We Will Banish the Darkness
December 19, 2025
I remember being in third grade in my New Jersey Jewish day school, learning the children’s Chanukah anthem, “Banu Choshech Legaresh.” With the opening line that means “We have come to banish the darkness,” the song sounds like a proud battle cry. With its tone of fortitude and marching beat, it is a far cry from the sweet, upbeat American stylings of “I have a little dreidel.” Our little band of American eight year-olds burst into giggles when Morah Shochat made us stand in a row like we were a menorah made of Maccabees with paper flame crowns on our heads, literally stomping out the darkness, as the song proclaims, each of us a little light. Why was our Hebrew teacher teaching us this song that sounded so angry? Wasn’t Chanukah supposed to be super fun? What happened to “Gather ‘round the table, we’ll give you a treat,” and “Let’s have a party, we’ll all dance the horah?”
A child of the American 80s, I had no idea what this darkness was that we needed to stamp out. I presumed it had something to do with the Maccabees, a historic battle of long ago. I humored my Hebrew teacher, sang along and stomped on cue.
This Chanukah, in the wake of a hateful terrorist massacre on Bondi Beach, Australia, I miss those days when darkness was such an abstraction, the stories of some other generation, or a faraway place like the Soviet Union. And yet, the song’s message – that every one of us is a light chasing away the darkness, insisting that we will never be extinguished, is more inspiring than ever.
As we focus on the lights, miracles, and lessons of Chanukah, an insight taught by Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, comes to mind. He explained that 150 years after the Maccabees won their historic and miraculous victory against the Seleucid-Greeks to restore Jerusalem, the Roman Empire rose to power and destroyed the Beit Hamikdash, the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Struggling to recover from the tragic losses, the rabbis debated if they could even celebrate Chanukah. The Jewish community set upon ensuring Jewish civilization could endure under foreign rule and dispersion – through the strengthening of yeshivot, of Jewish education. There was a lesson in healing and rebuilding, reflected in the Menorah:
“The Menorah symbolised something quite different from military victory. It represented faith, hope, loyalty, courage. Jews began to understand that the real clash between Ancient Israel and Ancient Greece was not political but cultural. To defend a country, you need an army. But to defend a civilisation, you need schools.”
Last week BJE joined the Milken Family Foundation to honor four Los Angeles Jewish educators, gifting them back the honor they devote to our children every day. Collectively, they teach various elements of Jewish civilization, immersing our children in the bounty of music, prayer, middot (Jewish habits of behavior), Talmudic structures of Jewish logic and argument, Jewish customs and laws. They equip students to live in a complicated present, armed with the wisdom of their heritage and the skills to create a sustainable future.
“The message of Chanukkah is simple,” Sacks taught us. “What lasts is not victory on the battlefield, but the candle of hope we light in the mind of a child.”
The candle Morah Shochat lit in my mind as a child still flickers in my memory and prompted me to research the history of the song. It turns out the song’s light came out of the shadows of struggle, a song of overcoming. “We will banish the darkness,” was written by a Jewish kindergarten teacher named Sarah Levi-Tanai before the founding of the State of Israel. Her family immigrated to Palestine on foot from Yemen in the late 19th century and spent her early childhood in Jaffa, until the Ottomans banished the Jews from the neighborhood in 1917, landing them in a refugee camp in Kfar Saba. After a typhus outbreak took the lives of her mother and siblings, and the subsequent death of her father, she grew up an orphan who flourished through art education at a youth village in Northern Israel called Meir Shfeya. She married a young man who left Europe in 1933 and took care of their young children while he fought for the Jewish brigade. Levi-Tanai became a kindergarten teacher, composer, and founding artistic director of the Inbal dance troupe, an award-winning company that preserved and expressed Yemenite Jewish culture in a heavily Ashkenazic dance-theater scene in Israel.
The story of the light of this one teacher, and the flames of courage she has kept burning through the singing of children around the world for many decades, demonstrates the ripple effects of creative teachers. Like the Jewish educators we continue to honor thanks to the generosity of the Milken Family Foundation, Levi-Tanai’s story reflects the diversity of the Jewish community. The annual ceremony brings together communities from across Jewish Los Angeles, from yeshivish to secular, Mizrachi, Sefardi, and Ashkenazi, from the Valley to the City, united in a passion for education. There is no other event quite like it in Los Angeles. The Jewish education world is bright because of the teachers whose wisdom and commitment unite the LA Jewish community.
“Sura, choshech.” Be gone, darkness. Teachers and their students are bringing the light.
