Hanukkah 5784: Flames of Resistance

antifa sticker, and menorah in the background

From Outside the Circle by Cindy Milstein

NIGHT 1

So the counting begins. Nights and candles. But which nights? The eight (now seven) evenings ahead? The more than two thousand years past of this celebration of revolt and miracles (some six hundred years before anyone had even heard of Jesus, a Palestinian Jew)? And/or the last seventy-five years of Nakba, itself only three short years after the catastrophe of Nazism.

It’s not just what to count. It’s who counts, or doesn’t, and when.

And how to count at all when our eyes are blurred by tears that won’t seem to dry—perhaps another Chanuka miracle, expanding our hearts enough to keep mourning and raging against the some seventeen thousand dead and over forty-two thousand wounded in Gaza the past sixty-one days of genocide?

We should all count, of course. That seems as clear and bright as even my two small candles can illuminate on this first night of Xanuka.

How many more flames of resistance must we put into this world to finally mend it?

When I lit my candles, I saw ancestors in the glow—innumerable ancestors who held fast to celebrating holidays of lights and moons and gifting each other time-space, even when they knew their days or hours were numbered by not-too-dissimilar fascistic regimes centuries ago, decades ago, now. They made life count, even when they had to practice rituals in secret as their antifascist action. They danced rebelliously in the flames of solidarity, knowing that whether Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian, or Arabic, their safety and liberation were and still are inseparably braided together—a force that combined, could smash borders and states into countless pieces, because we’ve felt the same pain, the same trauma, and refuse to weaponize it against each other now.

Our resistance counts, as does our solidarity—particularly when barbarism tries to shred any sense of humanity or light.

#WeWillOutliveThem #FreilachHanukkahNotFascism #UntilAllAreFree

(photos: my candles; wheat-pasted posters, fresh torn asunder by those we must keep battling, as seen around so-called Asheville, NC)

***
NIGHT 2

In setting up the chanukiah, one can’t help but feel parallels—as if the candles extending in the same direction are portals into parallel worlds.

In 168 BCE, an empire was intent on crushing the Jews as a people, and so marched into Jerusalem and desecrated the holy temple, then sent soldiers and other vigilantes to villages throughout Judea. Jewish rebels, seemingly no match for the well-equipped military, fought back with what they had at hand, including rocks. They did so to not let their culture be annihilated—along with their bodies—and in the end, after rebuilding the temple and a miracle with oil lasting eight days, turned this tale into the story of Chanukah.

On December 7-8, 2023, under cover of dark, the state of Israel, intent on crushing the Palestinians, and armed with the aid of the United States and other powers, sent its military into Gaza’s old city and desecrated a holy mosque—the oldest in this strip. While no match for the sadistic weaponry, Palestinians rebelled this morning with the weapon they had at hand: storytelling; tales and images of the mosque and its history so as not to let their culture be annihilated—along with their bodies.

This is far from the only parallel—of various moments when fascistic regimes tried to exterminate Jews, Muslims, and Palestinians and the entirety of their cultures, and people scrappily resisted, including with the weapon of memory. Thus the need for these regimes, as countermove, to burn books and blow up archives. The trauma and heartache of these moments could and should cause our flames of rebellion to converge into conflagrations of solidarity and liberation—and often they do. Witness the millions of people of all cultures, including Jews, around the globe rising up in diverse ways for Palestinians.

But that’s not true for all. Fascists see no parallel in celebrating the rededication of a temple—twisted into a myth of nationalism and power—and destroying the sacredness of a mosque—and life.

May Hanukkah bring a real miracle: “death to fascism.”

#FreilachHanukkahNotFascism #UntilAllAreFree

(photos: my candles and an antifascism sticker in four languages by Municipal Adhesives; a wheat-pasted solidarity poster seen on a wall on the stolen lands of so-called Asheville, NC)

***
NIGHT 3

Perhaps it is just my social media feeds and Signal text threads, but I suspect not—I hope not. In only three nights of this year’s Khanike, with still so much fire to go, rad Jews have shared thousands of photos and artistic renditions of their chanukkiahs ablaze with solidarity for Gaza.

We rebel Jews have faithfully followed the sensibility underlying this Festival of Lights, in a time of genocide that feels anything but festive, or for that matter, light, by visibly bringing forth the light of resistance. We’ve extended the practice of bravely and defiantly lighting our Hanuka menorahs in windows at moments when antisemitism has threatened our lives and indeed the whole of Jewish existence, to now bravely and defiantly lighting these same menorahs in all sorts of public places, often communally, as Zionism (including Christian Zionism) and Islamophobia threaten Palestinian lives and indeed the whole of Palestinian existence.

For us anarchist Jews in particular, we see this as inseparable from our antifascist practice, our antifascist duty, including to all the ancestors—Jewish and others—who were exterminated by fascists in other times … and now. As the Fayer Collective notes in the zine illuminated by my candles tonight, “For us, the fight against fascism … is a personal and direct fight for our lives,” for others’ lives, … “for the earth, the good life, and total liberation” for all. “And that knowledge has put a fire in our hearts, as anarchists and Jews.”

I’ve been proud of my fellow anarchic Jews—more so than ever—for bravely and defiantly resisting fascism, including in our Zionist kin, every single day since October 7, unceasingly, with public actions ranging from banner drops to Mourners Kaddish, mutual aid to blockades, disruptions, and other direct actions, collective care to rebellious rituals. And we’ve no intention of letting that fire go out, #UntilAllAreFree.

May Xanuka bring the miracle of the light of our solidarity never extinguishing.

#SolidarityNotStates #TryJewishAnarchismForLife

(For a PDF of this Palestinian solidarity zine and many others, DM me your email; photos: my candles tonight; a Jewish friend painting a #JewsAgainstGenocide banner in October for a public grief ritual held a couple days later by a bunch of us anarchistic Jews in so-called Asheville, NC.)

***
NIGHT 4

I’ve never thought to associate Chanuka with sheydim, Jewish demons, although according to ancient teachings, 11,00 demons surround each of us.

This Xanuka, however, demons feel all too present, all too real.

Within innumerable Jewish stories about sheydim over the millennia, there are broadly two types: malicious and malevolent demons, inflecting harm, causing damage, and even bringing death; and benevolent and even protective ones, albeit sometimes mischievous.

We see the first category of demons hard at work, wreaking havoc and genocide in Gaza. They go under names like “Zionism,” “state of Israel,” “United States,” “IOF,” “Elbit Systems,” “Christo-fascism,” and on and on (recall those 11,000 sheydim per person and one can count many vicious demons, which often fly and prefer the dark of night for their evil-doing).

Yet Khanike equally conjures those sheydim who do us good, especially because this type prefers the light. And depending on how you’re lighting your candles, each night brings us more light and thus more sheydim as our guardians—sheydim who are anti-fascist, anti-Zionist, anti-hafrada (anti-apartheid), and also anti-state, anti-colonial, anti-militarist, anti-cop…

These protective sheydim, often sitting on our shoulders, whisper in our ear that ultimately, only we can and do keep each other safe(r). They are only messengers, something we can carry as amulet, but really, we supply each other—Jew, Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, and so many more of us threatened by brutal demons at the wheel of the death machine—with communal self-defense and collective care. Still, maybe we can also use the thousands of helping hands of sheydim like “solidarity,” “resistance,” “mutual aid,” “direct action,” and “rebellious mourning,” to name a few big ones, and smaller fellas like “herbal remedies,” “flowers,” and “candles,” among so many more.

This Hanukah, I see the faces of protective sheydim in the bright flames, smiling and weeping and raging and loving, side by side with us, #UntilAllAreFree.

(photos: my candles with “An Amulet for Gaza” zine by Storm Bringer Press; two public altars for Gaza set up on stolen Cherokee lands, Oct-Nov 2023)

***
NIGHT 5

To end this day of global strike against the genocide in Gaza, I struck a match. It burst into a fiery yellow-orange, which I brought to the shamash, and quickly this middle candle was alight. From there, five candles were soon aglow on my Hanuka menorah, and the whole room felt dreamy.

During my strike day, I “stayed home from” my self-employment (copyediting) and instead focused on my current “labor of love” (an anthology I’m editing on “constellations of care” as practiced by anarcha-feminists). Both involve similar tasks, especially since I’m at the copyediting phase of my next book. But I never take money for my own books (proceeds go to anarchist projects), and they feel dreamlike, wholly/holy different than my paid work.

During my strike day, I stumbled across the teaching that, as Shlomo Yitzchak noted, “the light of the Chanukah candle is the Or Ganuz, the hidden light of creation:: when one looks in this light, they can see from one end of the world to the other”—to that world we’ve mended, beyond work, whether the work of capitalism or states or bombs.

During my strike day, I recalled the hidden light in the French word “grève,” meaning to “strike,” which includes the French word “rêve,” meaning to “dream.”

During my strike day, I took seriously the imperative in Chanukkah to rededicate ourselves to striking away their time—militarism, nationalism, fascism, and the bloody list goes on—by dreaming up and inhabiting our own time-spaces.

It should be time now, after the work of olive harvesting, to revel in that sacred tree of life for Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, and other peoples who’ve long understood the sense of peace and comfort that olives bring. Instead, during this strike evening, we dream of miracles—ceasefire, no apartheid, liberation, and so much more—seen in the light of candles, our modern-day olive oil, recalling that there’s also an etymological link between “grève” and grieve.

We strike from grief, we strike to open up room to dream, to live, to mourn, to see flickers of worlds hidden by this hellscape.

(photos: my candles and two views of an “End Israeli apartheid” banner, with hand-painted olives on it)

#RitualsOfResistance #LightsOfLiberation #UntilAllAreFree

***
NIGHT 6

At a well-attended and loud 3-hour noise demo a week ago here on stolen Cherokee land in solidarity with Palestinians—a noise demo meant to bother county commissioners who were rubber-stamping a deal to expand the local branch of a global military contractor, but that did double duty by offering solidarity to people behind bars in the nearby jail—someone decorated their noisemaker (a baking pan) with hand-colored watermelons.

It was just one of many instances that evening of how our resistance—even if we have no hope of winning a particular battle—is at once also an assertion of beauty, of the vibrancy of how we promote life and lives worth living, even in the face of genocide and other systemic violences. The hardness of a watermelon rind—the hardness of the past 66+ days, the losses and sorrow—is felt because of the sweetness of the juicy pulp—the ways people around the world, including in Gaza, are sweetly caring for and tending to each other, with love and even glimpses of joy.

The death machine, in contrast, can only imagine watermelons as something to smash, something to flatten and destroy.

So when a local fascist saw an image of that baking pan adorned with watermelons, all he could think—and broadcast to his followers—was that “antifa” had brought actual watermelons to the noise demo as projectile weaponry of some sort.

Chanukkah’s ritual sets up a similar hard+soft paradox that’s no paradox at all: it isn’t dark vs light; dark and light together let us see the wholeness of life, punctuated by the liminal spaces of possibility between them.

This Hanuka, we Jews against genocide keenly feel the impossibility of engaging in a Festival of Light, but that title has never really fit. Lighting candles at the darkest time of year is an annual reminder that our wholeness as humans, as one sacred species in a sacred ecosystem, is only possible if we’re willing to hold solidaristic space through night and day, through everything this world throws at us, offering up our hearts to each other like a refreshing slice of watermelon, resistant rind and all.

(photos: my candles with a zine; a delicious noisemaker)

***
NIGHT 7

Someone asked me just before the start of this evening’s public “Flames of Antifascist Resistance” Hanukkah gathering at Firestorm Books if there was something special about night 7.

One interpretation of night 7 is a focus on healing hurts and promoting well-being. It’s been impossible over the past 67 days to understand what well-being or healing looks like in a world that produces genocide—a world that doesn’t learn not to produce more genocides after past ones, or more perverse still, instrumentalizes a genocide called the Holocaust as “rationale” for waging a genocide called the Nakba.

My response to their question was “nothing.” I was wrong.

There’s always something special about queer Jewish anarchists making DIY ritual space in the best of times. In the worst of times, such as now, with Gaza never far from mind and heart, nor all the ways it’s further emboldening Christo-fascism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia, it can become extraordinary.

Perhaps it was the amplified power of multiple chanukkiahs being lit—maybe as they always should be, in community—their flames reflected in the window, where outside, a large DIY log chanukkiah winked back.

Maybe it was the space suddenly overflowing with people, Jews and non-Jews, reserved at first, but warming into conversation until the room was abuzz.

Or the beautiful depiction of amulets—communal self-defense we’ve crafted for ourselves for millennia, including from stuff of the earth—by my collaborator @porknap, and tables covered in the lushness of amulet-making materials contributed, “stone soup style,” as @porknap put it, by the awesome circle of rad Jews here. Or the many gorgeous amulets people made, adding little cutout demons symbolizing “antifascism,” hand-sown Palestinian flags, or sumac, garlic, salt, and yarrow, building rebellious immunity to those who cause harm.

Or gifted deliciousness of @savim_avl’s rugelach, sufganiyot, and ma’moul—carriers of the sweetness of Jewish culture.

All I know is, the world is far from well or healed. Yet flickers of well-being and mending made a special appearance tonight.

#LightsOfLiberation #UntilAllAreFree

***
NIGHT 8

Over 8 nights, beyond borders, around the globe, Jews and our accomplices have lit millions of candles as part of rituals of resistance against genocide—and this evening, Jewish direct actions shut down 8 bridges in 8 US cities, including with enormous “candles” lined up like on a Hanukkah menorah as blockade material. We wanted so to believe that somehow the collective power of our sacred flames would enact a miracle—the heart of our diasporic Hanukkah story—stretching from not just one short ceasefire, but an end to all bombing, displacement, dispossession, siege, occupation, apartheid, Zionism, and fascism, toward the real miracle of freedom, dignity, and life.

As we Jews like to say, “May it be so.”

But it isn’t yet so.

All of our rededication feels for naught.

Yet as the days wear on—with Hannukah night 8 reflecting Gaza day 69 or even 70 depending on moon zones—as the last of our candles flicker out, we cannot “go gentle into the night,” as antifascist poet Dylan Thomas penned. Even if all of our brilliant diversity of tactics have not been enough these past 8 days, 70 days, 75 years, back further to well over 500 years of colonizers and capitalists and nation-states; even if despair now wraps its icy hands around us and the cold brutality of this world steals our fire, Hanukkah reminds us that liberation will always be a struggle, a journey, a task we can never abandon.

We must rage, rage against the genocide.

We must rage, rage against white Christo-fascist supremacy.

We must rage, rage against all states, all nationalisms, all of their prisons, militaries, cops, courts, and borders.

We must rage, rage against Islamophobia and antisemitism.

We must rage, rage for solidarity, mutual aid, and fierce love among us.

Our flames of resistance can never go out.

Mon amour—from the rivers to the seas, may Palestinians and Jews, may everyone, be free.

(photos: my candles and Alfredo M. Bonanno’s “Palestine, Mon Amour” as zine [DM me your email for PDF]; sticker spotted on stolen Cherokee land: “free Palestine, fuck the police, from Turtle Island to Gaza, no borders, no states, #ACABeverywhere”)

There are 21 Comments

there was no polity called Palestine when that Jesus allegedly lived (the Romans, the imperial power at the time, called it Judea; Jesus, if he existed would have just been Judean), so calling him a "Palestinian Jew" is a deliberately political (in this case, the typical idiotic anti-imperialist) anachronism. but it's surely in keeping with the liberalism masquerading as anarchism we've come to expect from Milstein.

This anon writes, "there was no polity called Palestine when that Jesus allegedly lived (the Romans, the imperial power at the time, called it Judea)."

So what? Call it Judea, Palestine, the "Holy Land," or whatever, this does not change anything. The people and their land were oppressed under the Romans and continued (mostly) to be oppressed over most of the rest of history, until the Zionist leaders decided to take over and create their own country, economy, and state, at the expense of the folks who already lived there.

You call Cindy Milstein a liberal (for her "typical idiotic anti-imperialist" politics). While I don't always find her flowery and religious expressions to be to my taste, the politics being offered are revolutionary anarchism, including being against (anti-) imperialism.

No. Your history is off, Wayne. The area was called Retenu and it's population was made up of Egyptians of other groups long prior to it being called Judaea in 300bce. There were no people that would be remotely similar and/or descendants of modern Palestinians in the area. During and after the conquest, the indigenous peoples, at the time, were either turned into slaves, exiled or killed. Protip- it was not originally the land of the people who'd become of modern Palestinians and israelites (oppressors). Those who became Palestnians were the occupiers and oppressors along with Isralites, and later became they'd oppressed by the Romans. It seems you like when the oppressors oppressing people and carrying out awful stuff on the original population, but once the oppressor and disliked when the oppreesor becomes the oppressed by Roman oppressor.

Your history again in very odd and wrong. The Zionists weren't the ones responsible for the Israel state to be placed where it was, but rather the British, and this is no secret. You a funny guy, Wayne.

You repeating JLO rechectoric is funny in its own way. From posts I've seen of yours you sure do love and blindly repeat nationalistic rhetoric.

"The first clear use of the term Palestine to refer to the entire area between Phoenicia and Egypt was in 5th century BCE ancient Greece,[iii][iv] when Herodotus wrote of a "district of Syria, called Palaistinê" (Ancient Greek: Συρίη ἡ Παλαιστίνη καλεομένη)[9] in The Histories, which included the Judean mountains and the Jordan Rift Valley.[10][v] Approximately a century later, Aristotle used a similar definition for the region in Meteorology, in which he included the Dead Sea.[11] Later Greek writers such as Polemon and Pausanias also used the term to refer to the same region, which was followed by Roman writers such as Ovid, Tibullus, Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder, Dio Chrysostom, Statius, Plutarch as well as Romano-Jewish writers Philo of Alexandria and Josephus."

Isn't Palestine a modernization of Philistine, from the same area, who have hated Jews long before Jesus, in Pre-Christian/Islamic times?

No. During the time frame when Jesus is said to have existed, the area was known as Judaea. The Romans renamed the area from Judaea to Palestinia to shit on the Jews about a hundred years after Jesus is said to have existed.

Regardless of whether that is true or not (it isn't) modern Palestinians are descended from ancient Israelites just like modern Jews are. The difference is that Palestinians were Christianized and then Arabized.

20th century Palestine is a product of the British Empire. Ethnic Palestinians got lost in time and space through the ages, as they became Bedouin tribes. Not saying those that lived there and overthrew thr Ottoman empire aren't entitled to "their" space over there, but this space was never their own "Palestine"... or at least not in like 2500 years.

Like the other said Palestina was a Roman province created by super-antisemite emperor Hadrian after he mass-slaughtered Judeans. So yea, the word itself carries come hateful meaning.

Palestinian nationalism is just as foul as Zionism. Just because they lose all the time it doesn't make them virtuous.

Listen Max, ALL Abrahamic nationalism is toxic, ALL religion based, including Buddhist nationalism is tox! Stop singling out Palestinian and Israeli nationalism when ALL nationalism is anti-anarchic!

Listen fuckface, the connects here are about zionism and Palestinian nationalism because it's what Milstein centered. If you'd have bothered to read what the comments are directly referencing, then you'd have understood that. But yeah, keep trolling

Fuck Milstein and the narrative she weaves! I am an anarch, and I WILL always look at the BIG picture and focus on the elimination of all religious debate within the
anarchist milieu!

fuck your ignorant veering toward racist anti-semitic equation of Jewish culture with religion.

Cindy could quite literally beat the shit out of your weak ass AND bed your ugly mother in the same night. You better hope you remain anonymous and she doesn't get the itch to end you, pig-dog

Yes it is.
But the desire of the Palestinian people to be free of oppression by the Israeli state is not the same (and not as "foul") as the desire of the Zionists to continue to oppress the Palestinians.
We need to distinguish the nationalist form (which we reject) from the content of a people wanting to be free.

As long as the people in question are for authentic communism, I don't care about their personal religious preferences: Jewish, Islam, Hinduism, various forms of Christianity...

All I care about is measures that can help bring about the world's first successful anti-capitalist social revolution. You will never win people to this by telling them what philosophical bargain to make with their mortality and the cosmos.

But you get that by bringing forth modes of ezchange and empowerment that are "anti-capitalist" and negate the dictstorships of nation-states (jncl. those few awful city-state capitalist utopias). It's gonna take as long as we're not caring bringing "free stuff" as a new form of economy.... and that's gonna take long with so many of the "anarchists" not taking this imperative seriously.

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