Sparks of Mishpatim

Posted on by Rebecca


Sparks of Mishpatim

Judgements and the Number 13

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Last week we were standing at Har Sinai. This week we begin with the laws of slaves. And surprisingly, the Torah connects the two experiences.  As Rashi points out, the parsha begins, “And these are the mishpatim that you shall place before them.” The words ‘and these’ connects these mitzvot to the previous mitzvot. Just as those were given at Sinai, so were these.  What is the connection?

And while we are pondering that question, we can also wonder about the next Rashi, which describes a conversation the Midrash envisions between Hashem and Moshe.  In the conversation, Hashem warns Moshe, “Don’t think of just teaching the Jews the mitzvot as they are. You have to set the mitzvot before this nation the way a person sets a well-prepared table. The mitzvot have to be given together with their reasons.” Clearly, Moshe wasn’t exactly the lazy sort, who would leave out any part of the mitzvah. What is this warning all about?

We can get a bit more clarity by taking a deeper look at what the essence of a “mishpat” is. In general, we translate mishpatim as those laws which would have been compelled by logic if they hadn’t been mandated by the Torah. But Rav Shapiro explains that the word mishpatim, literally, means judgements. Mishpatim are laws that include an aspect of judgement, where there are two side that argue their case, like in a monetary dispute. Both sides must be taken seriously, and a judgement must be rendered. Where there is mishpat, judgment, there is first a moment when things are unclear. Clarity comes later, after the judgement is made.

Rav Shapiro explains that the introduction of Parshat Mishpatim is the introduction of a second pathway within the Torah. The first path was what we experienced at Har Sinai. It was a revelation of the true face of existence that was so powerful, so clear, that there was nothing that could stand before it. The experienced of Har Sinai is described as if Hashem held the mountain over us. We were coerced. In the face of truth and clarity it is impossible to take another path. When the Torah is given from a place of that much clarity, any reasons are superfluous; when Hashem Himself personally tells you to keep the Shabbat, it’s not necessary to spend time wondering why. Moshe lived with the clarity of Har Sinai, where reasons weren’t necessary. It was entirely reasonable for Moshe to want to teach us the law with no reasons attached.

However, Bnei Yisrael could not stay in the experience of Har Sinai forever. Parshat Mishpatim is an expression of anther reality, the reality where there is judgement. There is no longer just one clear path, but two competing sides, that we must choose between. Mishpatim opens up with the law of a Jewish slave in the sixth year, who must choose between his life as a slave, which he has grown to love, and the freedom which the Torah tells him is his due. In this mitzvah, we can see the first of the aseret hadibrot refracted through a different lens. Hashem told us at Har Sinai that He was our G-d who took us out of Egypt. At that moment we knew we were free, with perfect clarity. It’s a lot harder to feel the reality of our freedom after five years of slavery. Hashem may have taken us out of slavery in Egypt, but Mishpatim begins with a man who finds himself, again, a slave.

Parshat Mishpatim is the path we recognize. It involves all times when we find ourselves judging, when our circumstances aren’t as we would want them to be, or where the freedom of the Torah doesn’t feel that enticing. It is here that the comments of Rashi take on deep meaning. Both paths of Torah, says Rashi, were given at Har Sinai. It was all part of the original plan.

From the very beginning, Hashem commanded Moshe to teach the mitzvot with their reasons. This is not because we hope to understand the thoughts of Hashem and is also not so that we can argue with others. We are given reasons for the mitzvot so that we can be victorious in our own inner judgement, so that we can argue against our own inner fool.

We may have fallen into, or pushed ourselves, into circumstances that made us slaves. Even so, we have opportunities to free ourselves. The freedom of the sixth year is like the freedom of the shofar on Rosh Hashana. It reveals and actualizes whatever is asleep and dormant within us. We are free to refuse to listen to this shofar again and again. We can make the choice to remain slaves. But we are still always marching toward the Yovel, and when the shofar of Moshiach is blown, then all slaves are freed. We may not recognize how or why, but it is all part of the plan, marching toward Hashem’s goal.

Part of this path is the assurance from Hashem that we have a point within us that is able to make the right choice, even in our confusing world. This is because the world is built around a point of truth. This point is beautifully illustrated by Rav Shapiro through an exploration of the number 13, and the way that number is expressed in the three forms of our world: olam, zman and adam, which translate loosely into space, time and man.

13 is the number that brings together our world of expansion. To illustrate, in space a single point can expand in six basic directions. When it expands to make a form, there are 12 points at which those six directions touch each other (these are the six points of a cube). Additionally, there is another, middle point around which they all revolve. This is the 13th point, the point of unity within the expansion, the point of unity within the entire structure.   

In time we can see a similar phenomenon. From the first moment of creation, the world expanded into the six days of the week, and from there into the twelve months of the year. These are the twelve months of the sun, which march endlessly forward, apparently without meaning. However, the first command was, “This month is for you.” Hashem handed time over to us, and allowed us to participate in the march forward, and to give it meaning. The mitzvah of Rosh Chodesh is, unsurprisingly, called a judgement (Tehillim 81:5) and when we intercalculate the system of the moon into the system of the sun, we do it through a court. The 13th month we add, the extra month of Adar, serves to unify the two systems of time, the natural system and Hashem’s hidden plan.

This idea is also expressed in the realm of man. We express ourselves in our prayers. The original 12 brachot of the Amidah prayer are an expression of the basic needs of man as we expand in our world. The extra, 13th, bracha was added in later by Rabban Gamliel, together with his court.  It is the prayer against heretics. Rabban Gamliel considered our greatest human need: our need to connect to Hashem, and to introduce clarity and purpose into our world. This is the need that unifies all our other needs in the world.  

The 13th bracha was added into the Amidah immediately after the blessing, “Blessed are You, G-d, the King Who loves righteousness and judgment.” And the extra month of Adar is added into our year this week, immediately after we read the parsha of Mishpatim. That is us, this week. We no longer stand at Har Sinai, and  most of us are slaves, to one thing or another. We may even identify strongly with the slave this week, who chooses to stay right where he is. The message of the parsha is, we can reach in, with our emotions and our intellect, and we can choose to find our own freedom by connecting to that point of truth within ourselves. And even if we don’t, we are still on a path toward eventual freedom.

**This week’s post is dedicated to my wonderful Father, on the occasion of his 75th birthday, and my wonderful son, on the occasion of his 25th birthday. Enjoy your shared celebration. Wish I could be with you!!

Sparks of Beshalach

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Sparks of Beshalach

Horse and Rider into the Sea

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For me, the first question of this week’s parsha is, “Why?!” We just finished the full cycle of the plagues. Last week’s parsha ends with Pharoah a broken man, leader of a decimated nation, begging the Jews to leave his country in the middle of the night. Now, just a few short days later, Pharoah decides it’s an excellent idea to go chase the Jews into the desert. He leads his people directly into the sea to be drowned. It’s an astounding testament to the resilience and the stubbornness of the human mind, but at the same time is absolutely mind-boggling. It leaves us asking, “Why?!”

Ramban remarks that of all the miracles, the greatest wonder was that Hashem hardened Pharoah’s heart to follow the Jewish nation into the desert and then straight into the sea (Shemot 14:4). As we know from the makot (see Ramban Shemot 7:3), hardening Pharoah’s heart meant giving Pharoah the strength to follow what he really wanted to do, despite the clear evidence of disastrous consequences. Here too, Hashem made room for the Egyptians to see what they wanted to see.

The Jews camped in the desert opposite the one Egyptian god that was not completely destroyed, the god Ba’al Tzefon (Rashi, Shemot 14:2). This was enough to convince the Egyptians that their real mistake, all along, was that they were not praying hard enough to the right avodah zarah. They were convinced that this time, with Ba’al Tzefon on their side, they would be victorious. And so they trapped the Jews between their army and the sea, and when a strong wind blew the waters of the sea to the side, they were convinced that the waters were splitting for them. They rode into the sea on their horses, into what they were sure was victory.

And Hashem made a mockery of them. The image of Hashem exalting over the Egyptians as they rode confidently into the sea is the essence of the song, the nevuah, that we sang at the sea. Az Yashir begins and ends with the image of the horse and rider being engulfed by the sea. This image is the only line we have of the song Miriam sang with the women. It is clearly the central image of the miracle at the sea, and key to understanding what this miracle was all about. We can understand this image in three levels of increasing depth.

The first level is the recognition that although we were freed from Egypt on the night of the slaying of the first-borne, we did not feel completely free. We were runaway slaves and Pharoah remained in power in Egypt. As was clearly evidenced, he remained a threat. The horse and rider together is an image of Egypt in its peak.  It was only after we saw the Egyptians destroyed in the sea that we could felt fully free of him and his influence. It was only then that we could finally burst out into song of thanksgiving.

The image of the horse and rider drowned in the sea also conveys a deeper message about the destruction of evil. Both at the time of the redemption from Egypt, and also in the final redemption, evil is not destroyed. Evil self-destructs. At its core, it has no substance, and so the entire system leads only to destruction. The Egyptians, of their own volition, rode their horses into the sea and were destroyed.  

Another, deeper, level of the revelation at the sea relates to the type of revelation that occurred there. As we discussed last week, the revelation in Mitzrayim was a revelation of the truth of Ma’aseh Bereisheit. The revelation at the sea was a revelation of a different system. The Mechilta (Parshat HsShirah 3) says that each maidservant by the sea saw more than Yechezkel ben Buzi saw. What Yechezkel saw was a vision of the Ma’aseh Mercavah, the Divine Chariot. The experience at the sea was also a revelation of Ma’aseh Mercavah.

Sparks of Bo

Posted on by Rebecca


Sparks of Parshat Bo

The Deepest Cry

This is the second week in a row in which we find ourselves immersed in the process of the makot, a process which Chazal say took a year to complete. If we are looking at the makot as a system of punishment, it’s a little hard to understand why all this time and space is devoted to them. The makot, however, have little to do with our Western concept of punishment. In the Torah, there is a concept of tochacha, rebuke, whose purpose is never punishment, but only clarification of reality, for the purpose of growth. This is what the makot were. The makot clarified the true nature of our world and ourselves.

This is what we mean when we say that the 10 makot parallel the 10 ma’amarot with which the world was created. There existed a time in history when it was possible to understand properly what Hashem was revealing to us when He created the world through ten utterances. By the time we were slaves in Mitzrayim, that was no longer the case. The result of all the sins of humanity was that the ten expressions that Hashem used to create the world were distorted. Their message could not be heard properly in the world. The first plague, therefore, begins where the last ma’amar ends, and reveals its message. Each makah peels away another layer of distortion, one by one, until the true message of the ma’amarot could be heard, and the true nature of our world was revealed.

As each facet of truth was revealed, it impacted reality, and that impact was felt according to who was receiving it.  The Zohar (2:36a) says that the makot were, at one and the same time, a plague for the Egyptians and a healing for the Jews.  (This is also the essential nature of gehenom in the world to come, see Nedarim 8b) For the Egyptians, the makot were the revelation, one facet after another, that everything they had built their society on was false. Each makah was another blow at the essence of their national culture and identity. Facing the truth was a painful experience. On the other hand, for the Jews, for us, living through the makot meant going through the process of rediscovering our true selves, and the true nature of our world. It was the joy of rediscovering our relationship with Hashem.

The last of the makot, the end of the process, was the death of the firstborn of Egypt. It was the death of Pharoah’s perception of the world as if Egypt were the firstborn, and he was a god. On the night of the final makah in Egypt, Hashem’s Presence was revealed. Even more, Hashem’s relationship to his true firstborn, our nation, was inescapably revealed. On the first night of Pesach we came face to face with the glorious reality that we are Hashem’s beloved firstborn, and that we fulfill the purpose of creation through our relationship with Him (see Rashi, Bereisheit 1:1).

This moment of revelation was marked by something unique to this makah. Moshe tells Pharoah that on the night of makat bechorot, “There will be a great outcry in the land of Egypt, such has never been heard before.” (Shemot 11:6). And this is indeed what happened (Shemot 12:30). A cry is a sound that expresses what can not be put into words. The cry of makat bechorot relates to the ma’amar of Bereisheit, a ma’amar that is substantively different from the rest of the ma’amarot. It does not use the language of speech. Instead, it expresses the emergence of the essence of creation before it could be grasped or put into words.  It is undefined, but it is what enables everything that is expressed after it.

Within ourselves, the ma’amar of Bereisheit relates to the feeling of self that we can’t express in words, the feeling of self we express with a cry. A cry is the sound we make that comes from a deeper part of ourselves than speech, it comes from our heart, or from our essence, from the part of ourselves which is too deep to be formed into words. Each of us has the ability to cry. Every newborn cries. We emerge into the world with a cry. Our cry is the root of our ability to speak, to bring out our essence and express it.

In Egypt, at chatzot, on the night of the redemption, there was a great cry that was heard throughout the land. But it was a different cry for the Egyptians and for the Jews. For the Egyptians, the entire conception of the world had been ripped out from under them. They were speechless. There was nothing left to say. Their cry was the cry of the utter self-destruction. It was the cry of despair that comes with the recognition that at their very essence, there was nothing. Everything they believed was built on a lie.

We cried a completely different cry.  It was the cry of prayer. For a Jew, the deepest part of ourselves is expressed in prayer. This is the essence of who we are.  When a Jew comes face to face with reality, when we recognize that the deepest part of ourselves is connected to our creator, we pray. The Zohar tells us that crying is the greatest form of prayer, and that whenever we cry out, Hashem promises to listen. This was, in fact, how the redemption began. Hashem heard our moaning, and our cries (Shemot 2:23).  And it is how the redemption ends. In the words of the Midrash (Shemot Rabbah 18), while Pharoah was desperately screaming, trying to force us out of Egpyt, trying to save his life from the angry Egyptians, we were busy saying Hallel.  

The halacha is that in our tefillot, we join redemption (as expressed in the brachot of Shema) to prayer (the Amidah). It is a halacha that reflects a deeper truth. The prayer itself is the redemption. On the night of makat bechorot we were redeemed through experiencing the depth of who we are. The result was that we gained the ability to truly pray. We have the opportunity to relive this redemption every morning and evening.

As Ramban explains in his introduction to Shemot, the purpose of the redemption was to bring the entire nation of Israel to the level of the Avot. And the level of the Avot was prayer. As we have mentioned earlier, they were the ones who established prayer for us, and gave it over to us as an inheritance. To return to their level means to step into the place they left for us, the place of prayer. To experience redemption is to pray.  

At the moment, we are still living in exile. And when we are in exile, our speech is in exile with us. We speak, but we often don’t know what to say. What do we ask for? What do we want? But the cry of connection and yearning for Hashem that comes from deep inside is real and unfalsifiable. We may not know what to say, we may not connect to all the words of davening, but if we can make space in our world and in our prayers for that one groan or cry that comes from deep within, we can begin to move ourselves, and the whole world with us, into a place of redemption.

Sparks of Shemot

Posted on by Rebecca


Sparks of Shemot

By Name And By Number

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This week we begin to read the story of our nation in slavery. We experience our descent into Egypt, both nationally and personally, in the darkest month of the year, when the nights are longest, and the days are shortest. Rav Shapiro tells us that this is our opportunity to allow ourselves to descend together with our nation into Egypt, and to examine and experience the galut that we live in. Why would we want to do that? Because it also gives us the opportunity to continue walking with our nation into redemption.

Sefer Shemot begins with the names and the number of the Jews who came into Egypt. Rashi here tells us we are like the stars, which are brought out by name and number.  It’s an interesting way to begin the story of a nation that our prophets tell us is innumerable, uncountable (Hosea 2:1). Like the stars we have both have names and numbers and are also uncountable. This duality, explains Rav Shapiro, is the essence of who we are as a people, who we are as individuals, and the secret to our ability to survive in galut.

To be countable means to be part of the natural world, because everything in the natural world can be counted. And yet, hidden within the concept of counting is a connection to something more. Mispar, the Hebrew word for number, is connected to the word sippur, to talk or to narrate. When we speak, and most especially when we give something a name, we accomplish two things simultaneously, we both limit and reveal. To understand this, think of a person. That person has a name, and that name is limited. It identifies them, but it does not even begin to reveal the essence of who they are. Nevertheless, we need that name. Through their name, we can get to know them, and open up the space and the ability to learn about the essence that is hidden within. The infinite is placed into the finite so that it can be grasped.  The purpose of a name or a number is to portray that which is beyond it. When it is perceived correctly, it reveals its limitless roots.

We went into Egypt by name and by number. But to the Egyptians that had an entirely different meaning than it has to us. Mitzrayim is the place of meitzarim, boundaries and limitations. It is a place that is self-contained, a place that waters itself from the Nile and never has to look up to the heavens for rain. Mitzrayim has the same gematria as mispar, number, but it has the most limited understanding of mispar. In Mitzrayim, the things that we can count are not connected to anything higher. All of existence is limited to our perception of it. Since our awareness is everything, and we make our own awareness, then we make reality as well. This is how Pharoah could consider himself a god.

The letters of Pharoah’s name can be rearranged to make the Hebrew word ha’orpeh, the back of the neck. Pharoah was as stubborn as the most stiff-necked of people. But there is also a deep idea hiding here. There are two ways our thoughts and souls are expressed in our bodies, two ways our minds are expressed to the outside world. The first is through the face and the mouth, where the intelligence of our brain is revealed. The second is through the spine, down the back of the neck, where our brain gives instructions for the actions of the entire body. When the brain affects the body through the back of the neck, its influence can not be openly seen. It’s hidden. This is the way that Pharoah, and Mitzrayim, received sustenance from above, in such a way that the influence was hidden, and the spiritual aspect could be lost. The lower world was disconnected from its source.

 

This was our oppression in Egypt. We were forced into a boundary that was too small for our true state. The original greatness of man was originally (Chagigah 12a) from one end of the world to the other. Mizrayim was a place of meitzar-yam, where the sea was constrained. The expansiveness of life, as expressed by the expansiveness of the sea, was forced into constraining borders. We were a shadow of our true selves.  

Tevet is the month when we feel this. On the 8th of Tevet, the Torah, with its infinite meaning, was translated and constrained to fit into the perceptions of the Greek language. On the 9th of Tevet, Ezra HaSofer died, and nevuah was lost. We lost our direct connection to the expansiveness of the higher worlds. And on the 10th of Tevet Jerusalem, the city that connects the higher and lower world, was put under siege. This is the month, as we fast, as we read the beginning of the book of Shemot, that we can begin to appreciate that we are living in a constricted state. We only grasp a sliver of what we are and what reality is. It can be a depressing thought. However, that realization, that we are standing in exile, is our first moment of moving toward redemption. The first step toward redemption is the recognition of the greatness of man.

Rambam teaches (Hilchot Melachim 11:1) that anyone who does not wait for the arrival of Moshiach is a denier of the prophets and of the Torah and Moshe Rabbeinu. This is a pretty strong description. We are not talking about someone who denies Moshiach, but just of someone who does not wait for him. Why? Because if we are not waiting for Moshiach, that means that we are okay with the world the way it is. As Rav Shapiro says, “A world without the revelation of G-d’s glory is also feasible to him and he can live there. To consider such a world as reality is the simplest form of denial. (p.597)”

Maharal (Netzach Yisrael 29) explains that we cannot receive anything unless we have space to receive it. Bereisheit Rabbah (98:14) tells us that everything depends on our hope and on our yearning. All the best things come through hope. The extent of what we can receive from the higher realm is determined by what we want, what we yearn for. Our space, our vessel, to receive is hope. If we find ourselves in exile, we can know that we are in the perfect place to merit redemption because the greatest distance is what causes the greatest yearning.

Redemption is liberation from a system, from the order of things as they are. This is the place where our Fathers stood. The story of Shemot is the story of returning, as a nation, to the place of our Fathers. And the place of our Fathers is the place of prayer. What they instituted, what they left for us, is our prayers. Prayer is the path to redemption.  The Gemara tells us (Berachot 9b), “Who is a man of the world to come? He who juxtaposes redemption to prayer.”

What the fathers created was that ability to break out of the cycle of nature, to create new beginnings even within the natural order of life.  When we stand in prayer, or at least remain in place, we are stopping the forward stride, the surge of continuation of the natural world. We divorce ourselves form the entire system of the world to stand still in front of the Creator. And we say a bracha. A bracha is a prayer for continuation. We stand before Hashem, and we enumerate all that we have and all that we need, and recognize that its continuation, and our continuation, is not something that comes automatically. Everything needs to be renewed. Everything needs to exist in contact with its higher source. We are not on autopilot alone in this world. As the clock turns, we perceive each change in time as something new, and that understanding compels us to pray. In that moment, when we stop and remember our roots, we liberate ourselves from the relentless cycle of nature. We touch the place of our fathers. And we become people of the world to come.

Sparks of Miketz

Posted on by Rebecca


Sparks of Miketz

Good Eye, Evil Eye

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We begin this week’s parsha in Pharoah’s dream, the famous one of seven good calves being swallowed up by seven bad cows. This dream, which set in motion the events of Yosef’s rise to power in Egypt, had tremendous significance at the time. Rav Shapiro reminds us that it has eternal significance as well. Pharoah was the most powerful ruler of his time, and so his dream tells us something universal about the nature of the world.

What do we know about Pharoah’s dream? It is the story of tremendous good being swallowed up by evil, as if it never was. The only one who has the power to correct this is Yosef. What is Yosef’s power? When Yaacov blesses Yosef, we learn that Yosef brings bracha into the world through the power of his eyes (see Bereisheit 49:22). Pharoah brings destruction to the world through his evil eye, and Yosef rectifies it through his good eye.

In order to understand this, we first have to understand the power of our eyes. We use our eyes to partner with Hashem in creating the world. This world is a means through which Hashem can reveal Himself to us (see Vilna Gaon, commentary to Safra Ditzniusa 1:1). It therefore only reaches its purpose, its true existence, when we recognize it as an expression of Godliness. The bracha of this world is only brought to true expression through our eyes, and our ability to look at the world and say, “it is good.”

Yosef had very good eyes.  No matter where life put him, even in the dungeons of Egypt, he was able to look around and see Hashem’s guiding hand. His eyes were expansive. They bestowed true existence wherever they gazed. The Mishkan, which settled in Yosef’s portion of Eretz Yisrael for 369 years, reflected this expansive nature of Yosef, in his merit. In Shiloh, sanctified food could be eaten “as far as the eye could see” (Zevachim 118b).

The contrast to Yosef was Alexander the Great. He perfected the evil eye. Where Yosef was completely connected to Hashem and saw the revelation of Hashem in all of existence, Alexander was invested in perceiving the entire physical world as completely separated from any higher realm. The Talmud (Tamid 32a-b) expresses Alexander’s essence by portraying him as knocking on the gates of Gan Eden, demanding to be let in. A voice from within tells him, “This is the gate of Hashem, only the righteous will enter” (Tehillim 118:20). Unable to enter, he demands, as King, that they give him something. He is thrown a galgaluta, a skull, or according to Rabbeinu Asher, an eyeball. Alexander attempts to measure the eyeball with a scale, but no matter what he put on the other side, the eye outweighs everything.

This eyeball was an expression of the Greek vision of the world. As we know, the Greeks, and by extension Western Culture, defined reality as exclusively what could be perceived and understood by the human mind. In this, they were the epitome of ra, bad, a word whose root is connected to the concept of separation. The definition of good is that which fulfills its purpose. The definition of bad is that which is broken off from its purpose and separated from its source. For the Greeks, what you see is what you get. There is nothing more than what we can perceive with our minds. Put another way, what they were really saying is, “I am existence itself.”

We limit ourselves and our world severely when we view existence this way. If I am all there is, what room is there for anyone else? Wars are inevitable. When I am existence, then anyone who does not serve me has no purpose. On a deeper level, this eyeball was also sending the message that when we see ourselves as the whole world, our world is not only too small for others, it is also too small for ourselves. When we are the basis of existence, we are never satisfied. The eye of Alexander always outweighs anything on the other side of the scale, because when we relate to life only through the visible realm, then we are never satiated.  What we really need is spiritual, and no matter how much we amass, we can never fill that need with physical things.

Pharoah, like Alexander, looked at the world through eyes that were disconnected from Hashem. And so, even though he was given seven beautiful cows, they were immediately consumed by seven evil cows. It was as if the good cows had never existed. This is the power of the evil eye.  All the best things are bestowed on our world from on high, but our own vision, our own perception, has the power to consume them, and make them as if they never were.

We always read the parshiot of Yosef at Chanukah time, as we are lighting the menorah. They are a reminder of the power of our vision. Yosef first gazed at the land of Egypt from the perspective of a slave, but he had Hashem’s name always on his lips, and so he brought success with him wherever he went. When we look at the world as a continuous revelation of Hashem, then each moment brings new life. Our eyes (ayin) become wellsprings (also ayin!) of living waters that bring us continuous rejuvenation.

Rav Shapiro points out that the time of lighting the menorah is the time of the setting of the sun (Rambam, Hilchot Chanukah 4:5). At sunset the sun, the main source of light in the world, disappears, and the world is illuminated by secondary sources, by what the sun has already illuminated. The entire world takes on an aspect similar to a lamp, lit by a source that we can no longer see.  Rav Shapiro teaches, “When the Creator kindles a lamp, as it were, we too must kindle a lamp” (p.410). We light our menorah from a higher source, a spiritual light, and we use that light to illuminate the beauty of our world.