Candle to Candle

I have been looking into the scriptures with Chanukkah and my beloved Israel on my heart. In Isaiah 60:1 it says,"Arise, shine for your light has come, And the glory of the L*RD has risen upon you, in 62:1 it says, "For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, And for Jerusalem's sake I will not keep quiet, Until her righteousness goes forth like brightness, And her salvation like a torch that is burning."
Each of Psalm 119's chapters begin with a letter from the Hebrew alef-beit. The letters on the dreidle we spin at Chanukkah are, nun, hey. gimel and shin, pey if you live in Israel. Nun corresponds to verse 105, "Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." Hey corresponds with verse 33, "Teach me, O L*Rd, the way of your statutes, And I shall observe it to the end.". Gimel to 119:17, "Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live and keep thy word." The letter shin corresponds with verse 161, "Princes persecute me without cause, But my heart stands in awe of Thy words." And the pey, verse 129, "Thy testimonies are wonderful, therefore my soul observes them. The unfolding of Thy word gives light, It gives understanding to the simple."

As we gaze and meditate on the pure light from our candles this Chanukkah beloved let the words of HaShem's Torah touch our hearts. Proverbs 20:27 says, "The spirit of man is the lamp of the L*RD, searching all the innermost parts of his being".
Some friends wrote a simple niggun that we like to end our Torah study with, it is taken from Proverbs 6:23 which says, "For the commandant is a lamp and the teaching is light." The niggun goes, "You are the light of the world let your light shine before all men, that they may see your deeds and glorify thy Father in heaven. The lamp is the mitzvah, the light it shines is the Torah, the lamp is the mitzvah the light it shines is the Torah. Repeat, You are the light.........................Tziv Freeman says, "When light pushes away darkness, eventually another darkness shall come to take its place, but when darkness itself is transformed into light, it is a light that no darkness can oppose".
With Chanukkah only a week away take up the challenge in the film from Chabad below, go light up your world. Enlarge it for the best effect.
Shabbat Shalom, with much Emunah and Ahavah~Elisheva

Below is an excerpt from a teaching by Sara Debbie Gutfreund.

People respond to sincerity and purity like the way they do to fresh air. They welcome it. They inhale it. It gives them life. Every morning we say a beautiful prayer: “My G*d, the soul You placed within me is pure. You created it, You fashioned it, You breathed it into me, You safeguard it within me and eventually You will take it from me, and restore it to me in Time to Come. As long as the soul is within me, I gratefully thank You.” (ArtScroll translation)

But why is it so hard to feel the essential purity of our souls? Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller gives the example of the light of a candle. If you put a curtain up in front of the candle, could you still see its light? Yes. What if you put up two curtains? Yes, you could still see the light even if its dimmer. But if you put up a hundred or a thousand curtains then you might not see the candle at all, even though it is still lit. The soul is like that lit candle, and the curtains are choices that we sometimes make that block us from accessing our true selves

Chanukah gives us the strength to find the pure, infinite light hiding behind the curtains of our lives.
On Chanukah we are given a special strength to find that pure, infinite light that is hiding behind the curtains of our lives. But we need to want it first. We need to yearn for the opportunity to see the lit candle.
What is the strength that Chanukah gives us? What is it about the menorah makes us yearn to find our soul?

When we reclaimed the Holy Temple, there were other jars of oil that we could have used to light the menorah. But we only wanted to light with the pure oil even though there was only a little bit left. We were willing to risk the ensuing darkness in order to give G*d that one, pure jar of oil.

On Chanukah, the Almighty wants us to remember that we have the ability today to bring pure light into our lives. He wants us to remember all the times when we weren’t afraid to face the darkness. He wants us to believe in what is best and pure inside of us, no matter how small that spark of sincerity may be.
And then He takes each of our tiny sparks and fills our lives with light. That is the miracle.

We see this all the time in our lives. You keep one hour of Shabbos, but you keep that hour with a full heart. And God eventually helps you to keep an entire Shabbos. You learn one sentence of Torah a day with the untainted openness to receive wisdom, and the Almighty teaches you more than you could have ever imagined . You say one prayer with pure intentions, and He preserves the echo of that prayer for generations to come.

At the beginning of time, G*d created a special light that stretched from one end of the world to the other. Under that light, nothing died and nothing rotted. It was a beautiful, healing, infinite light. But it only lasted 36 hours because G*d saw that the light wasn’t fitting for this world where we need some darkness in order to have free will. So He hid the light away and allows it to shine only in the World to Come where there is no pain and no concealment.

But once a year, on Chanukah, G*d gives us access to this hidden light that resides in the deepest recesses of our souls. There are 36 candles lit during Chanukah, each candle representing an hour that this hidden light was revealed to the world.
Each candle that we light removes another layer of the curtain that blocks the hidden, precious light of our souls.Each candle surrounds us with the purity of that little jar of oil that always has one drop left. Because all we need is one pure thing. One pure image. One pure moment. One pure story.
And like fire giving to fire, light giving to light, soul giving to soul -- that one pure moment gives to the next pure moment. Candle to candle. Until the darkness disappears.

http://www.chabad.org/786958