Owning the Light You're Given: Hanukkah (Podcast)

Jewish Geography

This episode of the Jewish Geography podcast is a, uhh, encore performance (AKA a rerun) of one of my favorite pieces we've done. It's Daniella reading a post from her amazing blog, Letters to Josep. FOLLOW THIS LINK to read the original or listen to the original podcast in which it aired. This catches the essence of it for me: "The light was the essence of the Jewish people, which has survived a hundred times as long as it should have, which has refused to be extinguished despite the sound and fury of hundreds of cultures that swept the world, only to fade over time. But our light never faded. It burned, and burned, and burned. And in the midst of it all, the Torah is the “candle for our feet, the light to our path” (to slightly paraphrase Psalms 119:105), whispering in our ears the truth that God spoke to us at Mount Sinai. The Torah is the pillar of fire that continues to lead us through the desert to the Promised Land.

And as more and more Jews see no reason to hold on to the faith of their ancestors, and their children and grandchildren lose all connection to that past, it is more important than ever to emphasize this message of Chanukah. There is something special about you and the people you come from. Something that God gave you, making you who you are and giving you the unique mission only you can complete. That is your light. Own it."

Credits

Thank you to bensound.com for providing the music playing in the background during parts of the podcast as well as tristan-lohengrin for his, ‘jingle-02’, plasterbrain for his, ‘podcast-jingle,’ and mansardian for his, ‘news jingle,’ all shared freely on freesound.org. Also thank you to Dan Foster for sharing his version of ‘Hatikva – The Hope’.