The Holy Fire
Parashat Haḥodesh [Exodus 12:1–20]
[ . . . ] The Talmud states in Ḥagigah [5b] that, concerning God’s outer chambers, we may apply the verse Strength and Rejoicing Are in His Place (I Chron. 16:27), but in His inner chambers. He grieves and weeps for the sufferings of Israel. Therefore, there are occasions when, at a time of [Divine] hiddenness…
Kalonymus Kalman Shapira’s Esh Kodesh (The Holy Fire) originated as a series of weekly sermons delivered in the Warsaw ghetto between 1939 and 1942 to his Hasidic followers. In 1943, shortly before his deportation to the Trawniki concentration camp, Shapira hid his recorded writings in the Warsaw ghetto as part of the clandestine Oyneg Shabes archive. While the original audience consisted primarily of Shapira’s immediate community seeking guidance and meaning amid suffering, the postwar editions, primarily that of Nehemia Polen (The Holy Fire, 1994), transformed the work into a theological treatise for a wider Jewish audience. It offered religious insights to Jews questioning the role of God in the face of insurmountable evil.
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