Hannuqah is gay! Maybe Chanuka is even “be gay, do crime,” because back in the day, we got to steal seven extra days out of a one-day supply of oil.

But its queerness shines on many levels.

For instance, you get to pick your own name, or at least its spelling and pronunciation, and be fluid about shaking it up when the Xanikah spirit moves you. You can play with the candles, creating fabulous or sensual combinations of colors, or lighting them in all sorts of transgressive orders—left to right or reverse, few to many or reverse, or pure chaos. You can dress up your menorah(s) for each night out, or self-determine what to top (or bottom) a latke with.

More than anything, though, Channuqa urges us to resist assimilation in the queerest of ways, smashing binaries. It blesses the light and dark, but especially the liminal spaces that let us see all the myriad possibilities between light and dark, such as when the radiant light of a candle flirtatiously embraces the now-radiant darkness.

Yet a shadow has been cast on that fabulousness this 5783 year—a shadow that isn’t new, but has gotten more ominous.

We see in Hanuka’s flame what US Christian fascism 2022 is trying to extinguish, and in heartbreaking moments, succeeds at extinguishing: drag shows, queer books, gender-affirming surgery, trans and queer life, and so much more. We see Club Q, and mourn our dead there. We surround our menorahs with DIY altars to our many other dead, who too often are Black trans women and queer youths—murdered, directly or indirectly, by fascism, which demands rigid binaries and heteropatriarchal bodies.

We see our fire too. The ways we bash back with, say, community self-defense, vigils, wound-care trainings, and huge dance-party-antifascist-demos in the streets—gay fucking pride versus proud boys and their ilk.

This Xanukah, may we rededicate ourselves to queer joy, and all the nonbinary ways that gender, sex, and sexuality light up the world, even as we know we’ll need many miracles to outlast the fascists.

(photos: my night three rainbow-colored candles in front of @elijahjanka’s art depicting early 1900s’ queer+trans joy via a drawing of five people borrowed from an ethnographic photo for the @radicaljewishcalendar; “queer or nothing” wheatpaste, drawn as a black+white heart with a splash of pink, seen in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal, summer 5782)

#AllChanukahsAreBeautiful
#FreilachHanukkaNotFascism
#TryJewishAnarchismForLife