Hanerot hallalu kodesh hem, we say as we light the candles. These candles we are lighting, they are kodesh, holy. Ve’eyn lanu reshut lehishtamesh bahem ela lirotam bilvad. And we don’t have permission to use them but only to see them, to gaze upon them.
The Habit of Using the Light
We are not allowed to make use of the light of these candles. First taking in what a radical statement this is. We normally view light as functional, practical, useful. When we enter a dark room, we turn on the light, not in order to look at the light, but in order to see things in the room. Just imagining that scenario for a moment, flipping on the light switch, and notice how little attention you pay to the light itself and how much you view it as a tool, a background tool lehishtamesh bo, to absolutely make use of. Maybe you came in to find something or maybe you want to read or just to get your bearings. Whatever the reason you turned on the light, it was certainly not to gaze upon the light itself. It was to use it.
And sometimes, most of the time, it’s appropriate to view light in this utilitarian way. Perhaps that’s why the word for sun is shemesh, from the same root as lehishtamesh, to make use of. We do use the sun’s rays – for sight and warmth and growth. And unlike Chanukah, on Shabbat, the candles are not just allowed to be used, but meant for that purpose, to provide light and comfort. Even on Chanukah, we acknowledge this utilitarian need for light in the form of the shamash (also from the same root) – the useful helper candle. So it’s okay that normally we have a utilitarian orientation towards light. But this prohibition against using the Chanukah candles is pointing us in a different direction, the direction of intrinsic, as opposed to utilitarian value.
And that Chanukah orientation is pretty unfamiliar to us. The utilitarian orientation is more habitual, not just towards light but in general in life. It is the chol perspective, the secular daily perspective of work and functionality, of productivity and efficiency, of usefulness, of getting things done, of using something or someone to help us move forward to somewhere else, like stepping stones, always moving, not stopping, not honoring the thing itself, this stone itself, the light itself, but viewing it primarily as a means to some other end. Using the light to look at something else.
A Parable
Here is how I imagine the difference Chanukah is inviting us into. It’s like we are in this giant mansion and the Master of the mansion has given us each a candle. We are instructed that our life mission is to find the treasure in the mansion. We spend our lives using the candle to help us look through the mansion for this treasure. We search high and low, using the candle to light up all the nooks and crannies, but not finding the treasure. Maybe we stumble across some pretty remarkable jewels along the way, but each time, we have the sense that this is not it, not what the Master intended, not what feels fulfilling inside us. After a while, out of despair and exhaustion, we stop and sit down, giving up, perhaps even crying, when suddenly, out of the corner of one eye, we notice the candle in our hands or maybe it’s actually in our heart, its light flickering away. We hadn’t even seen it before, viewing it only as a means to another end, just a tool to help us see other things. It’s like it was invisible, always pointing outward, helping us see the next thing, not itself. Now, bringing our attention to the candle, we know – this is it, this is the treasure, right here. It is the candle itself.
There is a deep truth here that Chanukah is trying to help us experience. And the truth lies in pausing our usual busy restless rushing and seeking for treasure out there, and instead sitting and noticing what is right here in front of us, what we normally overlook and try to make use of to get somewhere else.
Not Working, Not Being Useful
There is a tradition on Chanukah that women don’t work while the candles are lit. No cooking or doing laundry or setting up dinner. None of that useful, productive stuff. For a moment we are invited to sit and just be, not to be a useful candle helping make other things happen, but to turn back and notice ourselves, notice the candle that we are, to see our own intrinsic value. This is the treasure itself. We are the treasure, not our work, not what we produce or how useful we are, but we, the light of our very aliveness. Maybe feeling that right now, a sense of your own beingness in this moment, like a flame burning inside you. The enoughness of that. Simply: I am. I am. That is enough. That is the source of your value.
Intrinsic Value
You are valuable in and of yourself.. Not because you offer care or provide service or perform or get things done or make dinner. Not because you serve someone else’s needs. Not because people are pleased with you. Not even because you write a good Chanukah meditative essay. All of that is using the candle to look at something else outside of you. On Chanukah we don’t use the light. We sit and appreciate its intrinsic value. Sinking deeper into yourself and feeling that essential truth about you – you are a piece of God. That light represents your irrefutable unconditional value, the divine spark of your soul that you cannot lose or diminish and that you don’t need to earn. Stop being useful for a moment so you can feel it and know it.
Gaze at the candle lishmah, for its own sake, for your own sake. The words lishmah and lishamesh have only one letter different. Drop the shin and add the heh, drop the usefulness orientation and re-integrate the heh, reintegrate God, a sense of your own divinity, lishmah, for your own sake, for the sake of God. As you turn towards the candle, turn towards yourself, noticing and seeing your own light planted by God deep in your soul. Don’t get up and do something. Sit and rest and know that you are whole, you are valuable, you are worthy of pausing and noticing, not as a stepping stone to somewhere else, not as a tool, not as a means You are the end itself. You are the point. You can stop the treasure hunt. You have discovered the treasure and it is you, your own precious divine light and aliveness, your very being.
The Dream
Someone in one of my meditation groups last week said that this notion of our intrinsic value feels like a dream. Indeed, it is a dream. It partakes of the mysterious, the mystical, the otherworldly, the miraculous, like Chanukah itself, a holiday whose theme is the nes, the miracle, and whose 8 day celebration takes us beyond the 7 days of creation, beyond natue to the supernatural, the inexplicable, the kodesh, the holy, the divine. There is indeed no logic to our intrinsic value. It is not rational. The utilitarian approach is perhaps more reasonable and functional. But we were created betzelem Elokim, in the image of God, and so we carry inside us this miraculous supernatural holy divine something that is not explicable or rational. It is irreducible. We can’t even really value it properly or see it clearly. It is indeed a dream. It has the feel of air, a breeze, like we are flying, defying gravity.
Maybe sensing into that dreamlike quality by imagining a Chanukah candle and feeling into the intangibleness of its flame, its luminous almost fluorescent blue and then yellowy white, its radiating energy, the strange non concreteness of its existence, evanescent and airy, yet incredibly powerful, and the soft glowy aura that surrounds it That is us, our divinely implanted soul, the thing that is both most dream-like about us and yet also most deeply true and grounding and centering and incontrovertible, the one thing we can never lose. The world may not always see it or value it, but letting yourself see it and touch it now, if only in a dream, hazy and mysterious, but true in a heartfelt way that leaves an imprint of knowing on your body.
How It Radiates Outward
This is such good news. Can you feel how it would shift everything for you, if you really knew and believed in your own intrinsic divine value, that you don’t need to earn your keep by being useful or productive or successful or helpful or caring, that just as you are, just alive exactly as you are in this moment, you are like that Chanukah flame, sacred and holy, intrinsically worthy? It’s not that we stop working in the world or offering our services when we know this. On the contrary, we have more light than ever to offer. But we do it from a lighter, less burdened place, without desperation or urgency or exhaustion, simply as an offering. An offering. We simply let our light shine out and trust it to touch the people it is meant to touch without needing to control or manage the result. Trusting that if we stay rooted in the knowledge of our own candle treasure and of the candle treasure of every other person, all else will fall into place.
Perhaps that’s what pirsumei nisa is, the mitzvah to advertise the miracle, to share the good news, to radiate the light, to let others know that the dream is true. That it’s true that we are not just flesh and bones, that we are not just our work or our usefulness or our to-do list, that there is more to life than utilitarian efficiency. The dream of the spirit, of God’s existence outside and inside us, of an intrinsic mattering that cannot be lost, that dream is as clear as this light against the dark night, radiating its message to all who need it, to all who are open to hearing and seeing and knowing. When we feel the truth of it, we cannot contain ourselves. It overflows out of us, it bursts forward with joy and praise song, shevah vehoda’ah.
Entering the Cosmic Dream
Gazing at the candles in this intrinsic, non utilitarian way, gazing deeply into the flickering fog of light and being present to it, connecting to it, we enter into a dream in which all people know their intrinsic value. We enter into a dream in which our own intrinsic value and that of others is the very same thing. We see clearly the divinity in each of us and in all of us, and for a moment, we perceive, too, through the haze of the light, a sense of God’s presence here among us, so palpable, we do want to shout it out into the universe. God is right here. The treasure is right here. Just pause all your searching and running and look at the light. The treasure is right here. It’s me, it’s you, it’s God in us and among us. Trust it and let it shine.
Photo by cottonbro studio at Pexels
