You may know the story from Shabbat 21a, part of the Talmud. Hillel and Shammai are having an argument about how to light the Chanukah lights. Shammai taught that on the first night eight candles are lit and then we should light one less each subsequent night. HIllel argued that we should start with one light and increase the lights each night as it is said, “in matters of holiness, we must increase and not diminish.” Others have said that that it is our joy increases each night.

This morning I have no words. My cousin, a pediatrician with young children of her own in Glastonbury CT wrote to me yesterday afternoon and said, “I know you are busy trying to write something that will make sense of this.” I can’t. I can tell you I saw a Woody Allen movie while I was on Kibbutz Revivim in 1977. It had a line in it, “What do Jews do when they get in trouble? They sing.” I could stand here and tell you about gun control or about access to mental health. Today I grieve. Newtown Connecticut is a town I know well. It has a lovely little sushi restaurant and a very nice Starbucks. It was a good place to break my drive from New York to Boston. My college roommate lives in Newtown. I officiated at her wedding in Newtown. I was there the day her baby was born. Her baby is now a kindergartner, a sweet autistic boy knows kids from his pre-school class were killed. How do you explain that. You can’t. There are people who say, “It couldn’t happen here.” Wherever here is. It did.

Last night I was in our building early. Early enough to light the Chanukah candles before Shabbat. I put the candles in the menorah. I set the menorah on the stand with flowers someone had sent as a gift. I thought about Newtown. I lit the candles, from newest to oldest. I thought about HIllel. How do we increase our holiness, how do we increase our joy on days like this? I sang the blessings. It felt like an act of defiance. I sat in the first row, staring at the candles and I cried. Then I remembered other peoples’ words.

Today’s haftarah includes a description of the menorah in the HolyTemple. And the words of Zechariah, “Not by might, not by power but by spirit alone shall we all live in peace.” Last night we sang these words in English with music Debbie Friedman wrote. Our own young children helped to lead the hand motions. The children sang. The children dreamed And my tears fell. But the song is hopeful. Another song will rise.

Last night was our first Kabbalat Shabbat with instrumental music. Like Hillel and Shammai there is much debate about whether it is permissible of not, whether it is halacha or not. Now is not the time for debate. But I add this, posted to Facebook by a friend who is a cantor in the name of Leonard Bernstein: ‎”This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”

Yehuda Amichai, one of Israel’s best poets and no stranger to violence says this about the vision of Isaiah: “Don’t stop after beating the swords into plowshares, don’t stop!
Go on beating and make musical instruments out of them.
Whoever wants to make war again will have to turn them into plowshares first.”

Bob Dylan wondered and Peter, Paul and Mary sang in another time and place, asking what seem to me to be the right questions,
“How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky ?
Yes, how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry ?
Yes, how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died ?
The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.”

Peter Yarrow later went on to write “Light One Candle” for Chanukah. We sang this last night too. The last stanza has sustained me in my own grief from time to time. I have used it for Chanukah, for Havdalahs, for weddings. It too asks questions:

“What is the memory that’s valued so highly
That we keep it alive in that flame?
What’s the commitment to those who have died?
We cry out “they’ve not died in vain,”
We have come this far, always believing
That justice will somehow prevail;
This is the burden, This is the promise,
This is why we will not fail!”

What is the memory that we will have of yesterday’s events? What is our commitment to those children so they do not die in vain? How do we keep their memories alive? How do we make sure that justice will prevail?

Debbie Friedman wrote another song, for use on Shavuot, for Confirmations:

Childhood was for fantasies, for nursery rhymes and toys.
The world was much too busy to understand small girls and boys.
As I grew up, I came to learn that life was not a game,

That heroes were just people that we called another name.

And the old shall dream dreams, and the youth shall see visions,

And our hopes shall rise up to the sky.

We must live for today; we must build for tomorrow.

Give us time, give us strength, give us life.
Now I’m grown, the years have passed, I’ve come to understand:

There are choices to be made and my life’s at my command.

I cannot have a future ’til I embrace the past.

I promise to pursue the challenge, time is going fast.
Today’s the day I take my stand, the future’s mine to hold.

Commitments that I make today are dreams from days of old.

I have to make the way for generations come and go.

I’ll have to teach them what I’ve learned so they will come to know.

Our innocence was shattered yesterday. Again. But our children have visions and our old have dreams. I heard an interview with the president of the Jewish congregation in Newtown. His 9 year old spoke at services. The kid’s message was as his father said, sweet and simple. “If we can get through this as nine year olds. You adults can.” A youth’s vision. Our children need us to be adults. Hug your kids—however old they are a little closer. Turn off the constant media coverage. Talk to them about it in terms they can understand.

Joseph was a dreamer. He was an interpreter of dreams. In today’s Torah portion, as Rabbi Ben Newman pointed out, “Joseph’s tears begin a process of change and reconciliation with his brothers.” It is too early to talk about forgiveness and reconciliation. It is too early to talk about faith. It is too early to ask “Where was God.” But for me God was with those children, crying. God weeps with all of us still crying. God did not ordain this. This was not God’s will. Our tears still fall. We pray that the tears that connect us in grief ultimately help our society to move toward balance and wholeness, towards peace. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel instructed “in a free society, some are guilty and all are responsible” and “indifference to evil is worse than evil itself.”

Like Joseph, I have a dream too. It seems simple. That children, all children will be able to board a bus for school in the morning and know that they will be safe. It seems simple but for some reason it is far from easy. May the Holy One give us the courage to build for our children, and our children’s children, safer homes, safer schools, and a better world.

So tonight we will light eight nights. The candles will burn brightly against the darkness. We will rededicate our lives to holiness and building a world of peace. We will sing. We might dance. Our holiness and our joy will increase—even if it seems impossible. We will continue to ask the hard questions. We will continue to cry. We will continue to dream of a day when children can go to school and none shall make them afraid.