An Ever-Living Fire

How Do We Preserve What Endures?

“A perpetual fire shall be kept burning on the altar, not to go out.” (Leviticus 6:6)

“Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord…” (Jeremiah 23:29)

One older person stood up from behind a wall, and said: Rebbe, my teacher, The Holy Light, come and light candles, for that is a commandment, on which it is said: An everlasting fire shall be kept burning on the altar, it should not be extinguished (Lev. 6:6). And, on that it is also said: To light the everlasting flame (Ex. 27:20). This is surely the light of the divine, the light that shines within the soul of every person. Come, light it with her. (Tikkunei Zohar, 73a:2)

The story is told of something Heraclitus told some strangers who wanted to come visit him. Having arrived, they saw him warming himself at a stove. Surprised, they stood there in consternation—above all, because he encouraged them, the astounded ones, and called for them to come in with the words, “here, too, the gods are present.” (Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism”)

The Torah describes the Temple Menorah as an “everlasting lamp or light” (ner tamid) and the fire above the Temple altar as an “everlasting fire” (ash tamid). In an obvious sense, neither of these lights is everlasting, continuous, or perpetual. With the Temple destroyed, the everlasting lights have gone out, have become intangible, preserved only through the text and our imagination. Even the lights that hang in our synagogues as symbols of the vanished past do not burn forever, nor do they burn without interruption. And for those whose eternal lights are lightbulbs, all the more so—paying an electricity bill doesn’t feel quite the same as adding kindling wood to a wood-fire or adding olive oil to a golden lamp.

But there is another sense in which the constant light and fire which the Torah commands us to maintain are inextinguishable. Their perseverance does not depend upon our behavior. This is the light which the Zohar understands to be the divine light. The light is not constant by virtue of our keeping it; rather, its constancy is what demands that we light, what allows us to light. To the extent that we light it at all, rather than are lit by it, we do so, simply by being.

In philosophical terms, this is the original light that Heidegger speaks of when he writes in Being and Time that “to speak” is “to let things appear.” The root of the Greek word, phenomenon, which means “appearing thing,” he points out, is phos, light. That which lets things appear—this is the divine light of the mystics or the light of Being of the philosophers. When we light the Menorah or kindle the altar, we are testifying to and illuminating that which has always been.

Why should we light a lamp or fire that needs no assistance? Isn’t it redundant? Hubristic? Absurd? Midrash Tanchuma (Tetzaveh 2) puts the question this way:

“You feed the entire world, yet you command me to offer sacrifices?…You are a light to the whole world, yet You enjoined us to burn a lamp continually. By Your light, we see light, yet You tell us to light a lamp? R. Meir declared that the Holy One, blessed be God, said: The lamps that Aaron lights are more precious to Me than the luminaries that I placed in heaven.”

Why should God prefer our small, seemingly redundant lamps to stars and planets?

One answer, given by The Zohar, is that each of us has a personal obligation to be lit up, to find our essential calling, because our souls are themselves divine. We are singular fragments of God. The act of lighting an external lamp is a means to lighting an internal one. The eternal light is not to be found in our environment, but in ourselves. Another possibility is that we have a personal obligation to light up the souls of others. The two obligations are interrelated: the more illuminated we are, the more capable we are of illuminating others. The more we surround ourselves with illuminated souls, the more we learn from their example, and take inspiration from them. We light to show ourselves and others that we matter, and when we know and help others know that we and they matter, our light is brilliant.

Commenting on a story about the Greek thinker, Heraclitus, Heidegger notes the visitors’ surprise at finding the famous sage engaged in an ordinary affair. The laypeople expect the great philosopher to be lost in thought, but instead find him warming himself by the fire. Is this humble activity philosophical? The visitors have come a long way to catch a glimpse of what philosophy is only to behold a scene they could have found at home. For Heidegger, the point of the story is that, for a genuine thinker, all activities are contemplative. Heraclitus responds “here, too, the gods are present.” I would add that the particular example matters. In his writings, Heraclitus describes the entire world as an “ever-living fire.” Perhaps his act of warming himself by the fire has a sacred, esoteric dimension to it. In warming himself, Heraclitus also signifies his agency as a witness to the great fire that is being itself. He kindles the ash tamid, the eternal fire, by tending his temporal one.

The law of the constant flame is a command to see oneself and one’s life as significant, even as one might have reason to think the opposite. Does the constant, undying, inviolable light, really depend upon us? In an absolute sense, no. In an experiential and historical sense, yes.

The Mishna states, “In each generation one is obligated to see oneself as though one came out of Egypt” (Pesachim 10:5). The law turns a one-time event into a recurring one; it makes the story an ash tamid, the act of memory an act of kindling the eternal fire. So much of the Exodus story is miraculous, and not just on the level of divine intervention. The faith of the people is also a kind of miracle—they had every reason to give up. But if the story were only a story about the past, then Pesach would simply be a story of gratitude: “look at what our ancestors did so that we might reap their rewards” Instead, because Pesach points to a more archetypal truth, it tells us that one day our descendants will benefit from the marvelous risks that we take today. Just as we exist today because Shifra and Pua defied Pharaoh’s genocidal orders, we must ask—what dominant forces must we overcome—so that one day future generations can say that they exist by virtue of our defiance.

To light the eternal fire is to embody the paradox that the fire does and does not need us. It is to acknowledge that wonder is to be found no less in the act of keeping than in the acts of initiating or accomplishing. In a Seder context this means recognizing that our story is perennially unfinished. Our night of recalling the past is itself part of the stor. Our ancestors recalled their past so that we might be here today, recalling ours.

The constant lights of the past are, in a literal sense, inconstant. Yet the Torah, which rabbinic tradition compares to fire, remains. When we study it, as we are now doing, we reveal its enduring warmth, and allow it to reveal ours.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach,

Zohar Atkins @Etz Hasadeh

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Etz Hasadeh is a Center for Existential Torah Study.

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