Torah Portion Music Video of the Week : The Eternal Light

[muman613]

Shalom and Welcome JTF readers,

Often when I am studying Torah I will come across an idea or a phrase which is also examined in music which I like. And when this happens I like to share it with my brothers and sisters and friends.

This week we are reading portion Terumah which contains the commandments given to Moses to build the Sanctuary (the Mishkan) and part of this instruction involves the Menorah (the seven branched candelabra which adorned the Mishkan). The Menorah was to be lit every day and it would burn for the entire day and night, providing a constant light. It would never be extinguished (in spirit).

Every synagogue is equipped with an Eternal light to remind us of the Menorah.

Matisyahu (back when he really wrote Jewish music) wrote a reggae song about this eternal flame...

Aish Tamid
The place lays phased like a warrior slayed
Engraved into the space with his sword still raised
Layers of charcoal sprayed through hallways
Praise relays off the walls echoing all ways

Dirt covered earth lays beneath my rib cage
Giving birth to overgrowth invading on to path ways
Burnt out trees cover streets where children once played
Sown seeds decay through sacred stepping stones in disarray
Where the alter used to be placed inter-changed for bloodstains
Sunrays illuminate the smoke filled haze
Trace of incense scents of sacrifice stayed

[Chorus:]
Aish tamid eternally
A fire burns continuously
Wondering where you been
Won't you come on home to me?

Flash back patches of grass growing wild in fact
Cracked walls burnt black like a kingdom sacked
Memories like artifacts attacked yet still intact
Melodies wrapped in glass and shatter with the impact

Air intermingling ringing with the singing
of songs once sung, hung, flung into the rafters
Catastrophe struck the sound stuck
Disaster plastered
The aftermath a blasted building still standing, like a starved man fasting
the skies expanding clouds passing, dust particles dancing,
in broken bars of light, streaming from a shaft, slashed into the ceiling,
Shh, you could feel the ground breathing.

[Chorus]

Daughter of Zion is lying crying in the mist
Morning light slips in, shifting through the darkness
Like a morning wife reminisce having visions of her long gone prince
Memories drip rain drops tip towing emptiness
Intermixed with tears like fears left unfixed
Walls worn thin frozen fortress like dawn waiting for the sunrise of a day that got skipped
Like a life gone wrong wandering wilderness
Lovesick stripped abyss empty once luscious

[Chorus]

Paint the scene so you could see, the city's picking up speed
On a bench 14th street, taxi's streaming yellow streaks
Spears piercing through my ears, you could hear the traffic speak
Jack hammers drill smacking through the cracking concrete
Buildings filled with windowsills spilled tangled telephone wires
Signs sparking neon lights flash like wild fire
My insides rise I start to feel paralyzed
Let out a sigh-a melody blew by- like an ancient war cry
the way the sunlight hit the trees it really caught my eye,
glistening' listening' to the breeze dancing' through the leaves,
freeze, the city move's in slow motion like a dream

I'm left empty like the temple turned into a fox den
Bus fumes dripping spitting into city summer sun
Sifting through the ash dimly lit vision listening
To the hiss lifting off a nighttime ocean
Shim, shim, shimmering singing hair on my skin
Glim, glim. Glimmering, whispering where ya been

From amidst the darkness set sail with the softness
Breeze traveling across the seas arisen from with in Mt. Zion
Wind coming in picking up momentum
Cutting crisply through the thickness riding on a rhythm
A rollercoaster sizzling, twisting down the mountain
ripping rocket ship exploding like a fountain
overflowing spilling through the courtyards of Jerusalem
Uncovering debris lifting up the fallen arisen within
to reach the yiddin even in Manhattan
exposed menorah glowing in the shadows of destruction
trailblazing through affliction
brushing off the branches golden
standing strong flames
dancing like a lion roaring rising out of nothing

[muman613]

http://www.aish.com/h/su/tai/The_Etrog_and_Jewish_Beauty.html
BEAUTIFUL OLIVES

In a similar vein, the Menorah, which is central in the service of the Holy Temple, and which has become a symbol of the Jewish people itself, is described in the Torah as "ner tamid," an eternal light. The source in the Torah reads: "And you (Moses) shall command the children of Israel that they bring unto you pure olive oil beaten for lighting to make a light shine out continuously." (Exodus 27:20)

The Sages of the Midrash point out that the olive -- the beaten olive -- whose oil burns continuously, is the true symbol of Israel. The Midrash quotes the verse in Jeremiah (11:16): "The Lord called thy name (Israel) a leafy olive tree, beautiful with goodly fruit," and the Midrash asks, why is it the olive tree with which Israel is identified?

The answer given is that Israel is uniquely similar in many of its essential characteristics to the fruit of the olive tree. The olive is beaten, pressed, ground down, and then it produces its oil which gives rise to glowing light. So, too, the people of Israel: Despite all the oppression, cruelty and exile visited upon them, they are not destroyed. Rather, they continue to shine on magnificently, ever brighter.

It is significant that in the passage quoted, Jeremiah declares not only the dauntless character of Israel's persistence in the face of every hardship, but defines this quality as being the very source of Israel's beauty -- "leafy olive tree, beautiful with goodly fruit..."

[muman613]

http://ohr.edu/tw/5760/vayikra/emor.htm


THE ETERNAL FLAME

"Command the Children of Israel ... to kindle a continual lamp." (24:2)


Go into any Synagogue when it's dark and you will see a small lamp shining above the Holy Ark. It's called the ner tamid -- the eternal flame.

That lamp is a mEmorial of the ner ma'aravi (western lamp) of the menorah which the kohanim lit in the Beit Hamikdash. The ner ma'aravi burned miraculously. It never went out. Every evening, when the kohen came to kindle the flames he would find the ner ma'aravi still alight from the previous evening. He would remove the still-burning wick and oil, clean out its receptacle and then put back the burning wick and the oil. Then he would kindle all the other lamps with the western lamp.

However, when the Romans destroyed the Beit Hamikdash it seemed that the little solitary flame had been put out forever.

In Rome, there stands a triumphal arch built by the Emperor Titus. One of its bas-reliefs depicts the menorah being carried through the streets of Rome as part of the booty pillaged from the Beit Hamikdash. All its lamps are dark. It looks like some expensive antique, soon to languish under the dust of ages in some Vatican vault.

But did Titus really extinguish that eternal flame?

The Beit Hamikdash is a macrocosm of the human body. If you look at a plan of the sanctuary in the Beit Hamikdash, you will notice that the placement of the various vessels -- the altar, the table, the menorah -- corresponds to the location of the vital organs in the human body. Each of the Temple's vessels represents a human organ.

The menorah corresponds to the heart.

Why is it that so many young people today are choosing to return to the beliefs and practices that their parents had forgotten, and their grandparents despaired of seeing continued? It is as though some mystical force is transmitted in the spiritual genes of every Jew. A light burning on the menorah of the Jewish heart across the millennia. A light which can never be extinguished, which burns miraculously, even without replenishment of the oil or wicks of mitzvah observance.

So, in a mystical sense, the light Titus tried to put out continues to burn in the menorah of the Jewish heart. But there's more.

It would come as a great disappointment to Titus, but the menorah that is collecting dust in the Vatican is not the original menorah. It is a copy. The original menorah was hidden away (together with the other vessels) in the caves and tunnels under the Temple Mount.

If while the Temple was standing the western lamp of the menorah burned miraculously without human assistance, so why shouldn't it go on burning even after it was buried?

That western lamp continues to "burn" under the Temple Mount throughout the long dark night of exile. It continues to "burn" to this day. And it will continue to "burn" until Mashiach comes. Then, the light of the menorah of the Jewish heart will be revealed as identical to the light of the menorah in the Holy Beit Hamikdash.

Sources:
Sfat Emet
Rabbi Akiva Tatz

[muman613]

Mans soul is like a flame leaping towards the heavens but his physical body (guf) requires him to remain grounded in this world. This imagery is part of our understanding of the menorah and the eternal flame.

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/102219/jewish/Soul-on-Fire.htm

The soul of man is a lamp of G-d (Prov. 20:27).

[muman613]

Two more on this topic and then.... kapoot...