Chanukah 2025: Eight Lights for Rights

Chanukah 2025: this year, we kindle eight lights for rights.

The Jewish holiday of Chanukah (December 14 – 22, 2025) suffers from its proximity to Christmas. Chanukah’s relevance gets lost in the glitter.

The story of Chanukah, told in four Books of the Maccabees, is not part of the Jewish canon. It is found in the Apocrypha; a harsh and militant story of resistance to the Greek Seleucid Empire’s occupation of Palestine. The text is bloody with the torture which enforced decades of occupation.

Upon liberating the land in 164 BCE, the victorious fighters re-consecrate the Second Temple. A miracle sits at the heart of the holiday story, as the temple lights burnt unnaturally long. The flame of resistance was seen not to be extinguished. 2189 years later, we continue to honour that unquenchable spirit by lighting eight Chanukah candles.

As with all of our ancient texts, threads of history are wrapped in emotive and interpretive gloss. Rather than being mired in the grudges or licensed by the exultations, we are tasked with drawing out today’s meanings. How do we honour the spirit of Chanukah today?

We do not honour it in the mindset of warfare. Chanukah marks the end of imperial rule by occupation. Chanukah is not the act of an occupied people; it is the first act of their self-determination. It commemorates that moment when resistance can give way to reconstruction—and therefore, it signifies the questions of vision and potential.

To celebrate Chanukah this year we ask, what are the lights that burn so stubbornly now? In these days of ceaseless occupation and genocide, what is the vision for which we hold out?

In Aotearoa, in Palestine and in places between, this year Alternative Jewish Voices will kindle eight lights for the rights that delineate our vision. We mark the day with those who still struggle for lives of dignity through resistance, charitable commitment, steady mahi and aroha. Human rights are universal, disastrously absent under occupation and ongoing genocide in Palestine—and also waiting for our action right here.

The eight Chanukah candles are lit by a ninth shamash candle. Shamash means service / ratonga, and service is leadership. With the shamash candle we acknowledge all those who make common cause with people who seek dignified lives of equal value. Each night, the Shamash / Pononga lights one more candle:

• one candle for Turanga waewae: a place to stand with ancestral rights; a place where one belongs, moves freely and exercises self-determination.

Mana motuhake.

• one candle for the right to shelter: a private, warm, dry, affordable home, owned or rented.

 Tika ki te Whai Whare Rawaka: he kāinga motuhake,

mahana, maroke, utu utu; nō ratou, rīhitia ranei.  Whakaruruhau

• one candle for the right to sufficient, nutritious food of one’s choosing and access to clean, sufficient water for consumption and use.

Te tika ki te ranea, ki te kai pai mā te tangata e whiriwhiri

me te whai wāhi ki te wai mā, e tika ana mō te kai me te whakamahi.

• one candle for the right to health and treatment of medical, emotional and dental needs.

Tika ki te Whai Oranga: Me te maimoatanga o nga matea hauora,

aronganui me ngā matea niho. Whai Oranga.

• one candle for the rights of children to be safe, provided for, educated, loved and valued.

Mokopuna: Te tika kia noho haumaru nga mokopuna, kia whakaratohia,

kia whai mātauranga, kia arohaina, kia whakanuia hoki. 

Kia noho Haumaru ngā tamariki, mokopuna

• one candle for the rights of people with disabilities, including so very many life-changing injuries inflicted by genocide.

 Whaikaha: Tika mō te hunga hauā.

• one candle for the justice and accountability which are the ground of real peace.

Tika ki te Haepapa: Ko te tika ki te haepapa me te kawenga te tuapapa

kia tau ai te maungārongo.

• one candle for a future lived in a healthier relation with this planet; in a society where all people have a stake.

Kia noho kotahi ai tātou katoa a muri ake nei i te aorangi nei:

he hunga whakapānga te katoa i te porihanga whānui. Kotahitanga.

Does it seem like a lot? That is the unquenchable spirit of Chanukah. We wish a visionary holiday to all who work for justice.

Marilyn Garson, Christine Pani and Samuel Kingi for Alternative Jewish Voices