Download the PDF of the reader here or at the bottom of the post.

Last year, Chanukkah was the first holiday we marked following October
7th and amidst the genocide in Gaza. There was a sense of dread leading
up to it — how would this holiday, which Zionism had already so avidly
seized as a celebration of militarism and Jewish chauvinism, be marked by
a traumatized, vengeful community while Israel decimates Gaza?

We saw Jewish communities from across the political spectrum each mark
the first holiday after October 7 in their own way. Horrifically, Chabad
erected a menorah amidst the bombed ruins in Gaza city. Far right activists
attempted to hold a “Maccabi March” to assert control over the Temple
Mount. Organizations around the globe raised money for the Israeli army
with nightly candle lightings, turning a mitzvah into a ritual of uncritical
nationalist commitment.

On the left, we rallied with Chanukkah for ceasefire events, blocking
bridges and protesting the ongoing massacres. All That’s Left produced a
reader titled “Rededication,” after the meaning of “Chanukkah” itself—
chanukat habayit, rededication of the temple after it was profaned. There
are so many holy things made rotten by this poisonous ethnonationalism,
so much that needs to be sanctified—a year ago, we asked, “How do we
rededicate, reconstruct a Torah and a lived Judaism that is liberatory and
life-giving, not oppressive and death-wielding?”

This remains a vital question a year later, but also—it is a year later. A year
ago, it felt impossible to imagine that this slaughter could continue much
longer, at such horrific scale; but a year later, we mark Chanukkah while
Israel continues to commit genocide in Gaza, and it feels like a brutally
cyclical downward spiral. Sheikh Khaled Nabhan became widely known
last year when, in November 2023, his granddaughter Reem was killed,
and a video circulated of him kissing her eyelids, calling her “soul of my
soul.” Nabhan was killed on December 16, 2024, in a strike on the Nuseirat
refugee camp.

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers sing “Haneirot Halalu” andwrite, “The festival of Chanukkah is almost here!” while setting Gazan homes on fire.

The death and destruction are so immense it rends the heart trying to
grasp them; the moral rot of this mindless, cruel militarism goes so deep. A
line near the very end of Ma’oz Tzur feels awfully resonant:

כי ארכה לנו השעה ואין קיץ לימי הרעה

The time keeps lengthening for us, and there is no end to the terrible days.
In this moment, deliverance feels impossibly far; it’s easy to feel like Adam
HaRishon in the midrash before the winter solstice, watching the days
continue to shorten and wondering if the world is drifting away with them.4
But the world is still here with us, however shattered. The line from Ma’oz
Tzur, curiously, has two girsaot—one that reads שעה, hour/time, and another
that reads ישועה, i.e.: the redemption is delayed. This verse holds two
truths: it feels that there is no end to the terrible days; and the redemption
is impossibly delayed, but existent. The opportunity for rededication and
rebirth may feel far away—the hour long, and still lengthening—and it is,
nonetheless, our obligation to strive towards it. Fred Moten, radical theorist
and poet, writes: “I believe in the world and want to be in it. I want to be
in it all the way to the end of it because I believe in another world and I
want to be in that.”

This time of horror stretches long; but the pieces in this reader offer some
Torah on how to frankly assess the wreckage; how to be in this broken
world; and how to envision that other world we wish to be in. There will
be an end to the awful days, even if that end feels impossibly far. It is our
job to hasten it.

The ATL x Halachic Left reader features ten essays for these times. Check it out: