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In this week’s Torah reading are eight commandments. Two were done daily in the Holy Temple; lighting the Menorah and burning the incense.

True; we Jews haven’t had the Temple for almost two thousand years but these commandments, filled with meaning and mystery, are vital to us today:

First, because, according to the teachings of the Chassidic masters, each Jew is a living Holy Temple with spiritual Menorah and Incense that we must activate.

Second, because any moment now Moshiach will rebuild the real physical Third Temple and we will again resume the actual Menorah and incense service as well.
In order to understand exactly what this means here are two stories.

The first is from Chabad Yagel, Kislev 5768.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s wife Chaya Mushka, in addition to being a person of great holiness and talent was very intelligent and regularly visited the Manhattan Library.

Once it so happened that once when she was taking out a book the female librarian who was helping her noticed the name ‘Schneerson’ on the withdrawal form and asked if she was any relation to the great Rabbi in Brooklyn.

When the answer was “Yes, he is my husband.”

“Ahhh” The librarian sighed, “I once got a blessing from your husband. Two years ago, I went to visit him and told him my problem. My husband and I had been married for almost ten years but still had not been blessed with children and, because I was told that the Rebbe was a great and holy man and his blessings were pure and powerful, I went to visit him.

“It was a very amazing experience. A very amazing man! I got a private audience with him and I asked him for a blessing for a child. He said that blessings are like the rain; they require a proper vessel. So he said he would bless me but I that I have to accept on myself to do a commandment for his blessing to work.

“I asked him which one and we agreed that I would light Shabbat Candles. In fact, a long time ago in Europe when I was a girl my mother used to light them. So, I started lighting Shabbat Candles and I’ve been doing it for two years. But, not that I regret lighting the candles, I am very happy that I began to light them! But for some reason the blessing didn’t work. We still have no children.”

The Rebbe’s wife listened and comforted her saying, “I’m very sorry. And, believe me, I know exactly how you feel. You see… I also have no children. There are simply some things that we don’t understand.”

But the librarian’s eyes filled with tears as she almost whispered. “But, I’m different. I’m a survivor. My family… I have no family… they were all wiped out in the holocaust… all of them. Only I survived. If I don’t have children no one will be left….. no one. This is why it is so important for me to have children. It means continuing the family.”

The Rebbe’s wife thought for a few seconds and cautiously asked. “Tell me again. Exactly what did my husband tell you?”

She answered, “I asked him what commandment I should do and he told me to light Shabbat candles every Friday. So I agreed.”

“Perhaps you missed one or two Shabbats?”

“No! I would never do that!” she replied. “It was the blessing! The blessing for children! I wouldn’t dream of missing the blessing. Every Friday, without exception, when my husband came home from work, I lit the candles.”

“And when would he come home?” the Rebbe’s wife asked.

“After work; at seven or eight o’clock in the evening… he would even put on a Yarmulke and watch. I covered my head, made the blessing and lit the candles… just like my mother used to do.”

The Rebbe’s wife understood what had happened, the woman did not know that Shabbat begins at sunset and candles are to be lit beforehand.

The Rebbe’s wife explained her mistake, the librarian thanked her, promised to correct it and sure enough shortly after she began lighting properly she became pregnant and nine months later called with the good news that she had given birth to… a boy. From then on, they kept in constant touch, a close friendship developed between them and the librarian even visited the Rebbitzin’s home in Crown Heights several times.

Here is the second story. This I heard from a Rabbi friend of mine who has a Chabad House in Russia. There he met an old man whose entire life had been a chain of tragedies. First as a young man in Poland he was taken to Auschwitz and had suffered the horrors of the holocaust. Then he escaped and made it to Russia only to be arrested at the border as a spy and sent to Siberia where he suffered the tortures of hunger, disease, more antisemitism etc..

Then he again escaped and tried to make it to Israel but was arrested, this time by the British, and again imprisoned. But he finished by saying,

“But I want you to know, Rabbi, that after all this, I can honestly say I never had a one bad day in my life. Not even one!  I had a lot of days that I didn’t understand!
But I never had a bad day

These answer our questions about the Menorah and the Incense

The lamps of the Menorah made light to see while the incense made a fragrance that touches the inside of the soul. (When a person is unconscious, light will not arouse him, but strong smell will.)

Similarly, there are two ways of serving G-d; external and internal.

The Menorah is light, externally arousing and giving birth to emotions; love, fear, awe, connection etc. in the service of the Creator in action, speech and thought. (Therefore there were seven branches corresponding to the seven emotions: love, fear etc.) Something like the Rebbe did to the librarian in our story.

But there is a deeper connection to G-d corresponding to the incense. Just as smell touches the essence of the soul so there is service from pure faith to the point of self-sacrifice… totally above understanding; like the old man in the second story.

Similarly we must TRY to arouse ourselves in these two ways: spreading the light of Judaism by teaching Torah and encouraging commandments like the librarian in the first story and awakening the essence of our Jewish soul like the man in the second.

But Moshiach will make sure we succeed. Indeed Moshiach will awaken all mankind to give ‘birth’ to true awareness, connection and service of the Almighty Creator.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe said that we are ALL representatives of Moshiach: It is upon each of us to arouse everyone around us; especially every Jew, in every way possible.

To ‘shine’ in thought, speech and action and also to awaken the world with the ‘fragrance’ of redemption (Moshiach will judge by his sense of smell – Isaiah 11:3) namely from the essence of our souls to hope, pray and do all we can so that soon all mankind will see the building of the Third Temple and the actual Menorah and incense.

It all depends on us to bring Moshiach even one moment sooner. We are standing on the merits of thousands of years of Jewish hopes, prayers and suffering. Now it could be that just one more good deed, word or even thought will bring ……  
Moshiach NOW!!

Rabbi Tuvia Bolton
Yeshiva Ohr Tmimim
Kfar Chabad, Israel

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