laughter! And, with any luck, all our mamas will be spared all the dramas in the nights ahead!

Chag Hanukkah Sameach!

Rebecca Abbate