In this week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh, Moses is told to command the Jewish people to take pure olive oil to light the menorah in the Temple.  The menorah was lit each day as one of the first services in the temple in Jerusalem.  The description of the actual fashioning of the gold menorah was already described in last week’s Torah portion among descriptions of so many of the Temple’s vessels such as the Ark and Table.  Following those descriptions we have this week’s command to light the menorah every day followed by a lengthy description of the vestments of the kohen (high priest).

Why does the Torah spend a portion relating the Temple’s furniture and vessels and another Torah portion describing what the kohen wore but between them a few lines about the lighting of the menorah connecting the two portions?  Indeed, the other many Temple services are not described here, only the lighting of the menorah.  How to sacrifice animals and bring incense is saved for latter books of the Torah, so why the stress here, between the section of the Temple’s vessels and the kohen’s vestments, on how to light the menorah? Furthermore, why use the menorah’s lighting as a transition between the Temple’s vessels and the clothes of the High Priest?  Why not just put them together?

Perhaps the Torah does not want only to describe the Temple’s vessels and the clothes worn to perform its services without touching on the humanness that must inhabit those vestments and use those vessels.  So we are told about the menorah’s lighting, something which can not be done without the person of the kohen.  Fire can exist on its own, oil can exist on its own, but bringing the two together takes a kohen.

Why then use the menorah’s lighting and not another temple service as a description of the kohen’s presence and necessity?  I would like to suggest that the lighting of the menorah is THE Temple service par-excellence.  Indeed, in Numbers 8:1, after the Temple is built and dedicated the first thing done is the lighting of the menorah before any daily sacrifices.  We know also that the  Macabees, after rededicating the temple, look first for pure oil for the menorah’s lighting.

Why is the menorah so central?  Why is the essential role of the kohen expressed in terms of the menorah’s lighting?  Perhaps the answer lies in the following medrash.  “The song of songs (which according to the Talmud describes the relationship of God to His people) says: “behold how beautiful, your eyes are like doves.”  Why are the Jewish people compared to a dove?  Just as when Noah sent the Raven it ran away but the dove returned to the Ark with an olive branch in its mouth to bring light to the world, so too says God my people shall bring light to the world when they light the Menorah before Me with olive oil.

According to this Medrash the Menorah is the symbolic expression of the Jewish mandate to bring light to the world.  The goal of our spiritual service is not to, God forbid, satiate God with the death of animals, but to bring light through our many services to a dark world where the Almighty is hidden.  And so it is precisely the Menorah which sets the tone for our Temple service and our lives as Jews.

Shabbat Shalom.