WELCOMING SHABBAT

Shabbat is more than a day of refraining from worldly activity.

When experienced to its spiritual fullest, its holiness enlightens all other days of the week.

We invite you to enhance your Shabbat with these words of Torah.

 

Oil, Wick, Vessel, Flame

Oil, Wick, Vessel, Flame

Tauber, Yanki
March 2, 2023

“… the flame is more than a symbol of spirituality. The flame is our own mirror, in which are reflected the strivings of our deepest self. In the words of the author of Proverbs, ‘The soul of man is a lamp of G-d.’

We, too [like a flame] yearn for transcendence, yearn to tear free of the entanglements of material life and achieve a self-nullifying reunion with our Creator and Source. At the same time, however, we are also driven by a will…to live a physical life and make our mark upon a physical world. In the lamp of G-d that is man, these polar drives converge in a flame that illuminates its surroundings with a G-dly light.

The soul of man is a lamp of G-d whose purpose in life is to illuminate the world with divine light. G-d provided us with the ‘fuel’ that generates His light – the Torah and its commandments (mitzvot), which embody His wisdom and will and convey His luminous truth.

Every mitzvah is oil for the soul. With every act that constitutes a fulfilment of the divine will, our lives are rendered into burning lamps, alight with flames that vacillate from heaven to earth and back again and illuminate the world in the process.”