December 29, 2024
The Miracle of the Light
Winston Churchill wasn’t Jewish. But he understood, from the burning bush to the Maccabees to the modern state of Israel, the meaning of the flame.
By Rabbi Meir Soloveichik
In darker times we look for light.
Among Jewish images of illumination there are few more inspiring than one taken in the German city of Kiel in 1931. Akiva Posner, rabbi of the Jewish community in Kiel, had set up his menorah on the windowsill on the eighth night of Hanukkah. Before the sun set, before the ceremony began, his wife, Rachel, saw that the menorah was facing, across the street, a symbol of a very different kind: an enormous swastika hung by local Nazis.
