We celebrate Hanukkah in the darkest month of the year, beginning on the 25th of Kislev. The flickering lights of the menorah grow stronger over the eight days as we gather in the warmth of family and friends. The Hanukkah story is a poignant reminder that a small group of people can stave off the darkness and ensure that the light continues.

We three feel that B’nai Jeshurun’s Thursday night respite dinners for migrant families provide a safe space for the families to stave off the darkness and commune in the light. Organizing these dinners has been a source of light for each of us and we hope for the other volunteers as well, providing a small sense of agency in a time when it is easy to despair. Over the last years, even as “our” families have been dispersed to different shelters, they still make their way to the Thursday dinners. The adults have found a community while cooking in our kitchen and eating and shmoozing upstairs. The children have made friends while playing, serving food, and feasting on the desserts baked by BJ volunteers. Parents have also obtained much needed information about access to healthcare, employment, their rights as immigrants, and school-related issues. The lights at our dinners burn brightly helping the families to bravely make their way in a new and often unwelcoming country.

Hanukkah is a story of how a people can survive over overwhelming odds. We see this story in the lived experiences of the families we have come to know. They take life one day at a time, striving to take small steps forward each day. They find moments of joy in the midst of their everyday challenges and retain hope for a stable and fulfilling future in their new home. And we suspect that if and when such a future arise, it will not be a “miracle” but rather a tribute to their hard work to find and keep employment, their devotion to their children who now are speaking English and wearing Knicks’ jerseys, and most of all, their willingness to do all that they can with what they have. We see in them the lights of the hanukkiyah and we are heartened as we wait for the darkness to dispel.