Behalotcha
Your raise the lights. But even more: the lights raise you.
Aaron, the High Priest, is instructed to raise the lights of the Menorah. A second Passover is instituted one month after the first, to accommodate those who could not experience the first Passover to the pure fullest. The people have been at the foot of Mount Sinai for a year and get into formation to move. Manna no longer tickles the palate; the people want meat. Seventy elders are appointed by Moses to help instruct the people. Miriam, Moses’ sister, speaks critically of Moses and is plagued by the consequences. The people wait seven days for Miriam to heal.
Behaalotecha: Mitchum
Parshat Behaalotcho discusses kindling the menorah that the flames rise on their own: recognizing G-d in our own lives by saying “im yirtzeh Hashem”.
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The Missing Complaint
A group of Jews had found themselves in a state which, by divine decree, absolved them from the duty to bring the Passover offering. Yet they refused to reconcile themselves to this.
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Lamps and Lives: The Holy Temple Menorah
Spiritual meaning of the Holy Temple Menorah, based on an essay from the Rebbe on Parshat Behalotcha (Numbers 8:1-4).
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Lamps and Lives
The verses in Parshat Beha’alotecha specify two laws of the menorah corresponding to two visions of man provided by Rashi and Nachmanides.
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The Cost of Light
Giving, whether physical or spiritual, carries a “price”. We find an example of such spiritual descent in Moses’ bestowal of the leadership upon Joshua.
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Train Journey
Using the metaphor of a railway journey, there are two possible routes the Redemption may come about – it may be hastened or come in its time.
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The Long Pole
Aaron is the prototype for man’s responsibility for the spiritual elevation of his fellows, which reflects his role as kindler of the menorah in the Temple
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A Humbling Thought
An important lesson to the spiritual “lamplighter”: do not think that you are achieving anything that your fellow could not, in truth, achieve on his own.
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Lighting Instructions
The menorah represents man’s potential to “kindle lamps”: to illuminate within his own self, in his fellow man & in the material resources at his disposal.
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The Servant and the Minister
The minister serves his king with his mind; the servant with his body. Our service of the Creator includes both elements – embodied in Torah study & mitzvot.
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