The
Baal Shem Tov, or Besht — the founder of Chasidism —
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Banu Choshekh L'kadesh: We come to sanctify the dark! |
Download alternative Ba'nu Choshekh here, four to a page!
Some years ago, I heard the song Ba'nu Choshekh for the first time at the Chanukah concert of my son's Jewish day school. This was a school with a fair number of Jews of color. I was pretty shocked to hear, "Begone Blackness!" The lyrics of Ba'nu Choshekh promulgate an idea of light vs. dark that has had horrifying repercussions throughout history. Here's a translation of the whole short song:
We come to banish darkness, in our hands light and fire. Each one of us a little light, but all together we are a mighty light. Get away darkness, begone black, flee before the light! I know that no one who loves the song today or in the past – certainly not the Yemenite composer, Sara Levi-Tanai – sings it with racist intentions. But structural racism is mostly not based on intentions. There's more to criticize in the song, as I discovered when I got a telescope and started doing amateur astronomy. So many people in the developed world can hardly see the stars, certainly not to the awe-inspiring depth that is revealed when one can see the Milky Way. The next year, I got involved in a campaign to stop the installation of LED street lights in Northampton that have sadly dimmed our view of the stars. That gave me three reasons to reject the imagery of Ba'nu Choshekh. Fundamentally, the idea that somehow we are trying to defeat the dark on Chanukah is foolish. Darkness is essential to the warp and weave of this world, as much as light. In fact, the halakhah agrees: Chanukah candles are not kosher if their flames come together "like a torch" – they must be separated by darkness in order to fulfill the mitzvah. That is not an idle or meaningless rule. As I wrote, "No one sits in front of the menorah thinking, 'I can’t wait for these candles to grow so bright that there’s no more darkness.' Darkness is the condition that makes the candles beautiful and sweet." We are planting seeds of light with the small flames of our lit wicks, seeds that grow in the soil of darkness. People have written a few new versions of Ba'nu Choshekh in response to these problems. I like my full rewrite best, but I'll share three versions here. The second one, from Rabbi Jill Hammer, is especially useful because it only changes four words. I have also laid out the first two, four to a sheet, in PDF format, so you can easily download, print, and share them. (They also match up back-to-back, if you want to teach both versions.)
2) The next one, from Rabbi Jill Hammer with a tweak from me, transforms the meaning with only slight changes to the wording:
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