#Sharethelights: Rachel’s Story

The latest trending topic among the digital generation is not a celebrity or current event but one decidedly digital. This Chanukah young Jews around the world have taken Chanukah online with #SharetheLights.

This unique campaign encourages participants to share the lights of Chanukah with others by posting photos of their Chanukah experiences on social media sites. Participants can tag pictures of their menorahs or other Chanukah activities with the #Sharethelights hashtag on Twitter, Instagram or the campaign’s Facebook page. The campaign aims at increasing holiday awareness and joy among young Jews and offers raffles for great prizes for those who participate.

Rachel is a young Jew attending school in NYC, Rachel tweeted that she lit the Menorah for the first time with a blessing. We were intrigued, so we reached out to her on Twitter to ask about her #ShareTheLights experience.

This is Rachel, and this is what she had to say:

I am a Jew. I am a Jew because of an unbroken line of Jewish women from long ago to me. Due to the fact that in Judaism, regardless of anything else, if your mother’s a Jew you are one too, I’m a Jew by default. Because where the mothers end and the men begin, is where the something got “lost in translation.” I was born Jewish, baptized and educated Roman Catholic, and raised in a “spiritual but agnostic” home by my mother, who was also raised Catholic. Based on an inner compulsion, I walked away from Christianity at an early age. Based upon findings in a family tree, I tripped and fell into the vast ocean that is Judaism.

For anyone, even people born and raised Jewish, navigating the numerous titles and divisions of observances can seem dizzying. I crawled through them, picking up bits and pieces. I’m Reform, Reformative, Conservative, Conservadox… But I’m not any of these. I’m a Jew. I study Torah and Talmud and I grow closer to G-d and His people and our charge: to be a light to the nations.

This Chanukah, I found the #sharethelights campaign on Twitter as I scrolled through my newsfeed. It put into words exactly what I have been feeling about the holiday. I want to “share the lights” with the nations, talking to non-Jews and Jews alike about the holiday and the traditions. I want to reach out to everyone. I want to educate everyone, understanding that no book should ever be judged by its cover. There’s plenty of Jews that might potentially slip through the cracks this Chanukah. I would have been one of them.

To me, finally celebrating as a Jew, Chanukah is the time I get to put a light up in my window, share a Maccabeats video on my Facebook, and explain why we play dreidel to anyone that is willing to listen. Chanukah is the embodiment of our mission as a nation. When we light, we could be thinking about anything under the sun. Personally, I was thinking, “I hope G-d doesn’t notice I’m butchering this Hebrew.” I must have restarted the blessings five times, until I could finally focus on what I was saying.  Despite whatever we think of when we light, we place the menorah in the window, and it all becomes one unified statement: We’re Jews. We’re here. We’re going to create a light in the world, every year, until mashiach comes.

And we’re going to share.