Sabbath Candle Lighting and the Revelation of Divine Light Within

This passage is drawn from the commentary of Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger on the first portion of Genesis, in his classic work, Sefat Emet (Language of Truth), which contains teachings delivered in 1888. Here, he offers a powerful and evocative interpretation of Sabbath candle lighting. For the Sefat Emet, as Yehudah Leib was known, the light of the candles lit at the start of the Sabbath on Friday at dusk is nothing less than a meditative and symbolic portal across the expanse of deep time, back to the first light of creation in Genesis 1. Yehudah Leib conceives of the first light of primordial time as that divine radiance that constitutes the deep soul core of all reality, and the essence spark of the divine self. It is a divine luminosity that is further released through the sacred words of the Torah when it is read aloud in the synagogue on the Sabbath. In the ritual of Sabbath candle lighting, Yehudah Leib combines mystical theology, contemplative practice or religious experience, and the evocation of the archetypal primordial sacred time.