Behaalotecha 5762 - May 31, 2002

Editor's Note:
re: looking at light

Though it occupies only three verses of this week's Torah reading, G-d's commandment to Aaron to raise light in the Menorah's lamps gives the entire Parshah its name. Indeed, the Menorah and its lamps, the flames they hold aloft and the laws and procedures governing their lighting, are seen by our prophets and sages as representing the composition of our inner selves and the nature of our mission in life.

So we availed ourselves of the opportunity to assemble an anthology of 26 articles, stories and meditations on light: on its luminance and warmth, its goodness and beauty, its transcendence and ethereality, its paradoxes, fissions and refractions, the darkness from which it emerges and comes to displace, the guidance it holds out and the hope it fosters...