A Collection of Hanukkah Poems

This is one of those posts I just love updating each year. It’s a collection of Hanukkah poems—uplifting Hanukkah poems, silly Hanukkah poems, Hanukkah poems I’ve loved for years, Hanukkah poems I’ve only just read for the first time, and, well, a few that weren’t technically intended to be Hanukkah poems, but that just plain work anyway. There are some about the holiday itself, yes…like Marla Baker’s “A Hanukkah Prayer for a Time of Darkness,” which feels especially relevant right now. But there are others that are a little more subtle—poems that will guide you through the themes and feelings that make this season so special. Walt Whitman’s aptly-titled “Miracles” fits beautifully into that category (and is a personal favorite!). Of course, it wouldn’t be a true list of Hanukkah poems without a few mentions of Maccabees and latkes and candles. You’ll find those things, too.

I hope you love these little odes to Hanukkah, and I hope they bring a little extra something special to your celebrations this year—or Instagram captions, or letters to friends, or personal meditations. Drop me a line on Instagram if you find one in particular that speaks to you! And if you’re a fan of what you’ve found here and want more, I recommend Marge Piercy’s The Art of Blessing the Day—a veritable treasure trove of Hanukkah poems, Passover poems, and other poems with a Jewish theme.

Season of Skinny Candles
by Marge Piercy

A row of tall skinny candles burns
quickly into the night
air, the shames raised
over the rest
for its hard work.

Darkness rushes in
after the sun sinks
like a bright plug pulled.
Our eyes drown in night
thick as ink pudding.

When even the moon
starves to a sliver
of quicksilver
the little candles poke
holes in the blackness.

A time to eat fat
and oil, a time to gamble
for pennies and gambol

---

Blessings for Chanukah
by Jessie E. Sampter

Blessed art thou, O God our Lord,
Who made us holy with his word,
And told us on this feast of light
To light one candle more each night.

(Because when foes about us pressed
     To crush us all with death or shame,
The Lord his priests with courage blest
To strike and give his people rest
And in the House that he loved best
     Relight our everlasting flame.)

Blest art Thou, the whole world’s King,
Who did so wonderful a thing
For our own fathers true and bold
At this same time in days of old!

---

Chanukah Dreams
Judith Ish-Kishor

Chanukah I think most dear
Of the feasts of all the year.
I could sit and watch all night
Every twinkling baby light.

Father lights the first one—green;
Hope it always seems to mean;
Hope and Strength to glow anew
In the heart of every Jew.

Jacob lights the blue for Truth.
Pink for Love is lit by Ruth.
Then the white one falls to me,
White that shines for Purity.

How the story of those days
Fills my wondering heart with praise!
And in every flame one sees
The heroic Maccabees.

---

Chanukah Lights Tonight
by Steven Schneider

Our annual prairie Chanukah party—
latkes, kugel, cherry blintzes.
Friends arrive from nearby towns
and dance the twist to “Chanukah Lights Tonight,”
spin like a dreidel to a klezmer hit.

The candles flicker in the window.
Outside, ponderosa pines are tied in red bows.
If you squint,
the neighbors’ Christmas lights
look like the Omaha skyline.

The smell of oil is in the air.
We drift off to childhood
where we spent our gelt
on baseball cards and matinees,
cream sodas and potato knishes.

No delis in our neighborhood,
only the wind howling over the crushed corn stalks.
Inside, we try to sweep the darkness out,
waiting for the Messiah to knock,
wanting to know if he can join the party.

---

Miracles
by Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the
        ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

---

Poppies
by Mary Oliver

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn’t a place
in this world that doesn’t

sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage

shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,

when it’s done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—

and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?

---

The Coming of Light
by Mark Strand

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.

---

The Feast of Lights
by Emma Lazarus

Kindle the taper like the steadfast star
Ablaze on evening’s forehead o’er the earth,
And add each night a lustre till afar
An eightfold splendor shine above thy hearth.
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn;
Chant psalms of victory till the heart takes fire,
The Maccabean spirit leap new-born.

Remember how from wintry dawn till night,
Such songs were sung in Zion, when again
On the high altar flamed the sacred light,
And, purified from every Syrian stain,
The foam-white walls with golden shields were hung,
With crowns and silken spoils, and at the shrine,
Stood, midst their conqueror-tribe, five chieftains sprung
From one heroic stock, one seed divine.

Five branches grown from Mattathias’ stem,
The Blessed John, the Keen-Eyed Jonathan,
Simon the fair, the Burst-of Spring, the Gem,
Eleazar, Help of-God; o’er all his clan
Judas the Lion-Prince, the Avenging Rod,
Towered in warrior-beauty, uncrowned king,
Armed with the breastplate and the sword of God,
Whose praise is: ‘He received the perishing.’

They who had camped within the mountain-pass,
Couched on the rock, and tented neath the sky,
Who saw from Mizpah’s heights the tangled grass
Choke the wide Temple-courts, the altar lie
Disfigured and polluted-who had flung
Their faces on the stones, and mourned aloud
And rent their garments, wailing with one tongue,
Crushed as a wind-swept bed of reeds is bowed,

Even they by one voice fired, one heart of flame,
Though broken reeds, had risen, and were men,
They rushed upon the spoiler and o’ercame,
Each arm for freedom had the strength of ten.
Now is their mourning into dancing turned,
Their sackcloth doffed for garments of delight,
Week-long the festive torches shall be burned,
Music and revelry wed day with night.

Still ours the dance, the feast, the glorious Psalm,
The mystic lights of emblem, and the Word.
Where is our Judas? Where our five-branched palm?
Where are the lion-warriors of the Lord?
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
Sound the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn,
Chant hymns of victory till the heart take fire,
The Maccabean spirit leap new-born!

---

A Hanukkah Prayer for a Time of Darkness
by Marla Baker

Creator of All,
In the beginning You made the night sky luminous with the light of the moon and the stars and
You made the daytime bright with the light of the sun and
Saw that it was good.

And You created human beings in Your own image, with capacity
To distinguish dark from light, with capacity
To create holy sparks, see into the shadows and
Shine light where it is dark.
And You saw that it was very good.

Creator of All and Rock of Ages,
In the time of the Maccabees once more You worked a miracle of light,
Permitting our ancestors to rededicate holy space.
And it lasted eight days and eight nights.
Creator of All and Rock of Ages,

In the dark of night, at the darkest time of year
We light candles in remembrance of the miracle,
One more each night until there are eight.

Creator of All and Rock of Ages,
Too many lights have been extinguished.
The world has grown too dark.
Creator of Light and Dark,
Teach us once more to see into the shadows,
To shed our light in all the dark corners and to
Create holy sparks for all humankind
So that once more we can say
It is very good.

---

Legendary Lights
by Alter Ableson

O, the legendary light,
Gleaming goldenly in night
     Like the stars above,
Beautiful, like lights in dream,
Eight, the taper-flames that stream
     All one glory and one love.

In our Temple, magical—
Memories, now tragical—
Holy hero-hearts aflame
With a glory more than fame;
There where a shrine is every sod,
     Every grave, God’s golden ore,
With a paean whose rhyme to God,
     Lit these lamps of yore.

Lights, you are a living dream,
Faith and bravery you beam,
     Youth and dawn and May.
Would your beam were more than dream,
Would the light and love you stream,
     Stirred us, spurred us, aye!

Fabled memories of flame,
Till the beast in man we tame,
Tyrants bow to truth, amain,
Brands and bullets yield to brain,
Guns to God, and shells to soul,
Hounds to heart resign the role,
Pillared lights of liberty,
In your fairy flames, we’ll see
Faith’s and freedom’s Phoenix-might,
The Omnipotence of Right.

---

Elijah vs. Santa
by Richard Michelson

Weight advantage: Santa. Sugar and milk
at every stop, the stout man shimmies
down one more chimney, sack of desire
chuting behind, while Elijah, skinny
and empty-handed, slips in invisible as
a once favored, since disgraced uncle,
through the propped open side door.
Inside, I’ve been awaiting a miracle
since 1962, my 9 year-old self slouching
on this slip-covered sofa, Manischewitz
stashed beneath the cushion. Where
are the fire-tinged horses, the chariots
to transport me? Where is the whirlwind
and brimstone? Instead, our dull-bladed
sleigh rusts in the storage bin beneath
the building’s soot-covered flight   
of cellar stairs. Come back to me father,
during December’s perfect snowfall
and pull me once more up Schenck
and down Pitkin, where the line wraps
around Church Hall. Show me, again,
the snapshot of the skull-capped boy
on Santa’s lap. Let me laugh this time
and levitate like a magician’s assistant,
awed by my own weightlessness. Give me
the imagination to climb the fire escape
and look up toward the Godless Heavens
and to marvel at the ordinary sky.

---

Light the Festive Candles
by Aileen Lucia Fisher

Light the first of eight tonight—
the farthest candle to the right.

Light the first and second, too,
when tomorrow’s day is through.

Then light three, and then light four—
every dusk one candle more

Till all eight burn bright and high,
honoring a day gone by

When the Temple was restored,
rescued from the Syrian lord,

And an eight-day feast proclaimed—
The Festival of Lights—well named

To celebrate the joyous day
when we regained the right to pray
to our one God in our own way.

---

Letters Spoken in Wind
by Rachel Galvin

Today we walked the inlet Nybøl Nor
remembering how to tread on frozen snow.
Ate cold sloeberries

that tasted of wind—a white pucker—
spat their sour pits in snow. Along
the horizon, a line of windmills dissolved

into a white field. Your voice
on the phone, a gesund auf dein keppele
you blessed my head. Six months now

since I’ve seen you. There are
traces of you here, your curls still dark
and long, your woven dove,

the room you stayed in: send your syllables,
I am swimming below the tidemark.
Words shed overcoats, come

to me undressed, slender-limbed, they have no
letters yet. It is the festival
of lights, I have no

candles. I light one for each night,
pray on a row
of nine lighthouses.

---

Honorary Jew
by John Repp

The first year, I grated potatoes, chopped onions
& watched. The second year, I fed all but the eggs

into the machine & said I’ll do the latkes & did,
my pile of crisp delights borne to the feast by the wife

who baffled me, our books closed, banter hushed,
money useless in the apartment—house, my in-laws called it,

new-wave thump at one end, ganja reek at the other—
in which she’d knelt to tell the no one who listened

no more no      no more no    a three-year-old mouthing
the essential prayer. The uncle made rich by a song

stacked three & dug in, talking critics & Koch—
everyone crunching now, slathering applesauce, slurping tea—

talking Rabin & Mehitabel, radio & Durrell,
how a song is a poem or it isn’t a song

& vice-versa. Done, he pointed a greasy finger
at me, said You can’t be a goy. You—I say it

for all to hear—are an honorary Jew!
which, impossible dream, my latkes lived up to

for five more years. Then the wailing.
Then the dust.

---

The Miracle
by Philip M. Raskin

The Rabbi tells his old, old tale,
     The pupils seated round.
“…And thus, my boys, no holy oil
     In the Temple could be found.

The heathens left no oil to light
     The Lord’s eternal lamp;
At last one jar, one single jar,
     Was found with the high priest’s stamp.

Its oil could only last one day—
     But God hath wondrous ways;
For lo! a miracle occurred:
     It burned for eight whole days.”

The tale was ended, but the boys,
     All open-eyed and dumb,
Sat listening still, as though aware
     Of stranger things to come.

Just wait, my boys, permit me, pray,
     The liberty to take;
Your Rabbi—may he pardon me—
     Has made a slight mistake.

Not eight days, but two thousand years
     That jar of oil did last,
To quell its wondrous flames availed
     No storm, no flood, no blast.

But this is not yet all, my boys:
     The miracle just starts.
This flame is kindling light and hope
     In countless gloomy hearts.

And in our long and starless night,
     Lest we should go astray,
It beacon-like sheds floods of light,
     And eastwards points the way,

Where light will shine on Zion’s hill,
     As in the days of old.
The miracle is greater, boys,
     Than what your Rabbi told.

---

Chanukah
by Marion Hartog

Down-trodden ’neath the Syrian heel
     Did Zion’s sceptre lie;
Her shrine, where once God’s glory flung
Its radiance, now wildly rung
     With pagan revelry.

And in the Temple’s secret place,
     Where once the High Priest bowed
In homage to the King of kings,
The vilest of all earthly things
     Was worshipped by the crowd.

And still the flaming altar smoked,
     The priest was at his post,
Commanding Israel’s sons to pray
To images of stone and clay,
     Or swell the holocaust.

Seven glorious brethren there had stood,
     Unflinching, side by side,
And, sooner than yield up their faith,
Had dared the faggot’s burning breath,
     And willing martyrs died.

Not unavenged and not in vain
     Fell that undaunted race;
For Judas, with his patriot band,
Drove the oppressors from the land,
     And cleansed the holy place.

Then the Menorah once again
     Illumed the holy shrine,
One little flask of sacred oil,
Saved unpolluted from the spoil
     Supplied the light divine.

Full twenty centuries have rolled
     The gulf of Time adown,
Since those heroic Maccabees,
The victims of Epiphanes,
     Assumed the martyr’s crown.

And still the Festival of Lights
     Recalls those deeds of yore
That make our history’s page sublime
     And live for evermore.

---

We Shall Forever Celebrate Light
by Suzanne Sabransky

For three long years they hid in the caves.
The hillsides filled with the sound of their battles.
The voices of warriors, unleashing their cries of anger
As with sword and shield, they fought against tyranny.

We were under the thumb of Antiochus;
Our Temple had been sacked, looted and defiled,
We could no longer practice our religion,
We were denied the right to be Jews. 

But then came the Maccabees…
Mattisyahu and his five sons.
We remember them as religious men,
Righteous men, fighting for our way of life. 

They were led by Judah.
Not Judah of the Twelve Tribes,
But the one who was his namesake…
He who held the strength of his forebear
And was girded by conviction to stand fast and to fight. 

Judah, whose very name means Jew,
Rose up, and together with his brothers, defeated Antiochus.
They reclaimed our Temple, cleansed and reconsecrated it,
Knowing that the nertamid would soon brightly shine. 

Though there was not enough oil for even one day, they relit that lamp…
For eight days and nights, its illumination did not dim.
The Temple had truly become a house of prayer once more
And the Maccabees gave praise to the Giver of Light and Life.

And that long ago flame has never died…
We know it today in the light of the hanukkiyah,
Beautiful candles brilliantly burning, filling us with warmth,
Becoming shining rays of hope for the future.

Hanukkah: The Festival of Lights.
It is a joyous celebration of our journey
From darkness into brightness.
The telling of a story we all know so well… 

And it gently reminds us that this journey,
Out of darkness and back into the light,
Is one which never ends…
We will repeat it, again, and again, and again, 

As each day, another candle is added,
Each night is filled with more light than the one before.
A single candle provides us light; combined they light our way,
Pushing back the darkness of our souls, and illuminating our lives. 

This holiday reminds us; darkness lives ceaselessly at the edge of light,
Yet light has strength, and the power to overcome darkness.
Our people have always had the strength to overcome darkness,
And even in the darkest of days, we shall forever celebrate light. 

---

Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent
by John Milton

When I consider how my light is spent,
   Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
   And that one Talent which is death to hide
   Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
   My true account, lest he returning chide;
   “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
   I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
   Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
   Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
   And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
   They also serve who only stand and wait.”

---

Light breaks where no sun shines
by Dylan Thomas

Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides;
And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads,
The things of light
File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.

A candle in the thighs
Warms youth and seed and burns the seeds of age;
Where no seed stirs,
The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,
Bright as a fig;
Where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs.

Dawn breaks behind the eyes;
From poles of skull and toe the windy blood
Slides like a sea;
Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky
Spout to the rod
Divining in a smile the oil of tears.

Night in the sockets rounds,
Like some pitch moon, the limit of the globes;
Day lights the bone;
Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin
The winter’s robes;
The film of spring is hanging from the lids.

Light breaks on secret lots,
On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the rain;
When logics dies,
The secret of the soil grows through the eye,
And blood jumps in the sun;
Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.

---

Hanukkah Lights
by Philip M. Raskin

I kindled my eight little candles,
     My Hanukkah candles, and lo!
Fair visions and dreams half-forgotten
     Were rising of years long ago.

I musingly gazed at my candles;
     Meseemed in their quivering flames
In golden, in fiery letters
     I read the old, glorious names;

The names of our heroes immortal,
     The noble, the brave, and the true;
A battlefield saw I in vision,
     Where many were conquered by few;

And mute lay the Syrian army,
     Judea’s proud foe, in the field;
And Judas, the brave Maccabaeus,
     I saw in his helmet and shield.

His eyes shone like bright stars of heaven,
     Like music resounded his voice:
“Brave comrades, we fought and we conquered,
     Now let us in God’s name rejoice!

“We conquered; but know, my brave comrades,
     No triumph is due to the sword;
Remember our motto and watchword,
     ‘For the people and towns of the Lord.’”

He spoke, and from all the four corners
     An echo repeated each word;
The woods and the mountains re-echoed:
     “For the people and towns of the Lord.”

And swiftly the message spread, calling:
     “Judea, Judea is free!
Rekindled the lamp in the Temple,
     Rekindled each bosom with glee!”

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *  

My Hanukkah candles soon flickered,
     Around me was darkness of night;
But deep in my soul I felt shining
     A heavenly, wonderful light.