Rise and Shine: B'ha'alot'kha 5785 / 2025
June 13, 2025
Last night as I was studying Hebrew with my son, a friend texted me to let me know that Israel had attacked Iran. Many of us expect retaliation over Shabbat. None of us know what is coming, and I don’t have wisdom to offer. All I have is this prayer: may the day come soon when the Iranian people, the Palestinian people, and the Israeli people can all live in safety and peace.
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This week’s Torah portion, B’ha’alot’kha, takes its name from its first significant word:
“God spoke to Moses saying, ‘speak to Aaron and tell him, בְּהַעֲלֹֽתְךָ֙ אֶת־הַנֵּרֹ֔ת אֶל־מוּל֙ פְּנֵ֣י הַמְּנוֹרָ֔ה יָאִ֖ירוּ שִׁבְעַ֥ת הַנֵּרֽוֹת׃ / when you raise the lamps at the front of the menorah, the seven lamps will give light.’” (Numbers 8:2)
When we think of lighting lamps, there’s an obvious verb we’d expect to see: להדלק / l'hadlik, as in l’hadlik ner, “to kindle the lights” of Shabbat. Instead we get להעלות / l’ha’alot, which means to raise or to ascend. It’s the same root as the word aliyah, which is what we call it when someone comes up to the bimah and “ascends” to Torah, symbolically returning to Sinai.
The other significant words in our verse are words we might recognize: nerot, candles or lights. (In those days they were oil lamps.) Menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum our ancestors crafted for the mishkan / the portable sanctuary, like a seven-branched tree of hammered gold.. Ya’iru, they shine or give light. Two main ideas in this one verse: going up, and shining.
Torah often speaks in the language of aliyah and yeridah (ascending and descending). When our spiritual ancestors went down to Egypt, Torah called that a descent. Joseph descended into the pit, descended into slavery, descended into Pharaoh’s dungeon… and following him, our ancestors descended into Mitzrayim, “the Narrow Place” of constriction and spiritual servitude.
And when we left Mitzrayim, “The Narrow Place,” Torah calls it an ascent. Literally, aliyah. Going up from constriction to the land of promise. Our spirits rising. As the Psalmist writes, “From the meitzar / the narrow place I called to You; You answered me with expansiveness.” That’s the spiritual move we’re making as a people. From a low place, a stuck place, rising and giving light.
As human beings our souls naturally shine. This is part of what it means to me when Torah says we are made in the image of God: our souls are like sparks from the divine fire. Our life’s work as human beings and as Jews is to repair what is broken in our world, and to let our light shine. In the words of Godspell, “If that light is under a bushel, it’s lost something kinda crucial.”
Our light wants to shine. And… the struggles of day-to-day life can obscure our light. Injustice obscures our light. Prejudice and mistreatment obscure our light. Trauma and loss obscure our light. And as the sages of the Talmud remind us in their teachings about illness, “a prisoner cannot release themself from prison” – we can’t “bootstrap” our way out of life’s narrow places.
But we can lift each other up. That’s why we’re in this life together. בְּהַעֲלֹֽתְךָ֙ אֶת־הַנֵּרֹ֔ת / B’ha’alot’kha et ha-nerot: “when you lift up the lights” – the lights are our souls, and it’s our job to lift each other up so we can shine. Because our souls need to shine, and this broken world needs all the light we’ve got.
Ibn Ezra explains in his commentary on this verse that this section of Torah comes to teach us that the light of the original menorah in the mishkan shone also at night. In this way it’s the precursor to our ner tamid, the eternal light that shines in every sanctuary. The physical light that’s meant never to go out symbolizes the light of holiness, the light of hope, the light of God.
That’s the divine fire of which each of us is a soulspark. I don’t believe that fire ever goes out.
Tonight we sang the words of Mi Khamokhah to the melody of the Zulu hymn Siyahamba, “We are walking in the light of God.” In ancient times a golden menorah shone a reminder of that light for our ancestors. Today I think Torah is inviting us to help each other shine that light: to lift each other up, cultivating joy in helping each others’ inner light to shine.
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In our morning liturgy we pray, ‘Or hadash al Tziyon ta’ir, “Let a new light shine upon Zion.” I pray for the new light of peace and safety, justice, human dignity, and mutual uplift to shine on the people of Israel, Palestine, and Iran, and on all of us whose hearts feel-together with theirs. And may we all help each other to shine our own light, here in the place where we are.
This is the d'varling I offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog.)