This piece is co-published with In These Times.

Hanukkah — often a time of joy and abundance — is here. Throughout these eight days, many Jews eat delicious fried foods like potato pancakes and jelly donuts, sing, spin dreidels and celebrate the story of a bit of oil that lasted for eight nights, lighting an ancient temple. While Hanukkah is considered a minor holiday on the Jewish calendar (and its history is fraught with questions of militarism), we look forward to it each year as a winter festival that responds to the increasingly dark season with a celebration of light.

Yet we are entering this holiday of candlelight and feasts as people starve amid rapid genocide in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 16,200 people, with thousands more potentially dead under the rubble. Hanukkah is coming amid ceaseless heartbreak and horror.

So, on the fourth night of Hanukkah this year, I will be fasting alongside a group of Jews and others committed to Palestine solidarity. We’ve been fasting each Sunday since October 22 as part of the reignited Jewish Fast for Gaza. The fast is an international effort to show solidarity with Gazans and Palestinians everywhere, and to recommit ourselves to action for an end to Israel’s genocide, occupation, colonization and apartheid. We are fasting each week until there is a full and permanent ceasefire. After that, we will be fasting each month until Israel’s crushing, 16-year-old blockade on Gaza is lifted, because while a ceasefire is a first step to curtailing Israel’s mass violence, it’s certainly not the end.

Of course, there is no comparison between the minor discomfort of our weekly day of fasting and the pain and terror experienced by people in Gaza, but this act of solidarity is intended to keep Gazans’ suffering at the top of our minds as this horrific genocide persists.

“A communal fast is held in times of crisis, both as an expression of mourning and a call to repentance,” Rabbi Brant Rosen, one of Jewish Fast for Gaza’s cofounders (and my rabbi), tells me about how the fast is grounded in Jewish tradition. On each fast day, we are rededicating ourselves to taking action throughout the following week in solidarity with our Palestinian co-strugglers. So, going into this season, we remember the meaning of the word Hanukkah: “rededication.”

Taking action has meant different things for the various folks participating in the fast, from the U.S. to New Zealand, Singapore to Canada. Together, and with other formations, many fast participants have organized vigils, collaborated on movement art projects, joined marches, used social media to inform our communities, participated in civil disobedience and engaged in tough conversations. We build connection and solidarity with each other, too, as we’re fasting across state and national boundaries, through messaging apps and social media. This community-building helps us collectively use the fast period as a chance to reflect and double down on our commitments to liberation: As Aotearoa (New Zealand) faster Marilyn Garson — who has spent fast days drafting Palestine solidarity remarks to deliver at the New Zealand parliament — has wished the group, “May your fast be meaningful and radical!”

Through our fast, we’re recognizing the need to commit to disruption on every front, including in our daily lives. Each Sunday as we move through the........

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