Vayetze December 5, 2008

By Steve Rubinstein

Two of my favorite songs are Hey Jude and Sympathy for the Devil, kind of representing the loftier and baser poles of aural experience. Yet, I am going to discuss Jacob’s Ladder, not by way of Stairway to Heaven but by referring to another favorite piece of music, Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians. During this almost 1-hour composition, Reich introduces themes and slowly phases them. To the first-time listener, it might appear that there isn’t any forward motion. However, the more I have heard it, formerly subtle shifts become more apparent. I end up in a very different place than I started.

This week’s Torah Portion, Vayetze, recounts Jacob’s vision of a ladder spanning from Earth to Heaven and then tells of his 20 years of labor for love as he unwittingly marries Leah before he can marry his true love, Rachel.

Jacob persevered for love. He waited for 7 years to marry Rachel, only to be told that he must marry Leah first, as was the custom (perhaps conceived on the spot) for an older daughter wed before a younger sister. During those 7 years, he was climbing closer to his goal. He didn’t realize that this was an extension ladder with slippery rungs.

Tonight’s meeting is my fifth Board meeting. And as I contemplated how to relate Vayetze to my nascent experience with this Board, I wonder if we are moving forward. Are we providing the necessary nourishment? Are we enabling this Temple’s rich heritage to be strengthened and further cultivated by the next generations, so beautifully illustrated in Vayetze through Jacob’s progeny – the future of Israel?

We live in austere times. Our fiscal budget is in need of monetary nourishment, but that is not enough and is only part of the picture. Some of you might say that money is the requisite fuel for the mission (in health care, the familiar saying is “no margin, no mission”). Chicken or egg? Are we endangering our collective spiritual climb by not viewing the entire picture? Angels ascend the Ladder; they emanate from within to disencumber us from our physical states to bring us closer to spiritual ones.

We are all angels.

Holy Hanukah Lights December 2, 2008

By Joel M. Hoffman

“These lights are holiness — haneirot hallalu kodesh hen.“

This famous line about the Hanukah lights, now part of the standard Hanukah liturgy, comes from masechet sofrim, an 8th-Century Palestinian work that describes the practices of our ancestors in and around Jerusalem. Masechet sofrim goes on to warn that we are not allowed to use the Hanukah candles for anything except looking at them.

Unlike the Shabbat candles, then, which can be used to provide light for reading, or, presumably, warmth (though obviously not much), the Hanukah candles just sit there.

In fact, this is why we have a shamash. The shamash, the “ninth of the eight Hanukah candles,” is technically not actually a Hanukah candle itself. We use it to light the real Hanukah candles, while the shamash sits next to or above the Hanukah candles.

This way, in case you’re walking around the house reading a book, say, and if just as you walk by the Hanukah menorah the power goes out, and if by accident you keep on reading, you can maintain the fiction that you weren’t reading by the Hanukah lights. No! You were reading by the light of the shamash.

Or, if just as you walk by the menorah you suddenly find yourself in pressing need of a candle, you won’t be tempted to use the real Hanukah candles. You can grab the shamash instead.

This is why the shamash is supposed to be the first candle lit and the last candle to go out. (This is possible, even when the candles are identical. Can you figure out how to do it? The answer will appear on the school’s web site.) You wouldn’t want to find yourself with Hanukah lights and no shamash, not even for a moment.

At first glance, this all seems a bit silly, particularly in our modern day of electricity. I like to think of myself as fairly creative, and yet I have trouble conjuring up a situation in which I might be in dire sudden need of a burning candle.

But the real point has nothing to do with ambulatory reading or candle emergencies or any other practical concern. The real point goes back to the first line: these candles are holiness.

The light from the Hanukah candles, we are taught, is different than any other kind of light. Most light is just, well, light. (Photons, we might now call it.) But the light of Hanukah is the embodiment of holiness itself.

It’s hard enough to understand light, let alone holiness. We speak of light and darkness, even though there’s no such thing as darkness. (The old photography joke about opening the darkroom door and letting the dark leak out comes to mind.) Scientists have studied light and concluded that it is both a wave and a particle, though it’s also neither a wave nor a particle. It’s true, but it doesn’t help most people understand light. Still, we know what light is when we see it, and we know it’s part of our every day life.

Holiness is even harder. We may have a vague sense that God is holy, or that we are supposed to be holy. Holiness is involved in childbirth, perhaps, and according to some in the majesty of mountains and glory of nature. But, unlike light, most of us don’t think much about holiness. Would we even know it if we saw it?

Not surprisingly, the combination of light and holiness is even more difficult. How can light be holy? Even more vexing, how can a Hanukah candle emit holy light when the seemingly identical shamash gives us mere ordinary light? And what would that even mean?

I certainly don’t know. But I do know that we only get once chance a year to see the holy light.

So as we approach the darkest time of year and get ready to celebrate light, amid the stress of the holidays and the curious combination of exuberance and disappointment that accompanies gift-giving, let’s remember that life is mysterious. And let’s not miss our opportunity to gaze on the faces of the people we love as they are illuminated by flickering flames of the Divine.