Our Torah reading this week is of dreams, and our prophetic reading of heavenly visions.
We live in a sometimes most un-dream-like world, and sometimes may doubt whether the ambitions and intentions that most shape it are in any true sense transcendent.
How vital, in such a world, to have a place in which to practice uplift, a home base filled with mutual support and care, a small part of the world in which to cultivate and realize our capacity to shape a realm of light and of love.
An ancient rabbinic narrative recounts that when Moses, on Mount Sinai, was having difficulty comprehending the prescribed design for the menorah, the pattern being revealed to him for the lampstand to go in the tabernacle and later in the temple, God said, in effect, “Here, have one of mine” – in some versions showing Moses a menorah made all of fire, in others having one of gold miraculously take shape before Moses’ eyes.
According to these midrashim, the light-source in the sanctuary is in some sense on loan from on high. That notion resonates very strongly with me as our Harvard Hillel community in the main disbands temporarily for the winter recess. Very often, when I see the warmth – the radiance really – that exists so pervasively in this community – among people who see each other every day, and also toward and among newcomers and visitors – it seems to me that the light of this community is somehow on loan from on high, in some true sense a wonder.
As our building becomes a dishabited shell for a short time, I hope and pray that all who shape and constitute this community find light sources elsewhere, with family, among friends and loved ones, and I look forward to the light of this place being kindled anew in good time.
The world has never been more in need of such places of light and love – not just as refuges, but as paradigms of what is possible, sources and beacons of hope and inspiration, places we forge and shape with care, as gifts from on high.
Then the angel who spoke with me returned and woke me as a man is wakened from sleep, and said to me, what do you see? And I said, I have seen – and behold a menorah all of gold, its fittings and fixtures and surround of olive trees… and I asked, what do these things mean..? Then the angel explained to me, this is the word of the Eternal One … Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit. What is the greatest mountain before such a procession, returning to the most sacred place? It becomes as level ground, when the essential building stone is revealed, met with exclamations of ‘beautiful, beautiful!’ (Zechariah 4:1-7, interpreted)
Have a luminous Hanukkah, and a lovely winter break!