“Here,” Rachel said, handing me a box of matches and the unlit candle resting in a tiny silver goblet. “Can you light the havdalah candle?”

The silver was cold in my hands, yet warm and familiar against my spirit. The braided candle sat slightly askew in the little rectangular cup, which looked old, and well used. I wondered how many generations it had seen, how many brachos rang like bells against the curve of the metal. Wine and tea is passed around among our minyan, and I strike the match. Nine wicks catch aflame. We bless wine, breathe in besamim, and turn our fingernails towards the fire. Smoke curls towards the sky as I plunge the flames of the candle into a cup brimming with wine.

Shavua tov. Shavua tov. Shavua tov. A good week, a week of peace, may gladness reign and joy increase.

We gather with plates full in Rachel’s tiny living room. We’re squeezed on the couch, sprawled on the ground, and sitting atop stray dining room chairs. To my delight, the conversation turns to Molly Crabapple’s new book, “Here Where We Live is Our Country.” Four out of the ten of us had already read or were currently reading this meticulously researched book on the Jewish Labor Bund.

Stories are swapped about great grandparents’ ties to labor organizing, secular Jewish movements, Yiddish revivalism, and diasporism. “I know that many in my family were and are zionists,” Sonya remarks, turning the words carefully over her tongue. “But knowing where my lineage is from, I think it’s just as likely that some of my ancestors were also Bundists, radicals, and labor organizers. That feels so special to me.”

I think of my own great grandfather, a Puerto Rican union organizer who owned a record store in the Bronx. After his daughter, my grandma, passed away last year, we found piles of documents stuffed in folders and old books, paper trails in both Spanish and English narrating a story of working class struggle. These stories, unearthed from the genizah of my grandmother’s closet, shook a century of dust from tales of the fight for liberation

One of my favorite things about Torah and Talmud is that it’s not the work of one singular author at one point in time. Rather, it’s a tapestry of generations of hands doing their very best to write what they know of spirit and story. As the sun sinks in the sky, our knees and elbows brushing against those of our neighbors, tales of revolutionary struggle fill the narrow spaces between us. A thousands year old group project. Hands over hands over hands over ink on parchment. A sacred transfer of knowledge, story, and struggle.