At Hanukkah, a celebration of eternal light

By Alan Avery-Peck, College of the Holy Cross My earliest religious memory is of our synagogue’s Ner Tamid: the decorative electric lamp that hangs in every sanctuary, above the ark holding the Torah scrolls. This lamp, I learned from parents and teachers, was an eternal light – the literal meaning of the Hebrew term Ner Tamid. This meant it had to remain lit continuously. It could never go out. I’m not certain that, at 7 years old, I quite understood what this lamp symbolized. But I do know that the idea of its being “eternal” concerned me. I was troubled by what my personal experience had taught me about light bulbs: They burn out. A Ner Tamid illuminates the area above the ark in the synagogue, in front of a display of the Ten Commandments. Steve Allen/Stockbyte via Getty Images If this lamp needed to be eternal – and if, as I eventually surmised, it had something to do with God – then what terrible thing would happen when it burned out? Or if the power went out in a storm? These thoughts disturbed me. It was as though everything the synagogue meant to me as a child hung upon...