On a cold night in 1944, Auschwitz prisoner Yitzhak Cohen from the Greek city of Salonika contemplated suicide.
The young man could no longer bear the misery, hunger, hard labor and death that constantly surrounded him.
When someone asked him how one could commit suicide in Birkenau, Cohen replied: "You walk up to the electrified fence and hug it."
Back in 1944, when Cohen was on his way to the fence, he heard loud singing coming from the building that housed the Sonderkommando, work units tasked with disposing of the bodies taken from the camp's gas chambers.
Very quickly he recognized the song as "Ma'oz Tzur", a Jewish liturgical poem sung on the holiday of Hanukkah. Cohen realized it was the first day of the Jewish festival.
Through a foggy window, he saw the dancing flame of a little candle, which the Sonderkommando had lit. He froze in place and was unable to go through with the suicide.
That Hanukkah candle and the song made him hopeful again. Cohen would eventually survive the death camp and migrate to Israel, where he built a home and raised a family.
On Thursday evening, when I will be looking at the first candle of Hanukkah burning on the Menorah on my windowsill, expecting the seven others to follow, I will remember that spark of hope.
The first candle is the light of hope and belief in salvation against all odds. The light has followed the Jewish people for thousands of years, even through the harshest of times, and was never abandoned.
When there was no Menorah or candle to light, Jews used potatoes, shoe boxes, rubber bands in tree trunks, strings from blankets, machine oil and even scraps of margarine. With the flame from that light rising to the heavens, our hearts burned with hope for deliverance.
That is why on this Hanukkah, in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic refusing to leave us be, we will experience again the power of millions of tiny lights.
It is no coincidence that the story of the Miracle of Hanukkah revolves around a tiny cruse of oil, which was meant to last one day, miraculously lasted for eight whole days of the festival.
A true believer knows, had God wished so, he could have given the Maccabees eight cruses, but instead taught them the valuable lesson on what could be achieved with having a bare minimum.
If we want our flame to keep burning, we must invest our time and energy into making it last. With enough effort, faith and determination, a small flame could destroy the darkness.
Hanukkah in this coronavirus-hit year will be different, without the usual festivities we have become accustomed to. But we must keep things in proportion. We are from the atrocities experienced by our ancestors during the Holocaust.
We cannot partake in massive parties, meet with our extended families and risk the public's health, while sufganiyot (a round jelly doughnut eaten in Israel and around the world on Hanukkah) should be eaten outside on a park bench or straight out of the oil-stained cardboard box.
But, we can still observe the tradition, while adhering to the health restrictions, as hard and upsetting as they may be.
Rabbinical scriptures emphasize the tradition of lighting of the candles is the time of introspection, joy, hope and salvation. So, let's turn the tiny lights inside our homes into moments of jubilation for ourselves and think on how we can light the hearts of those who are all alone on this holiday.
How will we light up the hearts of the elderly, parents, families who had to go through two lockdowns, teachers, health care workers and those battling the disease? The relatives and friends of those who have succumbed to the virus, which has already taken nearly 3,000 lives?
All of them are heroes. We must now stop the infighting and think on how to bring light into each other's lives.
If a single candle can save a young man in Birkenau, think of how much good those lights can do for us now.
We must not forget to pray for miracles we so desperately need right now.