Peter Yarrow’s “Light One Candle,” with pictures from Temple Beth Shira in Boca Raton Florida (for email readers, the video is here).
Light one candle for the Maccabee children
With thanks that their light didn't die
Light one candle for the pain they endured
When their right to exist was denied
Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice
Justice and freedom demand
But light one candle for the wisdom to know
When the peacemaker's time is at hand
[Chorus:] Don't let the light go out! It's lasted for so many years!
Don't let the light go out! Let it shine through our love and our tears.
And then read Naomi Regan’s “Religious and Secular, We are the Maccabees”:
Every single Jew living in the land of Israel is a modern day Maccabee. Every Jew who has dared to wrench this re-born homeland from a callous world that would deny us Jews our birthright, while championing the birthrights of every other native people in the world –Tibetans, and Palestinians, and South African Blacks– is a Maccabee. . . With every candle we light – whether we are religious or secular – we celebrate those things that hold us together as a nation: our history and our culture and our faith.
We celebrate that these things have not been erased from the world, and are not now relics behind the glass cases of museum exhibits like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, and Sumerians. With every light in our window shining out against the dark night we proclaim: We are still here and our very existence is a stunning victory of the weak against the strong, the few against the many, the just, who love and protect life, against the lawless, who have no respect for life. . . .
We remember not only what we are, but who we are: the torch-bearers of the precious value of human life. Our agony as a nation over the life of one of its precious sons, our willingness to release those who have murdered us without pity so that that son might return to his family and live, that agony unites us as a nation because it goes to the deepest part of our heritage.
No other nation in the world would even consider such a trade. But we do, because . . . we are Jews and Israelis and together we light a candle, secular and religious, against the vast darkness of a hostile world. Because with that candle we proclaim: we are a unique people, and we are here to stay.