Nesivos Shalom Yahrtzeit

 Today is 7 Av, the Yahrtzeit of the Nesivos Shalom, previous Rebbe of Slonim.  His work, somehow overflowed fro his branch of Chasidus into the entirety of the Jewish world.  I have no words for my feelings that include gratefulness and go beyond it in response to having his Torah in my life.

Instead of sharing his Torah exclusively here, now, I will share something that I'm thinking about that started with a Torah thought of his (that's a Slonimer tradition, as so much of his teachings are).

The Torah says that G-d said "Let there be light" and there was light.  As he does from time to time, in the Chasidic tradition, the Nesivos Shalom brings out new meaning of a verse by using something other than the conventional punctuation.  In the case, if you put a comma after the first Hebrew word in this verse it can mean that a person says.  Then if you put in quote marks, the statement is "G-d, let there be light," followed by the words, "and then there will be light." So, now, the pasuk is telling us that when we cry out to G-d and tell him we need light in our lives and we can only get it from Him, that is when we will find light enter our lives.

Besides putting the idea in my head of making this verse a mantra, this Torah insight also got me thinking about the Jewish view of spiritual light.  I was recently at a class which discussed what the number one pasuk, so to speak, in the Torah is.  (It comes from a Medrash shared in the introduction to the sefer Ein Yaakov, and the author himself says that he could not find the Medrash.) The presenter suggested we each think about what pasuk we could make an argument for being the most important in the Torah.  Taking a bit of poetic license in re-interpreting the question I want to say that this is a verse that is very important to me and which I think has more depth than people realize.  (This could be said about any pasuk. In fact, in this shiur I attended, we were each instructed to open a Chumash to a seemingly random page and line and then argue for the verse we found being The Line of the Torah!)

It's of interest that light was created on day 1 of the creation we read of in Breishit. The sun was only created on day 4.  So where did this original light emanate from, what was it's nature and purpose?

Rav Kook wrote the book of Orot, Lights and many other books with light in their title and theme.

We praise G-d daily for creating light.  Might this be a spiritual light? 

The Nesivos Shalom points out the the time of the three weeks is a dark time of year spiritually and physically, as reflected by the days getting shorter and the nights longer. (This is the reverse of Chanukah time , which is considered the light time of year becaus ethe very short days start to get longer that that time.)

Some people light one more Shabbos candle for each child born representing the light that person brought into the world.

May the light the Nesivos Shalom's light continue to enlighten us all.