Parashat B’ha’alotkha פָּרָשַׁת בְּהַעֲלֹתְךָ

It is not always easy to see the connection between one week’s parsha and the last, and we know that the Torah is not necessarily chronological, so it may even be a mistake to look for those connections. But this week’s parsha--B’ha’alotkha—moves almost seamlessly from last week’s Naso.  

Remember that last Shabbat we read about the completion of the building of the Mishkan.  Well, in this week’s parsha, we turn on the lights.

We can only imagine what a powerful experience that must have been.

Of course that light appears through the menorah, perhaps the most widely-known symbol of Judaism.  God gives Moses exact instructions for how to build the menorah—hammered from gold, “according to the pattern that the Lord had shown Moses.”  Though the lamps are meant to be detachable, the menorah is supposed to be fashioned from one solid piece of gold.   And high priest Aaron is the one who has the honor of making it, using God’s instructions delivered to him by his brother Moshe.

One midrash tells is that the angel Gabriel actually put on a worker’s apron and showed Moshe how to make the menorah—there’s evidence for this in the parsha, where God says, “Now THIS is how. . . .” Some commentators see that word THIS (zeh) as almost like God pointing to something that is visible, like blueprints, there for Moses to see. Perhaps.

But, in addition, we are told that the flames should all point to the center of the menorah.  Why?

One argument is that the reason the flames point inward is so that no one will ever think that God NEEDS the light to shine his way—God has all the light He needs, so the light of the menorah does not point in his direction. But another interpretation—and I like this one better—tells us that pointing toward the center lets us know that we are united as a people, that however individual we are, both as individual people and as members of varied Jewish denominations and affiliations, we are all Jews, and we all point in the same direction.  Together, the menorah represents the people of Israel, God’s light unto the nations.  Perhaps this is part of what we mean by our “chosenness,” which is not, as we all know, what anti-Semites claim, but rather an increased responsibility and obligation to be a people of the covenant, a people who should serve as role models and, in the words of Rabbi Harold Kushner Z”L, to “teach by both personal and collective example.”