Tevet 5786: May it continue to be good.

It always feels a bit anticlimactic. After days of building toward a fully lit menorah—the eighth night blazing, the final Hallel, the last special Torah reading—Chanukah just…ends. There is no Havdalah to mark the transition back into ordinary time, as there is with the eight-day holidays of Sukkot and Pesach. The light simply recedes. Perhaps the letdown wouldn’t feel so sharp had the halakhah followed Beit Shammai, counting down toward a single candle, but since it does not, we’re left with a real question: once we’ve reached the fullness of this revealed light, how are we meant to carry its energy into the long, colder months that follow? This is a familiar challenge for people who engage with psychedelic medicine as well. The clarity and intensity of the journey can feel unmistakable while it is happening, but over time that brightness dims. Insight fades into memory, and the work of integration—translating experience into meaningful, lasting change—can begin to feel elusive. The moment passes; ordinary life returns. What remains is the harder, quieter task of learning how to live differently once the light is no longer visible.

The Bnei Yissaschar teaches that this very anticlimax is not a failure of Hanukkah but its fulfillment. Hanukkah, he explains, is deliberately tethered to the month of Tevet to teach that revealed light is only the beginning. During the days of the candles, the light appears freely—radiant and unmistakable—but we are forbidden to use it; it is meant to pass through us, not be consumed. Tevet is where the real work begins. Its task is not to generate new illumination, but to extend the light that the Torah calls tov—goodness—into a time when there is no flame to point to. Tevet is colder, narrower, more constricted, even marked by the beginning of historical calamity, and precisely for that reason it tests whether the light was real. If the brilliance of Hanukkah becomes patience, restraint, repaired relationships, and steadiness in the dark, then the miracle has endured. Tevet asks whether the light we touched can live inside us once the journey ends and ordinary life resumes.

So may it continue to be good. May this wild year of the expansion of our community continue to be good.

Hasidic ayahuasca circles practicing harm reduction,
may it continue to be good.

People trying ketamine for the first time to face abusive parent trauma,
may it continue to be good.

Nova survivors carrying music, terror, and love back into the body,
may it continue to be good.

Researchers tracing intergenerational trauma through names and nervous systems,
may it continue to be good.

Guides choosing training after years of holding space by instinct alone,
may it continue to be good.

Breathwork and cannabis circles on Sausalito houseboats, fog lifting with the tide,
may it continue to be good.

Pardes Hanna mushroom Shabbatons, Kiddush cups beside journals,
may it continue to be good.

Heimish Lakewood cacao circles, sweetness held within restraint,
may it continue to be good.

LA 5-MeO Pesach retreats, Exodus retold as dissolution and return,
may it continue to be good.

Daime visions redeeming Miryam Magdalene in the jungle’s light,
may it continue to be good.

Indigenous partners covering their eyes during the Shema,
may it continue to be good.

WhatsApp threads buzzing, then going quiet as people meet for latkes,
may it continue to be good.

Rabbinical students heading to Peru, seeking old-new ways to connect to spirit,
may it continue to be good.

The Syrian rue Jews who have figured it out,
may it continue to be good.

Healing centers opening and closing in Oregon and Colorado,
may it continue to be good.

Israel–Palestine circles journeying together and choosing not to, to protect integrity,
may it continue to be good.

Harm-reduction language learning Hebrew, Yiddish, and English at once,
may it continue to be good.

Elders advising quietly from the margins,
may it continue to be good.

Somatic therapists weaving ritual into preparation and integration,
may it continue to be good.

Shabbat meals after journeys, heavy on soup and silence,
may it continue to be good.

Meditation teachers retraining for trauma-sensitive work,
may it continue to be good.

Participants learning that insight is not the same as repair,
may it continue to be good.

Communities naming power, consent, and charisma in real time,
may it continue to be good.

The funders, the funded, the underfunded, the founders,
may it continue to be good.

Those choosing not to journey and staying in the work anyway,
may it continue to be good.

The long, uneven labor of integration after the light fades,
may it continue to be good.

May it continue to be good this Tevet. For all of us.

Z