We spent Rosh Hashanah with our chosen family, our blended family, in their home.
One of the things we believe deeply is that being a blended family isn’t about asking anyone to put aside who they are or what they believe in order to fit in. Quite the opposite. Everybody brings something to the table.
We believe in inclusion. We believe there should be room for everybody’s beliefs, traditions and experiences in the ceremonies we create and the adventures we share together. We don’t all have to believe the same things. We don’t all have to come from the same place. We don’t even have to understand everything in exactly the same way.
We just have to make room for one another. And so, when we gathered for Rosh Hashanah, we wanted our celebration to be recognizably Jewish while also being recognizably ours.
In their home is a beautiful pair of black dragon candlesticks. They are loved, they have pride of place, and they are part of what makes their home their home. So we incorporated them into our Rosh Hashanah evening. And in them we placed black candles.
Black dragon candlesticks with black candles for Rosh Hashanah certainly aren’t the traditional picture that immediately comes to mind. But the more I thought about it, the more appropriate it felt. Because the mitzvah is in the lighting. The holiness isn’t dependent upon having white candles or candlesticks that look a particular way. We take what is meaningful to us and use it to help create a sacred moment.
And ultimately, the color of the candle isn’t what matters. The light is.
The Torah begins with darkness, and then
“Let there be light.” Genesis 1:3
I love that the darkness isn’t removed before the light appears. The light comes into the darkness. There is something particularly beautiful about that as we enter Rosh Hashanah. We don’t arrive at the new year having erased everything that happened in the old one. We bring all of it with us. The joy and the sadness. The successes and the mistakes. The things we are proud of and the things we wish we could do differently.
And then we light the candle.
“The soul of a person is the lamp of God.”Proverbs 20:27
Every person around our Rosh Hashanah table brought their own light. Not identical lights. Their own. Their own beliefs. Their own histories. Their own traditions. Their own ways of understanding the world.
For me, that doesn’t diminish the Jewishness of the evening. It makes the act of gathering together even more meaningful.
And there we were, welcoming the new year together. The beautiful dragon candlesticks stood on the Rosh Hashanah table because they belonged to the people and the home in which we were celebrating. The black candles stood in them because those were the candles we had.
And when we lit them, something very simple happened. They gave us light.
The black wax didn’t make the flame any less bright. Perhaps there is a lesson in that. A chosen family doesn’t have to look like anybody else’s family to be a family. A Rosh Hashanah table doesn’t have to look like somebody else’s Rosh Hashanah table to be meaningful. And making room for somebody else’s beliefs doesn’t require us to diminish our own.
We can bring them together. We can learn from each other. We can celebrate what we share and respect where we are different. We can bring who we are. We can bring what we believe. We can bring what we love. We can sit around the same table. And together, we can create the light.