Light Tonight

Dear friends,

This evening’s shabbat will be dedicated to the question of light. We will be joined by my friend and teacher, Ghiora Aharoni, who in his exquisite artwork, as well as in his architecture designs uses light as an element of the whole, sometimes appearing as the mind of the piece, other times its heart, and at times painting the rest of the work without calling attention to itself. One of his recent works, which now lives at the Vatican is a concealer of light. Ghiora created a piece of art to guard and contain an ancient scroll of Tikkunei Hazohar, the additions to the main book of Kabbalah, the Zohar, which we might translate as “The book whose light cannot be contained.”

We will also be joined by another friend, Jeff Casper, who swims in the light of the Zohar often, and whose practice of Kabbalah focuses on healing, and it is through that angle that he sees light.

Rabbi Ponet will also be there. Most of you know by now that his most apparent feature is his flaming mind, or heart, and his ability to allow it shine outwards through words.

So yes, the world is as dark as ever, 3000 people are dying every day in this country from the virus, and one of the city’s greatest Jazz clubs, The Jazz Standard is shutting down along with thousands of other beloved businesses, and the sun seems to set before lunchtime, all of which allows us to see the light coming. “The sun is coming,” “בא השמש” means sunset in ancient Hebrew. When the light is disappearing, in other words, that means it’s on its way.

And yes, it’s almost Hanukkah, the holiday of refusing to succumb to darkness, of insisting on adding light, of putting light by our windows so everyone will see it, and know it exists, and has existed forever and will always exist regardless of what we see or do not see, of performing the act of lighting lights so that we know in our own bodies and beings that in the darkness we are light, no matter how absurd that may sound inside our dark and cluttered minds.

But even with all those words, we still do not really know what light is.

Ponet muses:
"We know it as the source of life, as Dylan Thomas put it, "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower." We hear it in God's first spoken words in Genesis, "Let there be light," a light that preceded sunlight, and in Dylan Thomas's equation of dying as an extinguishing of the light: "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." Light, the physicists say, is physical, though they know not if it be wave or particle, energy or matter."

Whatever the hell it is, it’s coming for us tonight. “Rise up my light, for your light has come,” as it does every shabbat.

Hope to see you at 6 this evening.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha