 | As many of you have heard, my mom has been in the hospital for a month, and therefore so have I. As many of us know from personal experience, hospitals are full of lights – colored door lights, blinking lights, flashing lights, beeping lights, and also lights of deep and abiding care. It's a heck of a time and place to revisit one of Judaism's abiding symbols, the Menorah, its purpose to give light, and its link to healing. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Parashat Beha'alotekha 5785 (2025)
For fully a month, my mom has been hospitalized for covid and then complications. For a month, I've been bedside with her. The photo is from the hospital hallway outside her room.
Hospitals usually aren't serene places. From inbound ambulance to bedside telemetry, lights flash, sirens wail and monitors beep. Late at night when I leave the hospital, the metronome of nighttime crickets evokes the beep beep beep of hospital time.
Yet it's the lights that most impact me. Doorways flash with color-coded lights. Monitors blink. IV machines blink. Lights seem to be everywhere ...
... and not just electric ones. After a month in a hospital, you come to know doctors, nurses and aides by first names. You sense the lights of their eyes and the lights of their care. Their calling, training and experience refine their lights to shine patient to patient, day to day.
It's quite the time and place to inhabit this week's Torah portion about the first Menorah, one of Judaism's abiding symbols whose essential purpose is to give light. And it's quite the time and place to inhabit this portion's narrative about Miriam's illness and the first healing prayer.
Parashat Beha'alotekha 5785 (2025)
For fully a month, my mom has been hospitalized for covid and then complications. For a month, I've been bedside with her. The photo is from the hospital hallway outside her room.
Hospitals usually aren't serene places. From inbound ambulance to bedside telemetry, lights flash, sirens wail and monitors beep. Late at night when I leave the hospital, the metronome of nighttime crickets evokes the beep beep beep of hospital time.
Yet it's the lights that most impact me. Doorways flash with color-coded lights. Monitors blink. IV machines blink. Lights seem to be everywhere ...
... and not just electric ones. After a month in a hospital, you come to know doctors, nurses and aides by first names. You sense the lights of their eyes and the lights of their care. Their calling, training and experience refine their lights to shine patient to patient, day to day.
It's quite the time and place to inhabit this week's Torah portion about the first Menorah, one of Judaism's abiding symbols whose essential purpose is to give light. And it's quite the time and place to inhabit this portion's narrative about Miriam's illness and the first healing prayer.
The seven-branched Menorah became the national symbol of the State of Israel. Why? Because in this week's Torah portion, the first Menorah was placed next to the Holy of Holies in the Mishkan, our ancestors' traveling center and indwelling place of transcendence.
This week's Torah portion begins by instructing our ancestors to light the Menorah and "activate" the Mishkan (Numbers 8:1-2):
This week's Torah portion begins by instructing our ancestors to light the Menorah and "activate" the Mishkan (Numbers 8:1-2):
| וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר יהוָ''ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֥ה לֵּאמֹֽר׃ דַּבֵּר֙ אֶֽל־אַהֲרֹ֔ן וְאָמַרְתָּ֖ אֵלָ֑יו בְּהַעֲלֹֽתְךָ֙ אֶת־הַנֵּרֹ֔ת אֶל־מוּל֙ פְּנֵ֣י הַמְּנוֹרָ֔ה יָאִ֖ירוּ שִׁבְעַ֥ת הַנֵּרֽוֹת׃ | YHVH spoke to Moses saying: Speak to Aaron and say to him, “In your raising the lamps at the front of the Menorah, the seven lamps will illuminate." |
The Voice emphatically did not say that Aaron should light candles (back then, little pools of pure olive oil). Rather, the Voice instructed that Aaron should raise them, which our ancestors understood to mean "cause the light to rise" (Rashi, Num. 8:2).
Today we know that kindling a flame creates a partial vacuum that causes light (and smoke) to rise. Back then, we didn't know why candle light tended to rise: it just did. To Talmud, the command was to keep raising the heat until light lifted on its own (B.T. Shabbat 21a). That's how it works, as anyone knows who's held a kindled match to a wick until it stays lit.
Why did the Menorah stand at the Holy of Holies? Surely not because God needed its light. Rather, we did. We needed the reminder that ultimately everything about the Holy of Holies, holiness and spirituality was for the purpose of giving light – and lighting us up. As the Psalmist wrote, "For You (God) light my lamp: YHVH, my God, illuminates my darkness" (Psalms 18:29); "For with You (God) is the source of life: by Your light we see light (Psalms 36:10).
As Ovadia ben Yosef put it in the 1500s, the Menorah's symbolism of light became "a conduit of spiritual light onto Israel." And as Hayyim ibn Attar added in the 1700s, the point was that we ourselves should learn to shine, because we must become the light.
What is the light for? It's a question I ask myself from time to time. Almost always, answers shine before me. Sometime answers are about faith, or reason, or curiosity, or hope, or love, or care, or direction, or struggle, or aspiration, or patience, or resilience. At this moment, writing these words in a hospital, the light is about indomitable power and the capacity to heal.
What else could lift hospital doctors and nurses, day after day, around the clock, one patient after another, amidst a seemingly endless parade of suffering and fear? I'm sure doctors and nurses have dark nights of the soul, as surely patients do. I'm sure some doctors and nurses become jaded and freighted, but somehow not most of the ones I've met this month. They radiate a quality of care, resilience and humanity that I can only call "light."
At the end of this week's Torah portion, Miriam takes the lead in gossiping about her brother Moses, jealous of his unique relationship with God (Numbers 12:1-10). God calls Miriam and Aaron out into the light and gives them a lecture, after which Miriam develops tzora'at, a spiritual sickness. Immediately Moses prays to God, speaking what became Judaism's first healing prayer (Numbers 12:13), אֵ֕ל נָ֛א רְפָ֥א נָ֖א לָֽהּ / El na r'fa na lah ("Please, God, please heal her") – as straightforward as prayers come.
Healing came, but only after Miriam was shut in darkness for a week, to feel the darkness and separateness her words unleashed.
There is darkness and there is light. Just as the first impulse of creation was "Let there be light," we too have that sacred ability to shine. Our calling is to be a light – to light up the darkness, channel divine love to the world, and maybe bring healing along the way.
Today we know that kindling a flame creates a partial vacuum that causes light (and smoke) to rise. Back then, we didn't know why candle light tended to rise: it just did. To Talmud, the command was to keep raising the heat until light lifted on its own (B.T. Shabbat 21a). That's how it works, as anyone knows who's held a kindled match to a wick until it stays lit.
Why did the Menorah stand at the Holy of Holies? Surely not because God needed its light. Rather, we did. We needed the reminder that ultimately everything about the Holy of Holies, holiness and spirituality was for the purpose of giving light – and lighting us up. As the Psalmist wrote, "For You (God) light my lamp: YHVH, my God, illuminates my darkness" (Psalms 18:29); "For with You (God) is the source of life: by Your light we see light (Psalms 36:10).
As Ovadia ben Yosef put it in the 1500s, the Menorah's symbolism of light became "a conduit of spiritual light onto Israel." And as Hayyim ibn Attar added in the 1700s, the point was that we ourselves should learn to shine, because we must become the light.
What is the light for? It's a question I ask myself from time to time. Almost always, answers shine before me. Sometime answers are about faith, or reason, or curiosity, or hope, or love, or care, or direction, or struggle, or aspiration, or patience, or resilience. At this moment, writing these words in a hospital, the light is about indomitable power and the capacity to heal.
What else could lift hospital doctors and nurses, day after day, around the clock, one patient after another, amidst a seemingly endless parade of suffering and fear? I'm sure doctors and nurses have dark nights of the soul, as surely patients do. I'm sure some doctors and nurses become jaded and freighted, but somehow not most of the ones I've met this month. They radiate a quality of care, resilience and humanity that I can only call "light."
At the end of this week's Torah portion, Miriam takes the lead in gossiping about her brother Moses, jealous of his unique relationship with God (Numbers 12:1-10). God calls Miriam and Aaron out into the light and gives them a lecture, after which Miriam develops tzora'at, a spiritual sickness. Immediately Moses prays to God, speaking what became Judaism's first healing prayer (Numbers 12:13), אֵ֕ל נָ֛א רְפָ֥א נָ֖א לָֽהּ / El na r'fa na lah ("Please, God, please heal her") – as straightforward as prayers come.
Healing came, but only after Miriam was shut in darkness for a week, to feel the darkness and separateness her words unleashed.
There is darkness and there is light. Just as the first impulse of creation was "Let there be light," we too have that sacred ability to shine. Our calling is to be a light – to light up the darkness, channel divine love to the world, and maybe bring healing along the way.
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