Darkest Night
On the darkest dark night of winter, one small light marks the start of the festival.
This darkest night is the longest night, too. In winter, in Maine, daylight can last maybe eight hours—if you’re lucky. And as the moon of the month of Kislev wanes from quarter, to sliver, to new, the Chanukah festival begins.
The first night is marked by blessings and the lighting of the first candle. The first blessing on this and every night of Chanukah praises God, or Adonai, or Creator, or the Spirit, who makes us holy by commanding or obligating us to kindle this light of Chanukah. The second blessing goes on to praise the one who performed miracles for our ancestors in their days at this season.
And on the first night, like on first nights of other festivals, an added blessing is offered, the Shechecheyanu, which praises God for granting life, sustaining us, and enabling us to reach this moment.
The addition of one light each night—one candle, one ner—the darkest nights are made brighter. Indeed, the light increases. A symbol and ritual of hope.
There is something physical about the experience of lighting Chanukah candles. By necessity, the family stands close to each other, so that each of us may reach and light their shamash “helper” candle first and, following the blessings, light the night’s candles in each of our respective menorahs. This is one time, more than any time or place throughout the year, when donning my identity of Jewish Mama, I make sure everyone’s head is covered with a kippah.
There is a basket in a small cabinet in the living room where we store kippot. Sometimes the collection grows large, overflowing, unruly, and then I will sort and sift to make a reasonable assortment again. Some are interesting, others meaningful, many beautiful, or gifts, remembrances of a family wedding, or a bar or bat mitzvah.
I have always particularly favored our Bukharian kippot. The Bukharian Jews of central Asia, now heavily transplanted to Queens, NY, create a distinctive style of kippah that is immediately identifiable in shape and design with ornate embroidered decorations. There was a time when the four of us each had our own Bukharian kippah. The kids outgrew theirs. But for many years, David’s Bukharian kippah was his favorite, his “go-to.”
In the later years, his taste and choice of kippah grew simpler. But not just simpler, really the simplest. The most minimal. The kind that fills and has filled the bins in synagogues for generations. Black. Single layer. A mere wisp of weightless cloth to cover one’s head.
I sometimes wonder if that was a portent of his leaving us, leaving our family, our family tradition, the one where he must have so often felt the outsider.
At Chanukah, he would alternate, along with the kids, between earnest participation, sarcastic eye rolling, borderline pyromania, and worst of all—just there to appease and please me.
I don't know why “just to please Mama” should be the least valued. I suppose we want to pass along our traditions, and “success” is measured by the next generation fully embracing and practicing as we do. But perhaps “success” really is the act of doing things in order to please; whether it be your mother, father, sibling, or someone else.
On the other side of the French doors to the dining room, the food, the gifts, the singing, the spinning dreidel game, everything else awaits.
We are close, we are four close together. Each holding one lit candle, over the small table by the window. Lined with aluminum foil, always aluminum foil. Each shamash in hand flickering, struggling. In each flame, there is the potential for great light, as well as devastating destruction.
That closeness, nearness, proximity. A fleeting brush on the back or more deliberate hand on a child’s head or shoulder. Our voices, Baruch atah Adonai. We watch the light, as the ancient Rabbis instructed. We neither read by it, nor create other light. But simply gaze, look at, and observe. We bask in that glow. When the intimacy of the lighting of the chanukiahs and the brightening of the darkness is complete, we are enveloped by the quiet of the room around us. The quieting of the surrounding world.
*
When four became three, when David’s life ceased, with no preparation, abruptly severed from us and our number reduced, a darkness filled the space where a person once stood. The darkness now increased, instead of the light. The absence, David’s absence, was a painful reminder. And not only a mental reminder, but a physical, muscle, deep in my gut memory. Like a phantom limb.
The pain and sadness and emptiness and growing darkness of the first night on that first Chanukah was stronger and more penetrating than I had anticipated. If a passerby had glanced in the window that night the looks on our candle-lit faces would have been of shock, confusion, and fear.
So for our grieving family, to endure this ritual for seven more nights was too much to bear. We did not observe the other nights of Chanukah that first year.
As one year, two years, three years have come to pass, we have once again joined together, three where there once were four. Our rituals remain, we choose kippot from the basket, the meal and gifts and songs await in the next room. We stand close together and light and bless and gaze. My hand gently grazes the backs of my now adult children. And what of that dark space? I struggle with whether the space is empty or full. But of one thing I am certain; the dark space remains, and we hold this space as it holds us.
-Joy E. Krinsky
Joy E. Krinsky began writing in the summer of 2019, with the obituary, and later eulogy, for her husband. Since that time, she has studied healing through writing, and is currently working on a memoir, Every Little Thing. Her essay "Sacred Text" was published on July 25, 2023 on HerStry as one of the Women of Faith essays. Her memoir is described here: Following the suicide of her husband, Joy E. Krinsky embarks on a journey of self exploration and discovery. Grief is now a kaleidoscope lens through which she experiences the world. Room by room, season by season, family relations, the everyday items that make a life that has been abruptly shaken up and shifted. Through this collection of essays, she invites us on this journey, recovering the past, creating the future, and discovering the richness of the present. Joy E. Krinsky lives in Portland, Maine.