On the third night of Chanukah, I sat in our living room in front of our menorah, placed right up against our large picture window. It’s where we light every year, as our tradition calls for: we publicize this miracle. We want the world to see our small but mighty lights. Small and mighty, like us.
Each year, we open the shutters wide and turn our club chairs around so we can bask in the glow of our menorah’s lights, talking and watching occasional passersby in the night. For the past few years, I’ve felt increasingly vulnerable during Chanukah. Here we are, so exposed as Jews during another wave of rising hatred and violence against us. In too many places it is no longer safe to be publicly Jewish: London. Sydney. Paris. The list is long and getting longer. But here, in Pico-Robertson, pride still overrides fear. On many neighborhood lawns there were huge, delightful inflatable Chanukah displays: Chabad-sized menorahs. Ten-foot smiling bears with sunglasses, cradling multicolored dreidels.
That night, despite those feelings of vulnerability, I felt supported by the quiet burning wicks. They burned steadily, with no flickering, confident and reassuring. Suddenly there was a knock on the door. I assumed it was someone asking for tzedakah. Those knocks can be insistent and demanding, though women’s knocks are often more tentative. This knock was cooly assertive, and because it was Chanukah I didn’t even peek out to see who was standing there, but threw the door open wide.
On my porch stood a small elderly woman, her hair under a dingy gray ski cap. She wore black sneakers, a black skirt and tights, gray and white striped shirt with a dull white scarf, and a black jacket. She carried a plastic grocery bag. “Chanukah sameach!” she greeted me, smiling broadly and pointing to my menorah. She did not launch into a tale of financial distress. Instead, in a rapid Hebrew-English, she urged me to read Tehillim (Psalm) 91 seven times while sitting in front of the lights.
“Then, after seven times, mamash, you ask God for anything you want! We don’t need to worry about anything, because He is in charge!” Here she pointed upward so the pronoun reference was clear. “All this trouble, we don’t have to worry about it. Soon, it will be time for Mashiach! The final redemption!”
I’ve met many Israeli women like this before, women who knock on my door in humbling need, yet still filled with a faith and gratitude so profound that the cynic in me wonders if they are emotionally stable, or just living on a plane of spiritual connection I can only dream of. She had an otherworldly quality, and I wondered: could this be an angel on a mission to offer reassurance during this post-Bondi Beach Chanukah?
I welcomed her inside, where she declined an offer of something to drink. She was anxious about my reading the verses of Tehillim 91, so I opened a volume and we looked at it together. Its theme is faith and protection, promising those who make God their refuge will be shielded from violence and disaster. The promises to the faithful extend to one day seeing “the retribution of the wicked.” (I don’t know about you, but I am so ready for this.) It closes with another uplifting pledge of long life and salvation.
“Just seven times!” she urged, as she finished reading it aloud. “It’s not so long!” I was fascinated by this mysterious little sprite and wondered, why had she landed on my doorstep? What was it about this psalm that I needed to absorb at this time? She seemed to want to stay longer, but I knew if I didn’t gently see her out, I wouldn’t have time to recite the psalm even twice, let alone seven times. I gave her more cash than I usually give, though she had not asked for money, and escorted her to the door. She disappeared into the night.
I sat down again while the wicks still burned, reading the psalm a few times with focused intent. My mystery guest, whoever she was, had added light and blessings to our home at a time when our task was to elevate joy and faith over fear and pain.
Judy Gruen is the author of the memoir “Bylines and Blessings” and several other books, as well as a writing coach and editor. www.judygruen.com
