'Beha'alotcha et hanerot - When you raise up the lamps'
"Beha'alotcha et hanerot - When you raise up the lamps" 20 Sivan 5780 - 12 June 2020 Candle Lighting time: Melbourne, 4.49pm, Sydney 4.35pm
Connecting through Candle Lighting
Illuminating our Week and World
From generation to generation women have been entrusted with ushering in the Shabbat with the beautiful Mitzvah of candle lighting all the way back to Sara Imeinu, our beautiful and visionary matriarch.
You too are part of this Jewish luminous chain of tradition connected to the women before us, to the women after us and to those alongside us.
Each week that Sara lit the Shabbat candles, they miraculously stayed lit from one Friday to the next. This miracle replicated itself for her daughter-in-law, our matriarch, Rivkah, and surprisingly, albeit less visibly, the same miracle occurs even now. Whenever a Jewish woman or girl lights the Shabbat candles, the spiritual light generated also extends to the entire week spreading the calm and harmony as only this Mitzvah can.
Not only does the spirituality of the Shabbat candles extend from week to week but it also extends outwards to the world around us.
This week’s Parsha shows us how - with the opening words “Beha'alotcha et haneirot - When you raise up the lamps” [of the Menorah in the Holy Temple]. The unusual term to ‘raise up’ shows us that the Menorah was kindled mindfully, with care and precision, until each candle shone strongly and brightly. This signifies a life lesson for all of us:
Our souls, too, need to be ‘lit up’ and may require ‘raising up’ with an extra bit of encouragement and study to shine brightly and strongly. As it says in Proverbs “The soul of man is the lamp of G‑d”. Our purpose is to illuminate the world with our Mitzvot and to help each other ‘rise’ up to reach higher and higher and shine brighter and brighter.
The lamps of the Menorah shone outwards, beyond the Temple, illuminating the wider world through its uniquely constructed windows which were narrow on the inside and wide on the outside. Our Shabbat candles too emanate light to the world from our homes, our ‘Beit Hamikdosh me’at’ (miniature Holy Temple).
On our recent festival of Shavuot we once again accepted our roles as a light among the nations through the light of Torah. Each week as we light our Shabbat candles we are gifted an opportunity to reflect on how we can spread the light of Torah and Mitzvot across time and space, as embodied by Sara’s Shabbat candles and the ‘raised’ lights of the Menorah.
The Shabbat candles are our special way, as women, to shine a light on the Torah and its precepts from generation to generation across the globe.
Our Candle Lighting Project
Our candle lighting project celebrates the wisdom of the women who came before us, which we in turn pass down to the generations that follow. All through time, stories from Jewish women have been told and passed down from mother to daughter, from generation to generation. The Rosh Chodesh Women’s Circle™ Inc encourages Jewish women and girls to tap into this wisdom with our two current projects:
1) ‘Linking the Generations; through the power of story’ - where seniors share their unique personal narratives recorded as an inspiration for community and family
2) ‘Eshet Chayil’ where daughters celebrate their mothers’ o.b.m. inspirational lives, sharing the wisdom, in person and via the subsequent recording, for all to connect with and learn from, in the beautiful atmosphere of the RCWC.
