When things are hard, the remembering is different. The joy is different. It wells up. It is held at the depth of an aquifer. It is joy forged over time. It is rooted in something beyond words. Something sacred. It is a deep joy that lures you toward those you those you love.

Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel described a memory of a fellow prisoner trading a ration of bread for materials with which to piece together a makeshift menorah during Hanukkah. Shocked that the man would trade something so essential to his survival, Wiesel asked him, “Hanukkah in Auschwitz?” And the man replied, “Especially in Auschwitz.” On a day when the lived realities of suffering were beyond reckoning, even there, the rites and rituals of prayer and remembrance were so life-giving, so life-affirming, that one might trade bread for candle wax, food for one candle lit against the darkness.