Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Judaism is obsessed with light. It is interesting how much of Jewish symbolism there is revolving around light. We know that when somebody passes away, we have a memorial candle lit for them. We know that for Shabbat every woman lights Shabbat candles. For holidays we light holiday candles. For Hanukkah we light Hanukkah candles. There is so much of Jewish tradition revolving around a flame. And the main reference to flame obviously is a reference to menorah. Menorah in the temple was lit every single day and it had seven candles in it. And this is the Kabbalistic meaning of the menorah. Everybody has two parts to them, a body and a soul. What is the idea of a body? Your body is physical. Do you know what your body wants to do? Sleep and sit on the couch and eat. Your body wants to be static. When you go on vacation, what do you do? You sit on the beach. Your body wants to be static. Your body will not move unless it has to. What is the soul? Soul is what is pushing you to be active. Soul is what is pushing you to be productive. Your body is physical and like everything physical, it is subject to gravity. Your body is being pulled down all the time. What is a soul? Soul is always striving to move upwards. And this is the difference between a body and a soul. And the Torah tells us there's a difference between a wick and a flame. The wick is always in the bottom and a soul is the flame which is on top. The wick is always static and the flame is always flickering. It's moving. The soul is trying to go upwards all the time. Now if you think about it, everybody always has its own self interests in mind. So if the weakers on the bottom and the flame wants to be bigger, what does it need to do to become bigger? It needs to go down. Because if it goes down, it's going to be able to consume more of the wick. But the flame is always trying to go upwards. The flame is going away from the wick, which is against its own self interests. And this is a characteristic of our soul. Our bodies are selfish. Our bodies always want to do whatever is best for them. And by the way, selfish is not always bad. People sometimes can do great things for purely selfish reasons. People could donate a lot of money to the poor because they want to become famous.
[00:02:47] So they are motivated by pure selfish interests. But they're feeding poor people. People can help others because they expect that these others going to help them in return later on. That's also selfish interests. But you know what? If somebody is helping someone, it's great. So our selfishness could push us to do great things as well. Our selfishness could also push us to do bad things. But our body is always selfish. Our body is not bad, it's just always selfish. What is a weak A wick is our soul. And soul is always selfless and it constantly does things which are against its own interests. And this is the main characteristic of a soul. It's selflessness is altruism. And this is the metaphor of our entire life. We see that a soul is always trying to get away from the body, go up, and the body is always staying down. We are always being pulled in two different directions by our soul and our body. And this contradiction is something we need to live with. It is interesting that most of other religions around the world tell you are torn apart by different desires. Join us and you will attain tranquility. Join us and you'll have peace of mind. The Torah says, I know you are torn apart by different desires, and that's normal. Live with it. We will explain how that's the norm because we have two different parts, a body and a soul. And these two different parts are pushing us in two different directions. And this is the idea. But what is an interesting metaphor of menorah? Menorah is this wick with a flame. A menorah is burning every single day. And what is the fuel that is burning in there? It's not the wick. The wick itself is not burning. The wick is just a conduit. Our body is just a conduit. What is the fuel? Fuel is oil. What is oil? The Torah tells us that oil is a metaphor for the soul of the Torah. That's the spiritual part of the Torah. And this is what is burning, what it has to do in order for our soul to act properly within the body, in order for our soul to be able to convince our body rather to do what has to be done. We need the oil. Because without oil, what happens if you light a wick without any oil in it, it's going to burn the wick and nothing's going to be left from the wick. What's going to happen if you will have without the flame, it's not going to burn. So if there's no Torah, the soul is just consuming the body and not letting the body exist. Oil is what is first of all the fuel which is burning and also what is allowing the soul to use the body for its proper purpose. That's what the Torah is the Torah is helping us to do what the body needs to do and what the soul wants it to do. And that's why we need this third factor, this third ingredient, which is the Torah.
