From Light to Light: A Chanukah Drash
To light, Liana Wertman, 2023 (Oil pastel and digital)
God appears many times throughout Torah in the form of fire. Sometimes this fire is a guardian. Now HaShem went before them [the Israelites] by day as a column of cloud to lead the way, and by night as a column of fire to give light to them so they could go by day and by night (Exodus 13:21).
Sometimes the fire is destructive and vengeful, meting out the justice of God throughout Leviticus and Numbers. And sometimes the fire is a reminder. We are instructed to keep the ceaseless light of God, the Ner Tamid, burning from morning until evening, before the presence of Hashem…forever (Exodus 27:21). Our God of fire is a God of passion. God’s passion is dangerous and fundamental to all life here on Earth.
And the light went out.
And I searched around in dark corners with my fingertips.
And I found one.
There was only one match left in that awful bar matchbook.
The one I got at that young adult Federation Hanukkah party last year.
And I struck the flimsy match to the box eight times
Trying to create an eternal flame.
And the light came.
The flame was actually quite small.
Good enough.
And the sudden light surprised me.
And I closed my eyes
And the light was still there.
Only, behind my eyelids, it was more than a light.
It was a tower of fire
burning towards the heavens against the starry night sky.
A symbol, a barrier, a reminder, a guardian
To light the way.
I usually think of fire as destructive. Massive forest fires, usually started by humans or human inventions, have changed lives and landscapes. I’m from Southern California where fire is a season. Whole months where one spark could mean destruction and death, air pollution keeping us indoors while the world burns. I think of fires and suddenly I’m back calling my parents from a couch in the hallway of Pardes in Jerusalem. It’s 4am in Los Angeles but I need to wake them up because I have just received an evacuation notice for our family home. I also know that fire is creative. The fires of my beloved mountains are part of the ecosystem. They come here to move our small bushy forests through natural and necessary cycles. Their heat and ash bring beautiful flowers and strengthen our trees. And so I learn that fires set incredibly important boundaries. But it is our role and responsibility to learn how to live alongside this beautiful and immense power.
Years ago, a friend told me that she had a practice of sitting in front of her Chanukiah and meditating on the flames until they all went out. She told me that as she mourned her father on the shortest days of the year, these lights provided a way through the external and internal darkness. She found comfort in the light, in its beauty and its call. The call to relight the eternal light of God every day and bask in its glory. I learned later that there is a rule that you can only use the light of the Chanukiah for enjoyment, for pleasure. It is not for creation or destruction. My friend had found a way to live alongside the beautiful power of this fire and honor it. So I sit with the fire too. But I long for more warmth.
And some time later I opened my eyes
And the light was small again. But it was everywhere.
Hundreds of tiny lights danced before my eyes everywhere I turned.
It felt like there was no more darkness.
And I couldn't see anything except those dancing lights.
They consumed everything I set my eyes on.
In Midrash Tanchuma’s commentary on the first line of Genesis, our Rabbis ask how the Torah was written. It was written, they answer, with letters of black fire on a surface of white fire. This image reminds me that the surface, the white space around the unchanging words of Torah, is also a space of creation and destruction. This fire is different from the fire of Torah’s words. The black fire is a flame that offers clear boundaries. While it cannot be changed it can still fundamentally change us, warm up our souls. But it can also burn those of us—women, trans people, queer people, disabled folks, and many more—who cannot always see ourselves in the literal words these flames light up. The white fire, however, is ever changing. It represents how we can create Torah, healing the wounds the words inflict in our souls. It burns, slow and steady, removing the things that no longer serve us, reminding us of the work it took to get here. That white fire is necessary to the health and sustainability of the words themselves.
In the fight to save California’s unique and diverse ecosystems from fires, Indigenous peoples in California lead the holy work of controlled burning practices. Controlled burns come from the traditional practice of lighting low intensity fires to clear the drying plants that might fuel ravenous forest fires, while also releasing the nutrients the fires were always meant to release.
A student making a menorah at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem, 1950
As we built our homes in the California hills, we could see only benefit in stopping the fires that made the air unbreathable and destroyed our natural landscapes. We lived so close to the fire that we became afraid of it, and this ironically made the fires worse. Without regular, controlled, and low intensity fires, the inevitable fire cycle had way more fuel from the dead and dried out plants. The fires got worse. The fires burned our homes. So we stopped seeing fire as healing, let alone as safe. We created protection for ourselves against the fire. We tried to revere it with fear. Why did iit keep burning us?
And I couldn’t allow the light to go out again.
I also could not stay in this all consuming light.
I need rules for how to live with this light alongside me.
How can it guide me without burning me?
How can it protect me without consuming me?
All I know is that to create, to recreate, to renew
Is not without risk.
For my safety I must live beside this fire.
For my safety I must not live inside this fire.
I am in eternal and deep gratitude for the people who do the work of controlling fires. There are varying levels of choice in who does this work. Some are called to it, others are brought to it. It is dangerous. It requires precision. When Nadav and Abihu, Aaron’s sons, finish their ordination into the priesthood and rush into the holy sanctuary to offer “alien fire,” God consumes them in flame (Leviticus 10:1). I like to read this story as a warning to always remember that any attempt at human oneness with God is all consuming. That is to lose ourselves completely in God.
My friend and teacher Elizabeth Dunoff-Bronstein taught me that the reason God chose Bezalel to build the home for God’s fire was because Bezalel knew how to create with what God gave him—a spirit steeped in wisdom, understanding, and knowledge of all creation (Exodus 31:3). He could make sure the final Mishkan looked exactly as God had asked, but he built it in an original order. He built it by trusting his own hand to control, direct, and house the fire. In that sense of self, in that creativity, was an innate understanding that his art was his and God’s at once. It was a collaboration. Art gave him the ability to find himself amongst the fire without getting burned.
And I build houses for fire in fields of brush.
And when the fire moves I move.
I have made my home moveable.
I can pick up what makes me whole, holy, and take it with me.
And each time I am different.
I am created anew before God.
And so I create alongside God.
And so I create to be close to God.
The fire of Torah rages when we try to control it through fear. Its words, supposed lessons, and immutability hurt us as we try to confine it for our own perceived sense of safety. And it burns us when we try to become it, be consumed by it. But that same fire is creative when we work alongside it, actually trying to understand it. When we treat Torah with the deep reverence of our attention and our care, the fire burns bright, creating light for us and through us. This is why the white fire must be there. Low intensity fire that spreads around the old growth to release what is captive beneath. It gives space to what has been crowded out. Our job is to grow there.
