The massacre at the menorah lighting in Sydney had been on my mind since the beginning of Chanukah, and on the fifth night a wave of sadness overcame me. It was an overwhelming sadness, and when I arrived home that night, I told my kids, “Let’s light the menorah. I’m feeling very sad right now, but I think lighting the menorah will make me feel happier.”

After we lit the menorah, one of my kids asked me curiously, “Did lighting the menorah make you feel happier?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m still sad, but now I’m also happy.”

“How can you feel happy and sad at the same time?” he wanted to know.

“I didn’t know,” I admitted, “but somehow G‑d made our souls big enough to hold happiness and sadness at the same time.”

My son understood. Kids understand this better than we do.

Joyous and Broken

The interaction with my son reminded me of a story that I recently heard from a friend of mine.

When the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, agreed to succeed his father-in-law as rebbe in 1951, a group of chassidim in Israel gathered to celebrate the occasion.

Most had never met the new Rebbe. There was one chassid at the gathering who had met the Rebbe years earlier (in Paris, if I remember correctly), and the other chassidim asked him to describe what the new Rebbe was like.

He looked at his fellow chassidim and told them, “Our new Rebbe is a joyous—and broken—man of G‑d”.

Joyous and broken.

Broken from the pain of the exile, and joyous from the closeness of the Redemption.

A Teaching Moment

After we lit the menorah, we turned up the music and began to dance. My kids are quite the dancers, and dancing with them after we light the menorah is one of the great joys in life.

After dancing for a few minutes, my five-year-old son stopped dancing, looked me in the eye, and asked, “Did a bad guy kill a good guy somewhere far away?”

He had overheard the adults discussing the terror attack and was trying to grasp such a tragedy with his pure, innocent mind.

I looked at my son and told him, “Yes, a bad man did kill a good man somewhere very far away.”

Then I stood there for a moment, not knowing what else to say.

I saw joy and sadness in my son’s eyes. The joy of Chanukah, and menorahs, and presents, and donuts. And the sadness of understanding that evil exists, even if it’s somewhere very far away.

I realized at that moment that my job as a parent is to teach my child that the world is a good place even when bad things happen. I have the responsibility to introduce him to a beautiful world even though there are moments when it feels broken.

At that moment, standing together, I didn’t know how to explain all of this to my son. I didn’t have the words. There are no words. But I did know the right thing to do. I knew there was only one way to teach my son to celebrate light in a world that sometimes feels dark.

I turned the music back on and we danced together, my son and I, for a little while longer.