Rabbi’s Message, December 23, 2025
Happy Winter Break! This is a version of the sermon that I gave on Friday night; I would love to see you at our next Shabbat gathering!
It was a joy to celebrate Hanukkah with our communities this past week; however I want to acknowledge that the welcoming of Hanukkah this year has been fraught with grief, and that the choice to exercise the courage that it takes to wrestle with our peoplehood and still choose joy and peace has not been a simple one. And, in response, as with so many moments that I find confusing or upsetting, I love to re-root myself in the beauty and complexity of our past — not to escape the present, but to steady myself in it — to see if there is wisdom to harvest there for us in our time.
Many years ago, Queen Salome Alexandra – the queen of the Hasmonean dynasty, established by the Maccabees, who we celebrate at Hanukkah – stood at her beloved husband’s bedside. Israel was in the midst of war, and they stood at the edge of the next great battle. As Josephus, the Jewish-Roman Empirical Historian records in his book Antiquities: when she learned that he was dying in the midst of all of this strife, “She came to him weeping and lamenting … and said to him, ‘To whom do you thus leave me and my children…?’” (1) And “So he gave her the following advice… that she should conceal his death from the soldiers until she captured that fortress. After this, she should go triumphantly and victoriously to Jerusalem and put some of her authority into the hands of the Pharisees; for they would commend her for the honor she had done them…” (2)
And so, in 76 BCE, Queen Salome Alexandra’s reign began in war and in secret, amidst massive external conflict, and equally intense internal conflict between the Sadducees — aligned with priestly power — and the Pharisees, who represented the intellectual and spiritual stream that eventually gave birth to the rabbinic tradition.
Josephus records that upon taking the crown, Queen Salome acted swiftly to de-escalate the violence that had scarred the land. Where war had been her husband’s legacy, she restored peace by reintegrating those who had been alienated, especially the sages and the Pharisees — whose voices had been suppressed under previous leadership. The Pharisees, whom Josephus describes as esteemed for their attention to law and devotion to tradition, became central to the administration of justice and public life under her guidance.
She appointed her son Hyrcanus II as High Priest, head of the Sadducees, placing the spiritual and legal authority of the land firmly in the hands of those devoted to study, justice, and Torah tradition, as best she could. The Sanhedrin — once a fractured assembly — was reorganized and empowered. In doing so, Queen Salome fostered a shared focus on what was just and what was whole. Her Hebrew name found in rabbinic literature, Shelamziyyon, means “Peace of Zion,” a name that subtly reveals her mission: not domination, but settlement; not victory, but wholeness. (3)
Over two thousand years later, we look back not merely on her political reforms, but on what they invite us to see: that leadership, especially in times of fissure, is not only about who wins, but about how we return and re-dedicate ourselves to a shared table; how do we repair what has happened and rebuild shalom bayit — peace in the home, peace in the community, peace in our hearts.
The very word Hanukkah — from the Hebrew ḥanukkah — means “dedication.” It recalls how, in 164 BCE, after years of Hellenistic oppression and desecration of the Holy Temple, the Maccabees returned to Jerusalem and rededicated the sacred altar. (4) They did not throw it out or destroy it to rebuild from scratch, as can be so tempting sometimes. Rather, the Maccabees – the founders of the Hasmonean Dynasty – chose repair and rededication.
But what does “rededication” really do in our lives? How does the ritual work of rededication impact us? Modern psychology helps deepen our understanding of ritual: rituals are not just actions done, but embodied emotional frameworks that regulate our hearts and souls, anchor meaning across generations, and connect individuals across time and place. They offer predictability in an unpredictable world, calming anxiety, reaffirming group identity, and transforming memory into embodied practice. (5)
In our menorah lighting over the past holiday, notice how each candle adds light. Each night’s candle is not simply a repetition of the last, but an incremental recommitment: to memory, to hope, and to collective life. We rededicate ourselves year after year — not because we are static people with a single moment of ease and perfection, but because, as dynamic beings wrestling with life’s hard moments, repeated affirmations root and re-root us in what matters most.
Ritual also does something profound in the human psyche. It helps us regulate our emotional world — especially the parts of our history that are painful or complex — by giving them form, rhythm, and pattern. In lighting candles, in singing songs, in recalling miracles and struggles, we wire those memories into the shapes of meaning. We transform fear into devoted care, fragmentation into belonging, and chaos into shared narrative. (6)
And so we might imagine: Did Queen Salome Alexandra feel this same need for ritual dedication? Surrounded by factions — Sadducee, Pharisee, court intrigue, competing children — she nonetheless focused on repair and renewal, on strengthening the institutions that held the Jewish people together, on revitalizing law, scholarship, and equitable justice. She might not have had the same box of candles to light that looked exactly like ours in her rituals, but her leadership reminds us that Hanukkah – re-dedication – is not only established with oil and candles, but with the daily work of tending our hearts and our spirits, keeping them oriented toward goodness and justice.
As we stood together before Hanukkah’s growing flames, and we entered what Heschel called ‘a palace in time,’ Shabbat, we are grateful for the rituals that connect us to our past and to one another in the present; we are honored to be a part of the continual hanukkah – rededication – that anchors us in our values that outlive a single victory or tragedy; and we appreciate the spark of awe that the holiday lights reflect as we rededicate ourselves to the wisdom and strength of our people, one moment, one choice, one candle at a time.
(1) Josephus, Antiquities XIII, §398–399
(2) Josephus, Antiquities XIII, §400–401
(3) https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/salome-alexandra/
(4) https://www.history.com/articles/hanukkah
(5) https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/jschroeder/Publications/Hobson%20et%20al%20Psychology%20of%20Rituals.pdf
(6) https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/jschroeder/Publications/Hobson%20et%20al%20Psychology%20of%20Rituals.pdf
