Tetzaveh

“And you should command . . . to light an eternal light . . .” (Shemos 27: 20) “’Not that I need their light, but rather that they should offer to Me light just as I enlighten them . . .

this can be compared to a blind and a sighted person walking along together. The sighted person says to his blind partner, “Let me guide you.” The blind person acquieces. They enter into a darkened building. The sighted persons says, “Please light for me a candle and light the way so you shouldn’t give me the credit for guiding you.” So is the sighted person in place of Hashem, and the Jewish people say, “For you light our lamp” (Tehillim 11), and You say to us that we should light our lamp before You. The Almighty says to them, you should light for Me, in order to enlighten yourselves, just as I have enlightened you.” (Shemos Rabba, 36: 2)

Even though we must constantly recognize that it is the Almighty who “lights our lamp”, who bestows us with His enlightenment and wisdom, this midrash teaches us that we must also recognize that we are not to rely solely on His enlightenment. Rather, we must “light our own lamp” so to speak, to the extent that we are able to do so. For, just as we trust that in the end, truth will overcome all and the Divine promise of “in its time, I will speedily bring him” will be fulfilled by the Almighty soon in our days, nonetheless, til that time we must build and plant the foundation of our future to the limit of our abilities. Of course, these efforts are only accomplished with the clear understanding that even as we do them, our actions are only possible through the guidance and direction of the One Above, without whose help we could not do anything. The obligation is ours—He finishes the job.

We find this same thought in the midrash in reference to the men who carried the ark of the covenant. The Almighty helped, as the midrash relates, because the ark miraculously “carried its carriers”. Nonetheless, it was incumbent upon the carriers to do their part to carry the ark with their own exertion, not relying on the ark’s Divine power.

(This d'var Torah is based on the work Peninei Daas, the essays of the Telsher Rosh HaYeshiva Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Bloch, zt"l, edited by Rabbi Noson Tzvi Baron, shlit"a, and Rabbi Avrahom Chaim Levin, shlit"a, vol. 1, p. 218)