When you raise light in the lamps . . . toward the face of the menorah (8:2)
The Holy One, blessed be He, is all light; as it says, “The light dwells with Him” (Daniel 2:22). Yet He said to Israel: “Prepare for Me a candelabra and lamps.”
(Midrash Rabbah)
When you raise light (8:2)
The spiritual significance of the mitzvah of lighting the menorah is that one should be a “lamplighter” who ignites that latent potential within “the soul of man, a lamp of G-d”
(Proverbs 20:27).
Here, too, the endeavour must be to kindle the lamp “so that a flame arises of its own accord.” In teaching and influencing one’s fellow, the objective should be to establish him or her as a self-sufficient luminary: to assist in developing his talents and abilities so that his lamp independently glows and, in turn, kindles the potential in others.
(The Lubavitcher Rebbe)
When you raise light in the lamps (8:2)
When the kohen came to kindle the menorah’s lamps each afternoon in the Holy Temple, he found them fully prepared for lighting: earlier in the day the lamps had been cleaned and filled with oil, and fresh wicks had been inserted. All he had to do was bring near the flame he carried, so that its proximity to the waiting lamp would unleash the potential for illumination which the lamp already holds.
Therein lies an important lesson to the spiritual lamplighter. Do not think that you are achieving anything that your fellow could not, in truth, achieve on his own; do not think that you are giving him something he does not already possess. The soul of your fellow is a ready lamp, filled with the purest oil and equipped with all that is required to convert its fuel into a blazing flame. It lacks only the proximity of another lamp to ignite it. If your own soul is alight, its contact with another’s soul will awaken its potential for light, so that it may illuminate its surroundings and kindle other souls, in turn.
(The Lubavitcher Rebbe)
And this was the work of the menorah . . . from its shaft to its flowers (8:4)
The menorah also represents the Torah, the source of divine light in the world. This is alluded to in the menorah’s design, which is detailed in the 25th chapter of Exodus. The menorah had 7 branches, 11 knobs, 9 flowers and 22 goblets, and was 17 hand-breadths in height. These numbers represent the five books of the Written Torah: the first verse in the book of Genesis has 7 words, the first verse of Exodus has 11 words, the first verse of Leviticus has 9 words, the first verse of Numbers has 17 words, and the first verse of Deuteronomy—22 words.
(Divrei Noam)
G-d spoke to Moses . . . in the first month of the second year after they came out of the land of Egypt . . . (9:1)
For more than nineteen hundred years now, our Passovers have been incomplete. We eat the matzah and the bitter herbs, we drink the four cups of wine, ask and answer the four questions; but the heart and essence of Passover, the Passover offering, is absent from our Seder table. For G-d has hidden His face from us—has removed the Holy Temple, the seat of His manifest presence on physical earth, from our midst.
G-d desires and expects of us that we refuse to reconcile ourselves to the decree of galut and its diminution of His manifest involvement in our lives. He desires and expects of us that we storm the gates of heaven with the plea and demand: “Why should we be deprived?!”
(The Lubavitcher Rebbe)
If any man of you, or of your future generations, shall be unclean . . . or be on a journey afar off, he shall keep the Passover to G-d on the fourteenth day of the second month . . . (9:10–11)
The meaning of the “Second Passover” is that it is never too late; there is always a second chance.
(Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak of Lubavitch)
Why was the mitzvah of the “Second Passover” not commanded directly by G-d in the Torah from the very start, as were virtually all other mitzvot?
Because the Second Passover represents the power of teshuvah—the power to “return” and rectify past failings and transform them, retroactively, into merits. This cannot derive from Torah itself, since Torah, which defines what is desirable and undesirable in the eyes of G-d, cannot regard a failure to fulfil a divine command as something “positive.” The mitzvah of the Second Passover could come only as the divine response to the profound yearning of a soul superseding “Torah,” as it were, crying out for attachment to G-d from a place so deep within itself that it transcends failing and merit, and can therefore reach back to transform the failing into merit.
(The Lubavitcher Rebbe)
And at times it was that the cloud abode from evening until morning . . . then they journeyed (9:21)
The Sanctuary was a formidable structure, consisting of hundreds of foundation sockets, wall sections, pillars, tapestries and furnishings; a work crew of several thousand Levites assembled the Sanctuary at each camp, and dismantled and transported it when the divine command would come to move on. Yet the “Tent of Meeting” was erected at every encampment—even if only for a single day!
This teaches us that each and every one of our “stations” in life is significant unto itself. A person may find him- or herself in a certain place or in a certain situation for a very brief period, and it may seem to him that he is merely “on the way” to some other place. Yet there is always something in that place or situation to be sanctified—something that can serve as a “Tent of Meeting” between heaven and earth.
(The Lubavitcher Rebbe)
I will depart to my own land and to my kindred (10:30)
This is in keeping with the common saying: Use your local grain for sowing, even if of a lesser quality.
(Midrash HaGadol)
We remember the fish which we ate in Egypt (11:5)
Rav and Shmuel differed as to the meaning of this. One says it means fish. The other says it is an idiom for forbidden sexual relations. . . . This is also the meaning of what is says further on, “Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families”—they were weeping over the incestuous relations that were now forbidden them.
(Talmud, Yoma 75a)
We remember the fish which we ate in Egypt for nothing (11:5)
“For nothing”—without the responsibility of the mitzvot.
(Sifri)
The Lubavitcher Rebbe illustrates the deeper significance of the “free fish” of Egypt with the following parable:
A wealthy nobleman was once touring his estate, and came upon a peasant pitching hay. The nobleman was fascinated by the flowing motions of the peasant’s arms and shoulders, and the graceful sweep of the pitchfork through the air. He so greatly enjoyed the spectacle that he struck a deal with the peasant: for ten rubles a day, the peasant agreed to come to the mansion and enact his hay-pitching technique in the nobleman’s drawing room.
The next day the peasant arrived at the mansion, hardly concealing his glee at his new line of work. After swinging his empty pitchfork for over an hour, he collected his ten rubles—many times over his usual wage for a week of labor. But by the following day, his enthusiasm had waned. Several days later, he announced to his master that he was quitting his new commission.
“But I don’t understand,” puzzled the nobleman. “Why choose to swing heavy loads in the winter cold and summer heat, when you can perform such an effortless task in the comfort of my home and earn many times your usual pay?”
“But Master,” said the peasant, “I don’t see the work.”
But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes (11:6)
A person derives pleasure from material things only by comparing what he has to what his neighbours have. So although they could enjoy every taste in the world in the manna, they derived no pleasure from it, since everyone had it . . .
(Rabbi Yonatan Eibeschutz
And I will emanate of the spirit which is upon you, and will bestow it upon them (11:17)
Was Moses’ prophecy perhaps diminished? No. This is comparable to a burning candle from which many candles are lit, yet its own light is not diminished. So, too, Moses lost nothing that was his.
(Midrash Rabbah)
On the most basic level, this is the difference between physical and spiritual giving. In physical giving, the giver’s resources are depleted by his gift—he now has less money or energy than before. In spiritual giving, however, there is no loss. When a person teaches his fellow, his own knowledge is not diminished—if anything, it is enhanced.
Upon deeper contemplation, however, it would seem that spiritual giving, too, carries a “price.” If the disciple is inferior to the teacher in knowledge and mental capability, the time and effort expended in teaching him is invariably at the expense of the teacher’s own intellectual development; also, the need for the teacher to “coarsen” and simplify his ideas to fit the disciple’s mind will ultimately detract from the depth and abstraction of his own thoughts.
By the same token, dealing with people of lower moral and spiritual level than oneself cannot but affect one’s own spiritual state. The recipients of this “spiritual charity” will be elevated by it, but its giver will be diminished by the relationship, however subtly.
Indeed, we find an example of such spiritual descent in Moses’ bestowal of the leadership upon Joshua. In contrast to the appointment of the seventy elders, where he was told to “emanate” his spirit to them, Moses is here commanded to “take Joshua the son of Nun, and lay your hand upon him . . . and give of your glory upon him” (Numbers 27:18–20). Here the Midrash comments, “Lay your hand upon him—like one who kindles a candle from a candle; Give of your glory—like one who pours from one vessel into another vessel.”
In other words, there are two kinds of spiritual gifts: a gift that “costs” the giver nothing (“emanation,” which is like “kindling a candle from a candle”), and a gift that involves a removal of something from the giver in order that the recipient should receive something (“pouring from one vessel into another”).
There are times when we indeed sacrifice something of ourselves for the benefit of a fellow. But there are also times when we commit ourselves to our fellow so absolutely—when the gift comes from a place so deep and so true within us—that we only grow from the experience, no matter how much we give of ourselves.
If there be a prophet among you, I . . . speak to him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so (12:6–7)
In sleep, when the soul frees itself to a certain degree from the confines of the body, it can begin to perceive the divine essence that hides behind the material world. Moses, however, was able to see G-dliness even when awake—for him the material world did not conceal.
(Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov)