Candle power

Hanukka lingered longer than 2005, which was fitting. The year just past was notable for its disasters and setbacks, human misery matched with human incompetence. The quirks of the Jewish calendar ensured that the thin rays of hope kindled in the Gregorian year 2005 would continue to shine into the year just beginning.

One of those rays was recently spotted in Israel, which will remember 2005 as the wrenching year of Disengagement. In response to the deep divides that opened up between Israel’s mostly secular majority and a minority that includes most of its Orthodox citizens, the Orthodox Union recently reinvigorated its outreach efforts to non-religious Israelis. “The destruction of the Jewish communities of Gush Katif and northern Samaria this past summer served as a wake-up call for many in the religious Zionist public,” Israel Outreach project manager Meir Schwartz told the news service Arutz 7. “People realized after the Disengagement that if we want to connect to the Israeli public, we need to do more than face the challenge of settling the Land. We need to reach their hearts through increasing our outreach efforts.”

Schwartz teaches religious Israeli students and adults how to dialogue with secular Israelis and runs a series of “Beyit Yehudi” drop-in centers. During Hanukka, hundreds of religious volunteers visited Israeli homes to light candles together with their secular residents and teach the meaning of the holiday.

As it turned out, the learning went in both directions. Volunteers “armed” with menoras and candles were surprised to discover that non-religious Israelis were already celebrating Hanukka without them — defying caricatures of know-nothing secularists. “What we added was a religious perspective to a seemingly secularized holiday,” said Schwartz. “We found that people in the State of Israel are happy to keep commandments that are not forced upon them…. The truth is that deep inside of the secular Israeli is a Jewish soul guiding him to continue lighting Hanukka candles.”

Critics may carp that the program’s intent was more self-interested than ecumenical. Let them. The meetings held out, and apparently delivered on, the promise that each side would be changed by the encounter. And it’s heartening that Arutz 7, a right-wing site with little patience for what it considers the “other” Israel, would give the story such prominence. In hundreds of Israeli homes, Jews bridged their differences, shedding a sweet light during a dark period.

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