Chaya Wolf

Night Six🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

“There is a Talmudic statement that says: “We are day workers.” There is also a quote from Proverbs that says, “The human soul is a divine lamp.”

Day means light. Our task as a day worker is to spread light and illuminate our world with the light of kindness and goodness, hope and wisdom. Evil and darkness do not get swept out with a broom. By creating more light, the night and darkness will disappear by themselves. Knowing that we are day workers helps us understand what it means that our soul is a divine lamp. Every human soul entered this world for one reason alone: To be a lamp. To bring light wherever there is darkness.

“In olden days, there was a person in every town who would light the streetlamps with a light he carried at the end of a long pole. On the street-corners, the lamps were there in readiness, waiting to be lit; sometimes, however, the lamps were not as easily accessible. There are lamps in forsaken places, in deserts, or at sea. There must be someone to light even those lamps, so that they may fulfill their purpose and light up the paths of others.”

As we light the sixth candle, let’s all aspire to be “someone who will forgo his or her own comforts and conveniences and reach out to light those lamps. Be a dedicated ‘street-lamp lighter,’ and fulfill his or her duty with joy and gladness of heart.”

“When you give people faith in themselves, in their future, in the sanctity of their own souls, you have not only brought them light, but you have also made them into human lamps. You have given them their purpose.”

May G‑d grant that each and every one of us be a dedicated ‘street-lamp lighter,’ and fulfill his/her duty with joy and gladness of heart.

(Adapted from Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, and a public talk by the Lubavitch Rebbe)