A recent newspaper throws more light on candles for me. Ernest Levy was held in a concentration camp during World War 2. One day he spotted a sardine can being contemptuously thrown down by a guard. He retrieved the can and used what little oil remained in it to produce some light for the festival of Chanukkah which was coming up.

Chanukkah falls his year on 11 December. It commemorates a successful revolt against Antiochus IV over two thousand years ago which was followed by the rededication of the desecrated Temple. The menorah (candelabra) was supposed to burn through the night there every night but they had very little oil - only enough for a day - but miraculously it went on shining for eight days and this is the wonder remembered at the weeklong festival to this day.

Ernest Levy survived seven concentration camps including Auschwitz and Belsen and later settled in Glasgow becoming a cantor in the city’s synagogues. He died this summer aged 84. He used to say that even in the midst of terrible darkness it was always possible to find a light of humanity that would shine out.

Let’s not forget that Jesus was born to a Jewish family in a country under foreign rule. Ernest Levy had personal experience of tyranny also. He was asked from time to time where God was in Belsen and replied: “He was there down in the dust with me. As the psalmists say, ‘I am one with you in trouble’.”

Christians see Jesus as the inextinguishable light of the world who makes God’s presence and character real to us. Surely Ernest Levy was part of God’s light for the world too?