SPEAK TO AARON AND TELL HIM: WHEN YOU RAISE UP THE LAMPS, THE SEVEN LAMPS WILL GIVE LIGHT IN FRONT OF THE MENORAH.

(Bamidbar 8:2)

 

When you raise up the lamps. "Why does the section dealing with the Menorah follow [the section which tells us of] the dedication-offerings of the princes? The reason is that when Aaron saw the dedication-offerings of the princes, he became disheartened because neither he nor his tribe participated with them in the dedication; whereupon the Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: 'By your life! Your contribution is [of] greater [significance] than theirs, for you will kindle and trim the lamps every morning and evening.'" This is Rashi's language from a midrash aggadah.

But it is not clear to me why God consoled Aaron [by reminding him of his function] in lighting the lamps, rather than consoling him with the burning of the incense every morning and evening, which is [the specific function of his] with which Scripture praised him, as it is said, they shall put incense before you (Devarim 33:10). Or [God could have reminded him of] all the offerings [performed only by his descendants], and the meal-offering of baked cakes [which is brought daily by the high Priest personally], and the service on Yom Kippur which is only valid if done by him [i.e., Aaron and subsequent High Priests], and [by the fact that it is] he who enters into the innermost part of the Sanctuary, and he is the holy one of the Eternal (Psalms 106:16), standing in His Temple to minister unto Him, and to bless in His Name (Devarim 10:8), and his entire tribe minister to our God! Moreover, what reason was there for Aaron's uneasiness of mind [upon seeing the offerings of the princes]? Was not his [dedication-] offering greater than that of the [other] princes, for he offered up during those days - all the [seven] days of the initiation [of the priests] - many offerings? And if you reply that [he was disheartened because] his offerings were obligatory and he had been commanded to bring them, and therefore he was dispirited because he did not bring a voluntary offering for the dedication of the altar as they did - [this cannot be so] because the lighting of the lamps with which He consoled Aaron was also a duty which he had been commanded! [Therefore what consolation did Aaron derive for not sharing in the voluntary offerings by being given a commandment which was obligatory?]

But the intention of this homiletic text is to derive an allusion from this section [of the Torah] to the Hanukah ["dedication"] of lights which occurred in the period of the Second Temple through Aaron and his sons, namely [Matityahu] the Hasmonean, who was High Priest, and his sons...

And I have further seen in the Yelamdeinu and also in the Midrash Rabbah: "The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses: Go and tell Aaron - 'Fear not! You are destined for something of greater importance than this. The offerings are brought only as long as the Sanctuary is in existence, but your lamps will give light in front of the Menorah forever; and all the blessings that I have given you with which to bless My children will never come to an end.'" Now it is an obvious fact that when the Sanctuary is not in existence and the offerings are not brought because of its destruction, the lighting of the lamps [of the Menorah in the Sanctuary] also ceases [so what does the midrash mean in saying that God promised Aaron that the lighting of the lamps would never stop]! Therefore [we must say] that the Sages of the midrash were alluding to the lights of the dedication of the Hasmoneans, which applies [on the festival of Hanukah] even after the destruction of the Sanctuary, in our exile. Similarly the priestly blessing which is also juxtaposed to the dedication-offerings of the princes applies forever. Thus the rabbis interpreted the proximity to the chapter of the dedication-offerings of the princes of both [the section] before and after it, in honor of Aaron who was not included with the princes [in those dedication-offerings]

(RaMBaN Bamidbar 8:2, following Chavel translation)

 

"To light candles in all the worlds - that is Shabbat" (Zelda)

Dalia Marx

For three very special bat-mitzvah girls: Ofir, Hanna, and Rotem.

Our parasha opens with God’s command to Moses that he should tell Aaron: "When you raise up the lamps, the seven lamps will give light in front of the Menora" (Bamidbar 8:2). The command is not about raising up the lamps, but rather that the lamps should give forth light. There would appear to be a problem with a demand that is made of the lamps themselves rather than of the person who raises them up. However, we immediately read, And Aaron did so (8:3). From here it may be inferred that the intentions with which one enters the Sanctuary both grants significance to the commandment and affects the way it is carried out.

The menorah is a very important ritual object, as is demonstrated by the exceedingly detailed accounts of its form and construction found in earlier parshiyot. In Zachariah’s prophecy, which serves as this week’s haftara, the golden Menorah comes to symbolize the Temple service in its entirety (Zachariah 2-3). The Menorah continues to spread light throughout the generations as the symbol of the Jewish People; it has been granted to our generation to also see it as the emblem of the State of Israel. Lamps are also lit in our private sanctuaries - I refer to the candles lit each Shabbat eve in Jewish homes, a practice which, according to some testimonies, dates back to the days of the Temple. In this article I will touch upon a few facets of the custom of lighting Shabbat candles, and later draw connections between the lighting of the lamps by the priest in the Temple and the lighting of candles by women in their homes.

 

Why light candles?

Let us begin by asking: what is the significance of lighting Shabbat candles?

This question has invited many answers. Of these, let us consider three answers, which illustrate three directions of thought and perhaps even three different religious temperaments:

1)      "Israel said: Master of the Universe, by Your light may we see light, yet You command us to light lamps before You?...The Holy one, blessed be he, said: It is not that I am in need of the light of flesh and blood [mortals], rather I commanded you regarding these lamps in order that you know your obligations to Me" (Tanhuma [Vilna] Tetzaveh 4). According to this midrash, the point of the commandment is to remind the Israelites of their station and of their obligations towards their Creator.

2)      In another midrash, the Holy One, blessed be He, offers a different answer to this question: "It is not because I require your service, but in order that you may give Me light even as I have given you light. For what purpose? That you may rise in the estimation of the nations, who will say: 'See how Israel gives light to Him who gives light to the whole world!'" (Bamidbar Rabbah 15:5). Here the lamps are lit in order to remind Israel of its partnership with God and of its role among the nations. The midrash goes on to offer a parable that clarifies the matter of Israel’s elevation: "This may be illustrated by a parable. To what may it be compared? To the case of a sighted man and a blind man who were walking on the way. The sighted one said to the blind one: "When we enter the house, go and kindle this lamp for me and give me light." The blind man replied: "Will you be good enough to explain? When I was on the road you supported me. Until we entered the house you accompanied me. Now, however, you tell me: 'Kindle this lamp for me and give me light!'" The man who could see answered him: "The reason why I asked you to give me light is in order that you might not be under an obligation to me for having accompanied you on the road." Thus, the man who could see represents the Holy One blessed be He... and the blind man is Israel; as it says, We grope for the wall like the blind (Isaiah 54:10). The Holy One, blessed be He led them and gave them light... When the Tabernacle was erected, the Holy One, blessed be He, called to Moses and said to him: "Now give you light to Me," as it says, When you raise up the lamps; implying; in order that you may be raised up (based on Soncino translation). The parable may be read literally as saying that God gave Israel a commandment in order to elevate their esteem in the eyes of the nations (and perhaps also in their own eyes). However, it is also possible to read it as a text that points to the reciprocal nature of the relationship between the Creator and His creations. While it is not a relationship between equals, they are both, in a way, mutually interdependent.

3)      In the course of the discussion of the Hanukah lamps, the Amora Rava takes up the case of a family which, due to financial limitations, must choose between lighting lamps either for Hanukah or for Shabbat. He states: "It is obvious to me that [when choosing between] the lamp of his home [the Shabbat lamp] and the Hanukah lamp - his home's lamp takes precedence, because [it is necessary for] domestic peace" (Shabbat 23b). Rava's dictum has become the accepted halakhah (Shulhan Arukh Orah Hayyim 678:1). It teaches us that the lamp comes to act inwardly within the home upon the souls of those who light it, and that "domestic peace" is a more important objective than the promulgation of the miracle - the promulgation of God's greatness.

The first interpretation posits that the candles are lit in order to promote peace between Israel and its Father in Heaven. The second is interested in promoting Israel's honor among the nations; it views Israel and God as constituting a pair in which the blind person [Israel] is also capable of lighting the way for the sighted person [God]. The third interpretation is concerned with "domestic peace." Loyalty to God and brotherhood among human beings can exist only if one is internally and integrally faithful to oneself and to one's own family. At least from this perspective, the lighting of Shabbat candles in the home is a kind of inwards "promulgation of the miracle," a "promulgation of the miracle" into one's own heart.

The poetess Zelda made her call: "To light candles in all the worlds - that is Shabbat;" in the enchanted worlds, across the wide earth, in the arena of our dealings with our brothers - our fellow human beings - and also in our private world, in our own homes. Perhaps this point should be made more precisely: in order to light lamps in all the worlds and to bring about the cosmic Shabbat, one must first prepare the wick in one's own heart, and raise up the inner lamps and the lamps of the home.

 

"The Shabbat lamp is given over to the women of the holy people for them to light it" (Zohar Bereishit 48b).

Already in the Mishnah (Shabbat 2:6) we find that women were in charge of lighting the Shabbat lamps. For generations this commandment has largely defined both the Shabbat as well as the religiosity of Jewish women, and many techines [techinot, supplicatory prayers] have developed around it. Techines are not part of the set and obligatory liturgy; they are uttered by women in private and in the vernacular. Through these prayers, Jewish women laid out their hopes, troubles, and pleas before God.

An old techine for the lighting of Shabbat candles (originally written in Yiddish) which was printed in a book of techines and petitionary prayers (published in Amsterdam, 1648) reveals something of the attitudes towards the commandment:

Master of the Universe, I have completed all of my work during the six days and now I shall rest as You have commanded, and I light two candles in accordance with the commandment of our holy Torah, as our Sages of blessed memory said - in Your honor and in honor of the holy Shabbat...

May the light be in Your eyes as the light raised up by the priest in the Temple, and do not allow our light to be extinguished, and set the light of Your Shekhinah upon us.¹

In this techine, the woman is compared (compares herself?) to the priest who raises up the lamps in the Temple. At the same time, her prayer marks her responsibility for peace within her own household. Aaron, who loved peace and pursued peace, was father of the priests who were commanded to bless the people: The Lord spoke to Moses saying:" Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying: This is how you shall bless the children of Israel, saying to them..." (Bamidbar 6:22-23, which we read last Shabbat). Similarly, when lighting the candles, the woman sees herself as responsible for raising up the light; it is she who must bless her household, her people, and her world.

The lamp-flame is woven from elements of vulnerability and fragility alongside strength and power; it contains both the fleeting and the eternal. That magical and mysterious flame has been compared more than once to human life, to the flickering yet transcendent soul (The human soul is God's lamp - Proverbs 20:27). The candles symbolize the never-ending search for tikkun - repair, and like the lamps, the aspiration for tikkun is at once both brittle and powerful. Just as Israel participates in creation and in the coronation of God (as we find in the midrash from Bamidbar Rabbah quoted above), so too the Holy One, blessed be He, participates in human woes and lights people their way, even in times of confusion and uncertainty. Let us conclude with a new expression of this ancient idea, appearing in the words of the poetess, Shifra Alon:

It's not every day that a person meets his God,

A person is not always given over to his prayers,

Not every hour is an hour of grace.

A person wanders, goes astray until reaching his road's summit.

And again he wanders, again he loses the tracks of his own footsteps;

He scouts out and searches for his forgotten paths.

But those - those seekers and wanderers -

Are sought after by God with lamps.²

1. Regarding this techine and other techines that compare the woman lighting candles to the High Priest, see Chava Weissler, "Woman as high priest: A kabbalistic prayer in Yiddish for lighting Sabbath candles." Jewish History 5,1 (1991), pp. 1-26.

2. The expression "to search with lamps" is borrowed from the verse: And it shall be at that time, I will search for Jerusalem with lamps (Zephaniah 20:27). See also Pesahim 7b. The author of Sefat Emet writes in his commentary on the Torah: "Now that the Tabernacle is hidden away, it can still be found with the help of lamps. By "lamps" is meant: the commandments" (Hanukah, 5631). I thank Pinchas Leiser, editor of Shabbat Shalom, for his illuminating comments.

Dr. Dalia Marx is spending this year as a visiting lecturer in Berlin, teaching at the University of Potsdam and at the Abraham Geiger College.

 

We recall the fish that we used to eat in Egypt for free" - Is it plausible that the Egyptians gave fish for free? It is written: So now go - work; no straw will be given to you. If straw was not given them free of charge, fish were given for free?! What, then, is the meaning "for free"? Free of the commandments.

(Sifri, Beha'alotkha, 87)

 

Love for the Land is related to obligations imposed upon its inhabitants.

For this reason people hated the Land. Being hard-hearted and uncharitable, they had no desire to exchange a place where charity is optional for a place where it is obligatory. They sincerely declared, "We recall the fish that we used to eat in Egypt for free" - and this is explained homiletically in the Sifri as "free of the commandments." The meaning of this is that they would eat without giving terumot u’maaserot - heave-offerings and tithes - (for this reason they also enumerated the cucumbers and the watermelons, etc., for all these are exempt from ma'aser outside the Land - even as rabbinical obligations - and compulsory within the Land only as a rabbinical injunction) ...Their declaration "free of the commandments" indicated stinginess towards the priest of God; therefore, they disliked the Land with its obligation. The women of that generation, however, were righteous and cherished charity - both the mitzvah of challah which is directed primarily at women and is obligatory in the Land, and all the other terumot and maasrot. This is what our Sages (Sotah 11) had in mind when they said, "In the merit of the righteous woman of that generation, our fathers were delivered from Egypt" - meaning that because of their merit they [our fathers] went from a place of permission - reshut - to a place of obligation for which their [the women's] hearts yearned, and thus our Sages (Bava Batra 119) described the daughters of Tzelafhad as ‘righteous women’ because they cherished charity, and therefore they asked "Give us a holding."

(Kli Yakar, Bamidbar 26, 64)

 

The riffraff in their midst felt a gluttonous craving; and then the Israelites wept and said, "If only we had meat to eat!"...The meat was still between their teeth, not yet chewed, when the anger of the Lord blazed forth against the people and the Lord stuck the people with a very severe plague. That place was named Kivrot Hata'ava ["the Graves of Desire"], because there were buried the people who had the craving.

(Bamidbar 11)

 

Envy, Lust, and Vainglory Shorten a Person's Life

The Graves of Desire - One might think that that this was its original name, but the Torah teaches that: Because there were buried... Because of that incident it was so called, but this was not its original name. But you do not know who were those who accustomed Israel to sin, therefore it says, The riffraff [lit. "those gathered"] in their midst - these were the converts gathered from everywhere. Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya says: These are the elders among them, as is written, Gather me - the elders, then, provided an a fortiori argument by which others could be judged [i.e., "If the leaders could behave so, then what can we expect of the masses?!"]. Similarly we say with regard to the passage, And the Sons of Elohim saw the daughters of man: What did the sons of the judges [the term Elohim - a widespread appellation of God, can also refer to human judges] do? They would grab women from the market place and rape them. If the judges' sons could so behave, then a fortiori, so would the ordinary people.

(Yalkut Shimoni Beha'alotkha, 247: 732)

 

When the Lord enlarges your territory... and you say, "I shall eat some meat" - teaches us that great expansion causes man to follow his passions, "and the lion roars only over a pile of meat" (Berakhot 32), here it is written, When the Lord enlarges your territory - this leads to removal of the mask of shame from your face to the extent that you unabashedly say, "I shall eat some meat". This is somewhat similar to the throwing off of the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven and to questioning the place of sacrifices; the reason for all this is, The place where the Lord has chosen to establish His name is too far from you, [since] fear of the Kingdom of Heaven is proportionate to closeness to the Temple, as is written, and fear my temples (Vayikra 19:29), meaning that fear of the Kingdom of Heaven flows from the Temple. But the fact that, The place where the Lord has chosen to establish His name is too far from you causes God to be far from your thoughts, therefore you shall experience desire all the time, and you will not be ashamed to say, "I will eat some meat". I therefore permit you to do so, and you shall offer up from you cattle, etc., as I have commanded you, but not at all times, but occasionally, when desire becomes overwhelming.

(Kli Yakar, Devarim 12:20)

 

Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord put His spirit upon them: there is No Monopoly on Spirituality

We were instructed that, it is fundamental to the highest spiritual leadership that no one was given special privilege ("monopoly") over spirit. God-given spiritual talent is independent of position; it is not a class privilege. The very least one of the nation may be endowed with the Lord's spirit, just the same as one who serves in the most elevated role of the royal court.

(Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch)

 

Manna as an Expression of Faith and Kindness

Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai would say: the Torah was given to be expounded upon only by those who ate manna. What does this mean? He would sit and explicate, not knowing where his food and drink came from, nor where his clothing and covering came from. The Torah was given to be expounded only by those who eat Manna, and after them to those who eat the terumah.

(Mekhilta BeShalah, Massekhet de'Yasisu, 2)

 

That is why the Torah was given only to those who ate manna, for that is the path followed by all those who busy themselves with God's Torah and are disgusted by excess luxuries that are destined to be consumed by worms. That which was allowed for Shabbat was excluded from such luxuries: it did not spoil and had no worms in it, for it was a sign that one should save some of his food for the day that is completely Shabbat - for the World to Come. One does this by sharing his food with the hungry. That is the eternal preservation it did not spoil and had no worms in it. This allusion is enough for those who fear the Lord and think of His name. The wicked shall not understand, but the enlightened will understand eventually. To awaken people to this, God commanded that a jar of manna be set for a remembrance before the Pact - the place of the Tablets - in order to announce that the Tablets only make a pact with those who eat manna.

(Kli Yakar on Shemot 16:18)

 

 

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