We have come to banish darkness

Wonderful story in the Miami Herald about the celebration of Hanukkah in a very unlikely place - one of Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces. bq. "Banu hoshekh legharesh" -- We have come to banish darkness. Thus begins a famous Hanukkah song, and no phrase better encapsulates the holiday's deeper meanings. This year, as a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq, several colleagues and I lit a Hanukkah lamp and uttered those words in a place that had never before heard them: the former presidential palace of Saddam Hussein, in the capital city of a new and free Iraq. bq. One is hard-pressed to imagine a holiday whose themes are more resonant with the events unfolding here: a spectacular military victory, the defeat of a despot, the resanctification of what had been desecrated. Truly, the banishment of darkness. and more: bq. This Hanukkah in Baghdad, in a large and lavish building, the gentle glow of a Hanukkah lamp shimmered throughout a cavernous room. One of the objects caught in its radiance is a gilded chair that used to serve as the tyrant's throne, and the palace in which it sits used to be the capital building of his reign of terror. Today, the chair is empty, and the palace houses the apparatus of Iraqi reconstruction. bq. As my colleagues and I remember the Maccabee bravery of yesteryear and the resanctification of the Temple, we pray also for the brave and indefatigable people of Iraq, who day by day are rekindling their flames of hope and resanctifying their great land. They are banishing the darkness, and we wish them Godspeed. Wonderful!