Shiru Lashem

What is our spiritual energy all about now?

Where do we go and what soul savings do we dip into in order to experience something sacred, especially now that we’re situated in post Chanukah winter mode.

We awaken to darkness, and after a brief daylight hiatus -are quickly reengulfed in darkness. The physical lights that we kindle in our homes, must also be accompanied by the kindling of the spiritual light in our souls.

The good news is- that our faith is replete with multitudes of mitzvah mechanisms that act as switches that can flick on those Neshama lights.

Turning on the electric lights in our homes is simple, in the way that we get to utilize that light immediately, easily adjusting it, if it seems too bright, and dimming it to where it’s comfortable and beneficial.

Benefitting from spiritual light however is far more complex.

We know it shines in us somehow in a subconscious way, in our depths, but it seems, that the divine lights, that we attempt to kindle into our selves, is far too bright and powerful an energy- to actually fit into our human awareness, without the proverbial being “blinded by its light!”

What is the dimmer switch in our souls that modulates and conducts that light in us to the point where we are able to experience and even feel it?

In Jewish spiritual soul language this would best be described — as our struggle to have the light of our higher ruach and Neshama -filter down in to our lower nefesh, human consciousness.

In Kabbalistic terms we see this same struggle played out on a cosmic scale.

The Lurianic creation narrative, vividly describes- what seems like a frustratingly, unsuccessful, G-dly attempt- to squeeze the sublime infinite lights of the world of tohu, into the narrow confines of the world of tikkun.

One solution might be found in one of our most heartbreaking yet ultimately uplifting biblical narratives.

Following the dramatic and emotionally taut reuniting of Joseph and the brothers, the family is faced with the question of how to break the news to the elderly patriarch Jacob, in a subtle and gradual enough manner so as not to overload him emotionally, and risk sending him into a potentially life threatening Shock.

A Midrashic text almost voueristicly -zooms us in to this tense family moment. Knowing full well his love for the beautiful singing of his granddaughter, serach the daughter of his son Asher, they get her to convey the news in lyrical form, “my uncle Joseph is alive he is a ruler in mitsrayim (Egypt)”- set to a beautiful tune that she sung for him.

Through joy and song she was able to convey a powerful truth in a gentle and loving way.

The tunes of our people, wether it be David Melech Yisroel, or the bim-bam/Shabbat shalom of our little children, the hauntingly beautiful middle eastern Sephardic prayer tunes, the songs of Shlomo Carlebach, or the soulful nigunnim melodies of the Chassidim and their rebbes -are the conductors, through which we can smuggle our highest most soulful consciousness, past our ego defense mechanisms, down into our regular human awareness selves.

We are brimming with a lofty soulfulness that swirls around eagerly just beneath our consciousness waiting for a heartfelt song to bear it upwards into our conscious minds and hearts.