Word Prompt – CANDLES – Pesha Kletenik

When I was a child, every year when the days grew shorter, a small box of Chanukah candles would arrive in the mail. The moment I saw it, I knew: Chanukah was on its way! The box promised warmth, music, the shimmer of miracles.

Candles shouldn’t matter anymore. They belong to another age – like quills and clay stoves, things replaced by convenience. And yet, candles endure. They wait on shelves and windowsills, marking moments no lightbulb can reach. We light them to remember, celebrate, begin, end, and to sanctify.

The Abarbanel teaches that each branch of the menorah represents a kind of wisdom – mathematics, philosophy, art – all leaning toward the shamash, the guiding flame. The shamash gives light and does not diminish, the Torah at the center of all knowledge.

Candles are our people – each one fragile, luminous, bound to another by a single spark. Our schools, our homes, our synagogues – they are wax and wick holding the fire of generations.

In Kfar Azzah, I saw a menorah still standing on a windowsill, its candles unlit, waiting for hands that would not return. I thought of another menorah – Rachel Posner’s, glowing in 1931 against the shadow of a Nazi flag. She wrote on the back of her photo:

“Death to Judah, so the flag says. Judah will live forever, so the light answers.”

And so, it does.

Even now.