Bring the Light

Sermon Parshat Beha’alotecha 5782

This week features the longest days of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, with the summer solstice coming up this Tuesday, on June 21st.  There are Jewish holidays associated with each of the equinoxes, spring in March and autumn in September, and the winter solstice in December.  But there is no Jewish sun-related holiday in June.  This demonstrates some interesting things about Judaism, and about all religion.

Judaism, unlike other ancient religions, views God as Creator of the natural universe.  Rather than seeing the sun and moon as gods, or the stars and planets as independent entities, we have always understood the entirety of nature as being the result of God initiating creation.  You can call this a religious form of the Big Bang Theory, if you like; I tend to think of it that way.  God began all creation out of nothing, Creation ex Nihilo, and the central idea is simply that the sun, moon, planets, stars, galaxies, and other celestial entities revolve and rotate and expand or contract in ways initiated by God’s original act of creation.  These heavenly bodies aren’t seen as bearing any astrological magic, they don’t impact our lives directly through some spiritual or mystical process, but are simply objects created by God. 

But we Jews have always been influenced by the surrounding cultures in which we lived, and we have often utilized some of the ideas others have found relevant and important.  We just use them to demonstrate the central idea of one God, and God’s role forming and shaping the entirety of the universe.

In nearly every culture in the world the place of the sun in the sky has been of interest, and often a central focus of religious practice as well.  In Egypt, the sun god Ra was a central deity, as was Aton, the solar disk. Mesopotamians worshipped Shamash, the sun god, whose name became the word for sun in Hebrew, shemesh.  Other peoples worshipped the sun too, and many created special rituals and monumental religious places dedicated to the solar cycle, from Stonehenge in Britain to the Temple of the Sun in Beijing to the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan near Mexico City. 

Because of the predictable quality of the solar year, nearly every region and people on earth has ritual holidays associated with the dates when days were shortest and nights longest—the winter solstice, as well as days longest and nights shortest—the summer solstice—and the dates when the days and nights were of equal duration, the spring and fall equinoxes.   Those holidays had various names and rites, from the Babylonian Nisanu spring festival to the Midsummer day in Scandinavia to the fall festival in Vietnam and China to the Roman Saturnalia that was transformed into Christmas. 

Judaism developed rituals and holidays around these solstices and equinoxes too: Passover, near the vernal equinox in spring, is our chag haAviv, our springtime holiday of freedom.  Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year, and Sukkot, our harvest festival, occur around the fall equinox.  And in winter, of course, Chanukah, our festival of lights, comes at the darkest time of year near the winter solstice.  Even though we don’t acknowledge any special religious significance to the cycles of the sun—our Jewish calendar, of course, is based on the moon—we still manage to cover three of the four special solar times with important festivals.  These holidays are officially unrelated to sun-worship, but in keeping with a Jewish genius for adopting customs of other traditions we utilize them to advance Jewish ideas and values.

We Jews do this for the key spring, fall, and winter dates but not for the Summer Solstice, this coming week.  It seems slightly odd that we connect to the other three crucial periods of the year for solar religiosity, while on the one day of the year that seems most likely to inspire religious connection we do bubkis, nothing.

Perhaps we don’t do anything for the summer solstice precisely because it was such an important element for many ancient religious traditions.  In Israel, the Essenes, an ascetic Jewish religious group active during the 1st century CE, were the only sect to use a solar calendar, rather the lunar one. At the time, nearly 2000 years ago, Essenes were one of about 24 different Jewish religious sectarian groups in Israel.  Archaeologists found that the largest room of the ruins at Qumran (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered) was a sun temple.  This Tuesday, at the time of the summer solstice, the rays of the setting sun will shine at the angle of 286 degrees along the building's longitudinal axis, and illuminate its eastern wall. The room is oriented at exactly the same angle as the Egyptian shrines dedicated to the sun gods. Two ancient authorities -- the historian Josephus and the philosopher Philo of Alexandria -- wrote that the Essenes were sun worshipers, and here we have the evidence.

In a world thus permeated by the glow of sun worshippers, Judaism thus found itself in a position in which it needed to avoid establishing anything that could become a catalyst for more solar devotion.  And so, no Summer Solstice celebrations for us this week, and no special dedications on behalf of solar devotionals.

But the days are sure long now, and filled with light.  Which leads to another thought about light.

This week we read the Torah portion of Beha’alotecha, the third parsha in the Book of Numbers.  In Beha’alotecha the command is given for the greatest symbol of Judaism ever created, the menorah, the candelabrum that comes to symbolize everything meaningful about Jewish inspiration and ritual.  Is the menorah the becomes the chief image of Jewish life for over three thousand years, the menorah that is the official state symbol of Medinat Yisrael, the state of Israel, the menorah that is the most important visual representation of what Judaism is all about. 

The seven-branched Menorah represents, in a picture, everything that is meaningful about Judaism for millennia.  The oldest Jewish tombstones we have are decorated with menorahs.  In the remarkable collection of ancient Jewish objects that you can find in the Vatican in Rome, for example, there are dozens of images of menorahs.  No wonder Israel made it the symbol of the state, the most modern and meaningful expression of Jewish life today.

Now I know that the so-called Star of David, the Magein David, is the picture everyone has in her or his mind about what really represents Judaism.  But the Star of David is actually a Johnny-come-lately.  It has only been used for perhaps 700 years as a Jewish symbol at all.  For much more of Jewish history it has been the menorah that matters.

That menorah is lit in our Torah portion of Beha’altoecha this week to prove the presence of God, the symbolic daily representation of God’s presence in our midst that really represents what is holy and brilliant about Judaism.  The Menorah was the 7-branched light lit in the Tabernacle in the Wilderness and then the Temple in Jerusalem, as the sign of God’s eternal presence. When it was lit, God was there.

Now we are all familiar with the Chanukah menorah, the 9 candled lamp that that we tend to think of as a “menorah”.  Actually, that is not a menorah, really, but a Chanukiah, a specific kind of lamp.  The Chanukiah, while a much older symbol of Judaism than the Magein David, the star of David, is still kind of newish—less than 2200 years old, 1000 years younger than the menorah itself.  

The lamp we have here in Beha’alotecha is the 7 branched menorah that was the central symbol of Judaism, the one you can see being carried off by Roman soldiers on the Arch of Titus in Rome.

So you should be asking yourself an important question by now:  just why are we talking about a 7-branched menorah?  After all, we don’t actually use such a menorah in any Jewish rituals at all today.  It is an archaic symbol, something so out of date that, with all our many rituals and candle lightings and brachot and services, we don’t even have one single rite in which we use a 7 branched menorah for anything.  That symbol has become meaningless.

Which is important.  Because no matter how central the menorah was to our people’s history and symbolism, no matter how much it represented God’s inspirational presence in our midst, it is now, in matter of fact, meaningless to Jews.

Why is that?

Because we didn’t use it. After the Temple was destroyed for the last time we never again lit a 7-branched menorah for any ritual purpose.  And so, it just doesn’t matter.

We do keep it around, as a memento of our great past history.  But it isn’t something you would want to buy in a gift shop, or give for a bar mitzvah or confirmation gift. 

And why not?

Because there is no practical use for it.  A 7 branched menorah is like an outdated computer or useless old cellphone today.  No real meaning.

Now, why is this relevant tonight?

Because that menorah truly can serve one important practical purpose.  Just as our Judaism serves an important practical purpose.

In a basic way, that golden menorah was a way to keep track of the days of the week—a new light was added each day from Sunday through Friday until, finally, all seven branches shone on the holiest of days, Shabbat. 

Each day, we added a bit more light.  Each day, our ancestors added to the illumination of God’s holiness.  Each day they remembered to bring just a bit more brilliance into their lives.

If we can remember to do the same—to add a bit of extra light into our lives each day—then perhaps we, too, will find holiness in our own lives, and reach closer to God.

Be’ha’alotecha instructs us to light the menorah in the holiest place, commands us to bring illumination, to add light to the world.  We Jews have always believed this is our truest task, to brighten the darkness of cruel or thoughtless societies.  There was an entire Jewish movement, the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment in the 19th century, that believed that intellectual honesty and integrity and openness could help bring more light to the dark places on our globe, could inspire us to grow in goodness, holiness, and responsibility.

So too, today, in a society and a world where darkness seems to spread unchecked, it is our role to bring light even into these superlong days, to seek to brink the illumination of care, love and integrity into our world, to brighten everything through our own example.

So may it prove to be for each of us this week.