The Winners of the Hanusol Contest for Peace: Ben Scherban, MD, and Kenneth Fung, MD

PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

After last year’s Chrismukkah Contest for Peace, won by Kenneth Fung, MD, as described in my column on January 9, 2025, at the last minute I created a contest for this year’s confluence of Hanukah and the Winter Solstice, with the combined name of Hanusol. I am pleased to announce that there were 2 cowinners selected. One is a newcomer, Ben Scherban, MD, and the other was the winner last year, Kenneth Fung, MD. Importantly, they come from 2 different religion and spirituality traditions, yet come to similar conclusions. As Dr Scherban concludes his essay:

“Perhaps world peace will come when we each learn to honor the particular perspectives of our own identity and the other, while reaching - hope against hope - toward a shared universality, however out of sight it may sometimes seem.”

Winner 1

Lighting the Menorah in a Divided World: The Confluence of Hanukkah and the Winter Solstice

Ben Scherban, MD

The confluence of Hanukkah and the winter solstice: it seems fated, almost as though the 2 should overlap every year. Isn’t Hanukkah about kindling light in the darkness? What could be more fitting than doing so in the “darkest” period, the longest night of the year? Surely this is a worthy first step towards world peace, even if only symbolically. The winter solstice is the turning point; we light the menorah and now things will start to brighten.

And yet, I cannot help but think to myself: Really? Things will start to brighten? With all the senseless slaughter and hatred, including terror on the very first night of Hanukkah? How many Hanukkahs have there been, how many candles lit, some even on winter solstices in years past, and still peace is nowhere to be found?

Why is there no peace? So many conflicts of the world today so obviously stem from the inability to the see other’s perspective. Am I not participating in precisely that blindness, when I think of the winter solstice, when it is actually just in the Northern Hemisphere? There is a whole Southern Hemisphere of other humans with a totally different experience of the same event. Am I going to universalize my own personal perspective and predicament? Maybe the winter solstice is just a symbol of this irreconcilable global divide.

It is worse, though. I must challenge my perspective further: Why is the dark so bad anyway? It is true humans are diurnal, but so many other mammals and animals are nocturnal. Unlike us, they see best in the dark. In fact, humans are currently polluting the nighttime with artificial light and harming animal life, because we are so blind to this. That is just the tip of the iceberg though (no pun intended) in how we are exploiting and destroying our animal kin and the environment. How can there be world peace without all life being cherished, without the planet itself being healed? Once again, what seemed to me so certain a metaphor, is just my own inescapable perspective, this time an anthropocentric one. At that point it seems almost hopeless to light a menorah at all.

We must start somewhere, though. As Rabbi Tarfon says in Ethics of our Fathers, “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” Peace will not come if we give up. Perhaps paradoxically, experiencing the solstice while celebrating Hanukkah reminds us not just that we are in our own contingent circumstances, with our own limited perspectives, but that underneath our separate identity is the rhythm of nature and the natural laws that we are all subject to on this earth. We really do share the same sun, even though that sun creates a longest day in one half of the world and a longest night in the other half.

I honor my Jewish heritage and light a menorah, because that is my historically conditioned way of making meaning. Living together on this planet seems to require starting imperfectly from wherever we actually stand. The solstice reminds me to be mindful that there are many other views, many other traditions, and that some of them may conflict with my own. The recognition of our uniqueness, and yet of our shared human experience; this very tension, between the particular and the universal, is the significance of the confluence of Hanukkah and the winter solstice. It is a tension dramatically present in Judaism precisely with the Maccabees, whose goal was to keep out cosmopolitan Hellenism and stick to the Judaism of their ancestors. Even so, their political descendants, the Hasmonean dynasty, gradually became Hellenized. Total insularity will not work, no matter how tempting it feels at times of heightened conflict. Perhaps world peace will come when we each learn to honor the particular perspectives of our own identity and of the other, while reaching—hope against hope—toward a shared universality, however out of sight it may sometimes seem.

Statement From Benjamin Scherban, MD

I am grateful for the opportunity to reflect on the timing and meaning of Hanukkah this year, and honored that my piece was chosen. Thank you to Dr Moffic for the invitation and for creating space for these reflections and conversations.

Religion and culture can inspire profound compassion and connection, yet they can also be invoked to justify harm or exclusion. As an American Jew of Iranian and Russian heritage, working on an inpatient unit serving the ultra-orthodox Jewish community, I am acutely aware of the rising currents of anti-Semitism today. At the same time, hatred and violence affect so many communities worldwide. My hope is that, as both psychiatrists and human beings, we can continue to cultivate understanding, empathy, and ultimately, peace. I hope this short essay contributes, in a small way, to that shared effort.

Dr Scherban works as an inpatient psychiatrist on the Westchester Behavioral Health “4N” Unit at NYP-Cornell, which specializes in caring for the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

Winner 2

Winter Solstice and Hanukkah: Light the Way to Peace

Kenneth Fung, MD

Last year, there was a confluence of Christmas and Hanukkah. This year, we experience the confluence of the winter solstice and Hanukkah. It is an occasion for pause, reflection, and deliberation on what this means in a world longing for peace.

The winter solstice marks the shortest day and the longest night. The darkness can be symbolic of tragedies and atrocities we still witness in our world. For some of us, it reflects trauma and turmoil in our own lives. For others, we see how adversities impact our loved ones. As health care professionals, we see this darkness playing out in our patients’ lives, in grief, anxiety, depression, and the feeling that life has narrowed with despair. As human beings, it can feel as though we are bombarded by world conflicts, mass shootings, other atrocities, natural disasters, and the march towards irreversible climate change. If there is symbolism to be found here, it may seem that this past year has been one long dark night.

Yet the winter solstice is celebrated because it marks a turning point. From this moment onward the days lengthen. The change is gradual, almost imperceptible at first, but it is real. The solstice is not a denial of darkness; it is an acknowledgment that darkness does not have the final word. It is a symbol of hope, and a time of gathering and celebration of what is to come.

The confluence of the winter solstice with Hanukkah resonates on many levels. Hanukkah commemorates the victory of the Maccabees over Greek occupiers and the rededication of the Temple, a turning point from a period of oppression towards renewed identity and hope. In remembrance of the miracle of oil that burned longer than expected, Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is celebrated with the lighting of candles over 8 days. Like the winter solstice, it carries the message that light can return, endure, and multiply.

The similarities between the winter solstice and Hanukkah are readily apparent. Yet the comparison may feel too easy. To say “darkness turns into light” may sound simplistic fanciful, or even cliché. But perhaps the deeper lesson is not that darkness disappears; it is that human beings can carry light within darkness and choose what we cultivate.

There can be light even within suffering as we move away from black-and-white thinking. In our hardest moments, we can still connect with our breath, our capacity to love, and our deep interconnections with each other. As in Yin and Yang, embedded in darkness is light. Within human suffering, there are untold stories of courage and compassion, just as even in celebration and joy, we can still carry grief. This more complex lens matters, because peace is not built on simplistic narratives. Conflict thrives on certainly, dehumanization, and “us versus them.” Peace requires the capacity to hold complexities and contradictions, to see the humanity, even in those we struggle with, and to avoid the trap of reducing anyone into stereotypes.

The confluence of Hanukkah and the winter solstice is a moment for reflection, celebration, and the reinstallation of hope. Hope lies in remembering that light has never been extinguished across the long history of human suffering, and that where there is cruelty, there are always those moved by compassion to act. Hope lies neither in simply waiting for things to “right themselves,” nor in meeting darkness with anger. Peace, like light, must be nourished, and cultivated, and advocated for. Choose compassion over judgment, empathy over blame, and invitation over accusation.

Peace depends on us. As we light our candle daily, we bring light into darkness. Instead of adding fuel to the fire with hatred or rage, our voices add actuals can illuminate what is unseen, stand with the vulnerable, and bring forth compassion, hope, and change, for ourselves, our families, our communities, and the world. We need to move from division toward unity. A single candle may not banish the night, and yet it is enough to kindle another. Compassion can be cultivated and spread, as each of ups has within us an inextinguishable capacity to be the spark of kindness and love, in darkness and in light, and across all seasons.

May we light the way to peace!

Statement From Kenneth Fung, MD

I am humbled to be chosen as one of the cowinners of this year’s contest, and grateful for the opportunity to join this chorus in wishing everyone peace. I would like to thank Dr Moffic for running this contest, and for his tireless efforts to promote dialogue and deeper understanding across divisions. As a cultural psychiatrist, I believe that across religious, cultural, and existential beliefs, treating others as would like to be treated can serve as a bedrock foundation for peace. In psychiatry, we are trained to name suffering, to diagnose, and to use labels, and we are also called to recognize the limits of labels, to meet one another beyond them, and to practice seeing ourselves in others. At the core, the answer across most religions, according to Rumi, is love. And as St. Francis of Assisi prayed, may we all be cultivating inner, peace, and letting it ripple and radiate outward, because the boundary between inner and outer life is often more porous than we assume. In closing, I wish peace and joy to every gentle reader these words may touch, directly or indirectly, as we all collectively pay it forward. Happy 2026!

Dr Fung is professor and director of Global Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, and a staff psychiatrist at Toronto Western Hospital, University Health Network.

Concluding Thoughts

Probably no closing comments are needed after those inspiring submissions and statements by Drs Scherban and Fung. I will follow with an Epilogue for next year, but will wait to do so in the next column. Hopefully, that they overlap in their visions will amplify the light and insight toward peace anywhere and everywhere.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.