This week’s Torah portion, Beha’alotcha, opens with the command that the Kohen light the menorah in the tabernacle. This command seems out of place here. It follows the account of the gifts brought by the heads of each tribe for the dedication of the altar and precedes the discussion of the sanctification of the Levites. Yet there are no other commandments before or after it regarding services in the tabernacle—only the menorah, standing alone.   

Rashi says that the menorah is mentioned here because Aaron felt distressed that all the heads of each tribe brought gifts to the tabernacle but his had not. God’s answer to him is, “Yours is more important than theirs, since you will light the menorah.” Why, though, does the menorah seem to have a special place among the tabernacle services? Why is it the first one performed each morning, and the one service that God holds up to Aaron as his special gift and one that occupies a special place in our parsha?   

The kabbalists say that the Mishkan is like a microcosm; thus, its construction must in some sense mirror the creation of the world. Just as the creation in the Torah begins with, “Let there be light,” so too the menorah, the source of light, occupies a primary place when it comes to the tabernacle.   

Just before the creation of light in Bereshit, the Torah writes that there was darkness. All of this light and darkness, paradoxically, comes before the creation of the sun, of day and night. The rabbis explain that this light is a primordial spiritual light, one which was shuttered away for the righteous in times to come. The idea that, as dark as things get, there was light in the past and there will be again; that even as we move further from a brighter past, we are also moving toward a brighter future: that a more redemptive time beckons—this is a deeply Jewish and hopeful view.   

The Mishkan was built at a difficult time between the sin of the golden calf and the sin of the spies. The Jewish people could have easily lost hope. But just as the world begins with light and ultimately circles back toward that primordial light, so too each day the Mishkan recreates this idea with the menorah. Thus, the menorah is not just another service in the tabernacle but the message that we are engaged in a cosmic movement toward a better, more redemptive time. Even at dark times such as these, we can all be part of bringing more light.