On this last, eighth night of Chanuka, I read a blessing written eight years ago by Rabbi Brant Rosen as I lit my candles, seemingly so whole, blazing in strength and solidarity.

“We light these lights
for the instigators and the refusers
the obstinate and unyielding
for the ones who kept marching
the ones who tended the fires
the ones who would not bow down. ...

“These lights we light tonight
will never be used for
any other purpose but to proclaim
the miracle of this truth:
it is not by might nor by cruelty
but by a love that burns relentlessly
that this broken world
will be redeemed.”

Love, of course, won’t stop fascism. The murder of three Kurds in Paris this past Friday, inseparable from the fascism of the Erdogan regime in Turkey, is but the latest cruel example.

Yet smashing fascism demands that we love each other, expansively, whether across their borders, or our beloved identities and cultures.

We need such relentlessly burning love in order to sustain our fight for a world without fascism. We need it to protect and defend each other in ways that reflect the best parts of ourselves and our humanity. And we especially need that love when all seems lost and bleak—feelings that have marked this Hanukkah 5783 for me.

Our rebellious love—which I saw in the blessed flames of my candles this eve—is why we mourn our dead and fight for the living so fiercely, with such heart and chutzpah, even when we’re hurting or weary. And it’s why—when and if that day comes, and only because of our relentless, loving rituals of resistance—we’ll dance joyously together on the grave of fascism. May it be so!

I mouthed Rosen’s blessing tonight as a love letter to my chosen, beloved rebel ancestors, and for all of you beloved rebels, who might need it too, but also to try to make myself feel—or rather trust in—some of the wholeness of my candles, full of fire for the hard, maybe even harder, days ahead.

#WeMustOutliveThem
#RitualAsResistance
#HateFascismLoveYourFriends
#AllChanukkahsAreBeautiful
#Mazeldon
#TryJewishAnarchismForLife

(photos: my brightly colored, night 8 candles with a red-and-black flag on an “antifascist action” sticker; despite our brokenness and all the messiness around us, “love more,” as this tag in white ink on a black utility box suggests, as seen on the streets of Tio’tia:ke/Montreal in June 2022)

For the full Brant Rosen prayer:

https://connectere.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/we-light-these-lights-a-new-hanerot-hallelu-prayer-for-hanukkah-by-rabbi-brant-rosen/

I haven’t seen the moon in ages. Gray days blur into overcast night skies. Instead, I relied on written pages to tell me what I want to trust is out there this Hanukkah eve: the new moon, and thus a new month, Tevet 5783.

That, in turn, meant turning the page on my @radicaljewishcalendar to find the art of my friend @alias_alice, who’s across oceans, but lighting candles under the same moon that’s hard to see and so from the looks of this drawing is relying on books too.

That makes sense. Jews are “people of the book,” and some believe that the book preceded the creation of the world and was written in fire. Books can shape, reimagine, and transform the world, and make new ones. Books can save lives in this one.

Many, many new moons ago, when the pandemic was new, I felt beyond lifeless. Each morning, I woke startled anew, wondering why I was still here, and only wanting to sleep again. And walk, obsessively, for hours. For some reason, one day I tucked a big book of speculative fiction under my arm and set off on foot. I’d never read the genre, and as it was, my broken heart had no ability to read at all. Yet I sat by a lake and somehow got through one chapter. Then another chapter the next day, and so on, until I had something to look forward to, even if I still couldn’t clearly see it. I got lost in trusting the written fire of the other worlds and other moons created in this book.

Perhaps we Jews light candles with such ritual persistence because colonialism, christianization, and capitalism have stolen the moon—our illumination—ripping apart our lunisolar calendar, bloating out the skies with climate catastrophe, letting billionaires like Musk make it their playground. Perhaps we write and read books as our weapon against them, and fiery promise of sacred worlds to and for each other.

So while we have to trust, hopeless as that feels these fascist-gray days, that the moon will reappear, new and maybe even whole, let’s always carry a book of our rebel wisdom and use its fire to the fullest.

Come, watch the moon with me, even if we can only imagine its guiding light, now obscured by all that pains us.

(photos: my night 7 candles in front of a drawing of a book, set against a pink floral background, with a 1940 Walter Benjamin quote, “The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule” and the words #AlwaysCarryABook, or #ACAB; red spray-painted outline of a heart on a gray wall with the tagged words inside it, “If you want, we can watch the moon?!,” spotted in an alley in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal, June 2022)

#WeMustOutliveThem
#RitualAsResistance
#AllChanukkahsAreBeautiful
#TryAnarchismForLife

Tonight, as the last of my Hanukkah candles burned down, it kept flickering out, and then multiple times, burst back into flames.

It offered, quite literally, ritual as resistance, refusing to give up, despite the odds of this evening’s configuration of a sacred time-space lasting.

But ritual as resistance has many other radical, life-giving roles. Among them, our rituals let us deactivate from the stress of what they (e.g., cops, courts, and the state) do to us; instead of reacting to them, we pause. We coregulate. We reignite the sacred fires inside us, and from there, self-determine how to proactively direct our actions and practices.

Indeed, the small act of knowing that we can always light a candle, that we can gaze into its glow and find warmth, find effervescence, is huge in terms of rekindling our spirits, especially when we’re up against the worst.

For instance, that our Hanukkah candles increase day by day isn’t a mere numbers game. What’s illuminated is the growing solidarity between the candies, burning in concert, supplying a felt sense of interconnection and collective possibilities.

This Hanukkah has brought some of the worst to @defendATLforest and @stopcopcity. Six people were arrested, are now being held without bond, and face charges of “domestic terrorism” for caring about a forest. A years’ worth of infrastructure related to mutual aid and forest defense was destroyed by cops and capitalists, as was a paved walkway and many trees in this public park.

But last night, about 100 people “gathered in the rubble of our beloved park to celebrate the solstice, … to build altars in the debris,” as @kezleyseeslife put it. “A crater in the ground was turned into a fire pit. A menorah was lit to celebrate Hanukkah,” added @atlpresscollective. Everything we build, and will keep building, “is born from our already broken hearts. … The forest will heal. We will heal,” Kezley asserted.

(photos: my brightly colored night 5 candles next to @desrevol’s brilliant painting of a possum, mouthing “Abolish the police,” surrounded by brightly colored flowers; picture of the rubble turned into an altar, including the tagged words from some anonymous forest defender, “You won’t win,” in the Weelaunee forest yesterday from @atlpresscollective; brightly colored hand-painted sign reading “Let us love and be loved by the forest,” which I photographed pre-rubble in October 2022)

#AllChanukkahsAreBeautiful
#RitualAsResistance
#CandlesNotCops
#TryJewishAnarchismForLife

Chanuka/Hanukkah/Janucá/Khanike/Xanuqa (etc.) fundraiser for two Jewish anarchist spaces that are near and dear and queer to my heart: @ratzonpgh and @dirozevepave!

Because it’s that time of year when I want to #AbolishXmas (along with capitalism, cops, christian fascism, and so much) and lean into the time-space of eight nights of much-needed light, illuminating resistance and resilience. And because I have some brand-new copies of six of my books “leftover” from a few events that got cut short by me sadly catching COVID this fall, after 2.5 years of being communally careful.

So rather than these titles getting lonely in boxes on my floor—I can always get more when I have the delight of trying again to do book-related events (DM or email me if you ever want to host one)—I’m turning them into this modest fundraiser!

Whether you’re Jewish or not, whether you hate Xmas or not, join in raising some gelt. I’ll donate anything over the material cost to me of each book to the two projects above.

DM or email (cbmilstein at yahoo) me if you want any of the following titles, sliding scale (or more) plus media mail ($3-5 per book) via my PayPal, while supplies last (alas, only for shipping in the US):

Anarchism and Its Aspirations, $6-9

Taking Sides: Revolutionary Solidarity and the Poverty of Liberalism, $6-9

Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief, $9-16

Deciding for Ourselves: The Promise of Direct Democracy, $9-15

There Is Nothing So Whole as a Broken Heart: Mending the World as Jewish Anarchists, $10-19

Try Anarchism for Life, $8-15

(photos, featuring the covers of all six books, borrowed from @camasbooks, @cryptotaenia.plant.sanctuary, and @scottcampbell, with much appreciation; all these books are also available from @akpressdistro, with #TryAnarchismForLife at @tangled_wilderness too)

#AlwaysCarryABook
#AllChanukkahsAreBeautiful