Click here to listen to an audio recording of this Shabbat Message by Rabbi Laila Haas.
I love a trip to the kosher market. My first stop is the aisle with my favorite Israeli chocolates. I take a quick perusal of the tchotchkes and then I head over to the Shabbat aisle, where I could spend hours. I fill my cart with matchboxes that have Shabbat Shalom written across the top. I stock up on placemats and napkins, the ones with Shabbat Shalom in Hebrew on a beautiful white floral background. You get the idea. My last stop is the candle section. I open up a few of the big boxes, making sure the large white candles inside are intact. I carry all my latest findings home and place them in the Shabbat drawer with all my favorite things.
On Friday afternoons I take two brand new candles out of that box and set them in the candlesticks. The wicks are always wrapped in that thick white wax and it takes a little time for the heat of the shamash, the helper candle, to melt it away and reach the fresh wick. If I am impatient and pull the shamash away too soon, moving on to the second candle, I turn back to find the first already extinguished. If I am patient and hold the flame over it a little longer, the wick catches, the flame ascends and a beautiful glow enters my home.
As I was preparing my Shabbat table for this evening, the words of this week’s Torah portion came to mind. Parshat Beha’alotcha opens with an instruction to Aaron about the menorah. The word it chooses, beha’alotcha, meaning “to raise up”, is more than simply an instruction to light the menorah. Rashi, 11th century renowned commentator, taught that one must tend each flame and stay with it until it rises on its own. Aaron was not simply to touch flame to wick and walk away. He was to remain beside each individual wick until it could sustain the light on its own.
The menorah was the source of light in the holy Tabernacle and it was kindled each and every day. The flame was both constant and renewed because someone returned to tend to it again and again. Aaron and the priests’ work was not the striking of the initial flame, rather, it was the offering of presence and staying long enough for the light to ascend.
We are not so different from those wicks. Each of us carries a spark of Divine light. We use that flame to serve as the shamash for others and hold the light steady for the people who depend on us. We are also the match for our own inner flame which requires attention, care and patience to maintain its vibrancy. We cannot be a steady presence for anyone else if our own flame cannot sustain itself. Tending our own light, our spiritual health, growth and renewal, is sacred work.
There is strength in knowing when to hold the shamash over our own flame a little longer; to rest when we are depleted, to refuel when we are running on empty and to trust that there is no shame in being the candle that needs a little more time.
I love that this teaching focuses on the menorah. Ours at the temple glows against the Jerusalem stone in our sanctuary. It is a visual reminder that when we are the wick that cannot quite hold its flame, when we are experiencing uncertainty and exhaustion, the light is there to hover close and stay with us until we can once again sustain our own flame.
Tonight, as you take out your Shabbat candles and place them in the candlesticks, hold the flame of the shamash a moment longer over each wick, long enough for it to ascend.
As you do, think of the place in your own life that needs more time, the corner of you that is still draped in wax. When you draw your hands inward and bring the light toward your eyes, with each of the three circles, I invite you to say:
Let me tend my own light with patience.
Let me hold the flame over my own wick as long as I need.
Let the light I tend kindle joy in me and brighten my own spark. Amen.
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi Laila Haas
