Tonight I did a free writing class for Chanukah from Yocheved Rottenberg of Write Your Way Home. (I’m sure if you contact her through the site, she’d send it to you). The following is what I wrote for one of the exercises, a Captured Moment from a Chanukah gone by.
I walk across the expansive dining room to the scaffolding at the far end that holds our dozens of menorahs. I select candles for Chanukah night number three from the box of colorful wax candles I bought in Geulah for 10 shekel, along with a classic brass menorah. This is the first menorah that’s truly mine, purchased by me and no one else, and this feels authentic and grown-up and extra-holy, like it’s the first time I’m doing the mitzvah for real. On either side of me are dozens of students from campus, from all walks of life, lighting menorahs big and small, many brass with candles like mine, others more ornate, many even lit with oil and wicks.
I say the tefillah before lighting the menorah. I want to do the mitzvah all the way, with all the preparations, with all the kavanos. I know that this mitzvah is connected to ruchniyus, to the ohr of Torah, to purifying the seichel, and I am in Eretz Yisroel, in Yerushalayim, immersed in a higher level of Torah learning than anything I have ever encountered, and my neshama is dancing like a flame.
Around me, girls and women are making the brachos out loud, answering amen to each other’s brachos, breaking out in Maoz Tzur and Chasof Zeroa and V’zakeini L’gadel.
Nearby I hear one girl say to another, “My teacher told us today that when you gaze into the flames of the menorah, they clean away anything impure that you have seen.”
I call my friend in another seminary. I tell her what I heard. We are both crying. She tells me she is coming up the hill to visit.
We stand side by side and gaze into the light of the menorah.
Our neshamos are dancing.
