Starting 2017 Ready to Fight

We Can’t Sit Around Waiting for Someone Else to Save Us

There’s an Old Wives’ Tale that on the last night of Hanukkah, if all of the candles burn out at the same time, the rising smoke will be strong enough to carry a wish up to heaven. It has to be all of the candles at once – any fewer and the wish will be too heavy.

For decades now I’ve sat and watched the candles burn low on the eighth night, waiting to see if the legend is true. I’ve tried all kinds of different candles and even varied the color selections in hopes of making it more likely to work. And even though it’s never happened, year after year, when the final night comes and the candles reach their end, I still find myself sitting and watching, wondering if this will be the year. Maybe this time it will be.

My candles didn’t burn out all at once last night, but as I was watching them melt, I remembered one of the central themes of the Hanukkah story. 

Hanukkah comemorates a very bloody insurgency and a fight for religious freedom. The Greco-Syrians conqured the land of Israel around the second century B.C.E. (before the common era, or, what non-Jews call “B.C.”) and outlawed any form of Jewish religious ritual or observance. They also ransacked and profaned the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, converting it into a temple for pagan sacrifice and worship. 

Eventually a small band of Jews (the Maccabees) rose up and fought back against the Greco-Syrians. Rather than listen to many of their neighbors who had assimilated into Hellenist practices, they took matters into their own hands and took back their land and their holy sites. They cleaned and rededicated the Temple and brought back the Jewish ritual practices that had been banned. (“Hanukkah”, by the way, means “dedication.)

Hanukkah ends tonight at sunset, but I’m taking its central lesson with me into 2017: We can’t sit around waiting for someone else to save us. Like the Maccabees, we’re going to have to do it ourselves. There will be plenty of folks who will tell us we’ll be safest if we just keep our heads down and go with the flow – and for some folks, that will be their best way to get through the next four years.

But for the rest of us? We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. The story of Hanukkah teaches us that any group – no matter how small – can make a huge and lasting impact, as long as they try hard enough and never give up. To be sure, it took a few years and there were set backs and losses and all kinds of things that could have been enough to derail their efforts. That didn’t matter, though. They knew what they were fighting for and they didn’t stop until they achieved it. 

The next four years are going to be rough for many of us – that much is clear. We also know that no one is going to come save us. We don’t have the luxury of hoping all of the candles burn out at once. 

I’m heading into 2017 ready to battle for my rights, for the rights of my friends and family, and for the rights of those who are more vulnerable than I. I’m going to follow the example of the Maccabees and keep going, no matter how hard, no matter how many set backs, and no matter how daunting. 

I’m not going to stop hoping that all of my candles burn out at once one of these years, but I’ll balance my hope with the knowledge that we control our own destiny, and that we don’t have the luxury of waiting for a miracle.

Happy new year, y’all. 

  

Robbie Medwed is an Atlanta-based LGBTQ activist, writer, and educator. Follow him on Twitter: @rjmedwed

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Image by Robbie Medwed