When my uncle was a small child, he once woke in the middle of the night, gripped by fear of the dark. Trembling, he ran to his mother, my grandmother, and said, “Mommy, I’m afraid.” She embraced him, soothed him, and then gently told him, “Go back to bed and remember: be afraid of nothing but G-d.”

Calmed, he returned to sleep. But half an hour later, he was back shaking. “What are you afraid of now?” she asked. He answered simply, “I’m afraid of G-d.”

That story captures something deeply human.

We all encounter nights in our lives—moments of darkness, loneliness, uncertainty—that make us tremble. Darkness has a powerful hold because it conceals, it obscures, it feels mysterious and threatening.

The mystics ask: Is darkness merely the absence of light or does it have its own substance? Either way, it confronts us and demands a response.

Please join Rabbi Simon Jacobson in this fundamental conversation about facing those darker corners of our lives and discovering a profound truth: even in the dark, you are never alone. And that ultimately, darkness is the greatest light of them all.