HaNer Tamid in Parashat Tzav

From Temple sacrifices to דאָס פּינטעלע ייִד

Kollel 14.03.2022

Sefat Emet: "In the soul of every person there lies a hidden point that is aflame with the love of God, a fire that cannot be put out. Even though 'it may not be put out' here refers to a prohibition, it is also a promise. Thus our sages said, 'Even though fire descends from heaven, it is a commandment to bring it from a common source.." [Sefat Emet on Vayikra, Tzav 3:23]

Now, questions!

1. How do you keep your dos pintele yid going when the world around you is on fire?
2. How does your internal fire manifest?
3. How do you interpret the responsibility to keep the eternal fire going?
4. Can resistance be considered as keeping the fire up?

Noach Dzmura in "Tora Queeries":

Rekindling an Old Flame

"When I see the light above the Aron haKodesh (Ark of the Holy, the container that holds the Torah) in synagogues today, to me it seems a bit forlorn. I do not feel the momentous power of the present-day incarnation of this symbol in the way that the ancient Israelites must have felt the power of an eternally burning fire. The priest’s ner tamid would have been visible in the daytime as a pillar of cloudy smoke and at night as a column of bright light, a visible connection between earth and heaven, between humans and the Divine. In the time of the Temple, this eternal flame on the priests’ altar was meant to hark back to the days of wandering in the desert, when God traveled with the Children of Israel as a pillar of fire and a column of smoke, and even earlier to objects that symbolize the connection between earth and heaven from Sumer and other Middle Eastern cultures, including the phallus, pillars, columns, or trees. Has the contemporary transformation from open flame to electricity robbed this symbol of some of its power? My sense of awe and dread is not kindled by the light above the Ark. Instead, I feel a vague sense of concern about the power source in the event of a summer brownout. Will the auxiliary generator kick in? Is it solar powered?

The service leader never draws our attention to the light. The cantor does not extol its virtues in song. We do not stand before it in awe with always-renewing layers of meaning as we do before the Torah scroll. We do not hear it or smell it like we would a wood fire. We scarcely notice it. The little light above the Ark appears to have lost something in translation as it moved from literal fire, which both sustains life and can become the bearer of death, and which demonstrated God’s physical presence and power, to a rigidly contained movement of electrons inside a glass bulb that reminds us vaguely of the Divine, like a tape recording of a thunderstorm. It seems a quiet, mild-mannered, unassuming little light. It does not seem to want to draw much attention to itself, just glowing there benignly in the Friday-evening twilight.

The original ner tamid was an open flame, a visible pillar of fire, casting heat and light, the engine of combustion generating noise and smoke. The ner tamid in our synagogues today is distant from that sensory experience. It is a symbol of a symbol.

Do we simply suffer from the remoteness of our connection to the Divine, or is there another way to think about this transformation of symbols? What am I missing? How did this light bulb replace the bonfire?

Two Flamers

Answering those questions requires looking at the symbol of the eternal flame beyond the priests’ ner tamid, as it manifests itself at two other points in the narrative history of the Jewish people: the Exodus from Egypt and the Maccabean Revolt. Though they take different form, each iteration of an eternal flame in Jewish tradition symbolizes not only the connection between God and Israel but also the covenant, brit, that defines that relationship.

The Pillar of Fire

An eternal flame was important to Jews even before the Israelites were formally recognized as Jews. During the flight from Egypt, God went before the Children of Israel as a pillar of fire by night and a column of cloud (might this have been white smoke?) by day. The Bible tells us this fire is the presence of God, what we might imagine is a “miraculous fire,” and never mentions a fire created and fed by humans.

And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; that they might go by day and by night: the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night, departed not from before the people. (Ex. 13:21–22)

I think the miracle of the pillar of fire and the column of smoke is that it might represent a real fire and the first eternal flame that the Israelites carried. Aside from being a portentous symbol of the power and eternal presence of God, a wonder to see and a comfort of light to a people wandering in a profound metaphysical darkness, a pillar of fire and a column of cloud generate in one’s neighbors and enemies a recognition of a tribe’s singularity (no other people carries fire before them day and night) and of their might. (Who can afford such a waste of combustibles in the desert? How many people and baggage-laden animals does this tribe contain?) On seeing this wonder, the neighbors would certainly suppose that this new people heralded by light and cloud and wandering through the desert are wealthy and numerous. Wealth and numbers would tend to garner respect and a lack of willingness to attack these strangers for plunder. The eternally burning fire is a symbol to outsiders, as well as to straying members of the tribes, of the link between the power of God and the fortunes of the Children of Israel.

The Menorah

When Jerusalem was overrun and the Maccabees reclaimed the Temple from the Seleucid dynasty (approximately 164 BCE), their first action was to rekindle the flame in the Temple’s menorah, which miraculously burned for eight days on only one tank of oil. At this point, the symbol of the eternal flame required visible assistance from humans. It had gone out and needed to be relit. The new emphasis that the symbol of the eternal flame acquired was on the active role of the Children of Israel in maintaining the relationship with the Divine.

But the Hasmonean dynasty, founded roughly twenty years after the Maccabean Revolt, was short lived, lasting for only a hundred years. Eventually the Temple was destroyed, sacrifices and huge bonfires were a thing of the past, and self-governance of a Jewish state was lost for close to two thousand years. The people were scattered to the four winds, and over hundreds of years, the single Temple was transformed by the work of the Rabbis and Sages into the form of the present-day synagogue. Sacrifice was no longer possible, and prayer replaced sacrifice as the means through which an eternal relationship with the Deity was tended.

The Eternal Flamer

The eternal flame transformed again. This time, it went in two directions, to meet the needs of the different kinds of Jewish lives. Both aspects of the eternal flame “went stealth,” blending in with their surroundings. One aspect of the symbol took up residence above the Aron haKodesh in the Synagogue, in the form of an oil lamp, and later a light bulb, that remained lit at all times. Although it retains little of its original character, it is still called the Ner Tamid, the Eternal Flame. Instead of sacrifices burnt on an altar, we offer prayers to feed its transformed flames and nurture our relationship with the Divine.

The other aspect of the Eternal Flame moved into the realm of mysticism and became visible only to those with eyes to see beneath the surface. Dos pintele Yid is the Yiddish expression, and Nitzotz HaYehudi is the Hebrew, for “The Jewish Spark,” a clever way of expressing a turn from an external God to whom we owe our allegiance to an internal God that forms the core of one’s Jewishness. Dos pintele Yid clearly refers to a flame that will never go out that resides in every Jew.

How can queer Jews fan the flame of eternity that resides within? One way might be to recognize that “flaming queen” is not a pejorative but an indicator of one’s spiritual health. Queer people do not often speak of their “pintele queer” (perhaps a modern Hebrew rendering, zohar muzar, or “flaming queer,” might work, especially since the Zohar is one of the preeminent mystical texts), yet all queer Jews, no doubt, feel that they have an inner flame that animates them not only as Jews but as queers.

Through this series of transformations, some light is shed on the notion of Eternal that might help in conceptualizing the Deity. We come to understand that eternal does not mean “changeless” or even “deathless.” In modern Hebrew, tamid is translated as “always,” but in Biblical Hebrew it also has the meaning of “an activity regularly performed” or perpetual maintenance. So rather than a flame that burns without ceasing, we come to understand the ner tamid as a flame that must be tended regularly, incessantly. Eternal means “well tended”; it contains an element of memory and human action. Eternity—that which is timeless because it encompasses all time—is based on relationships that occur in time. The Israelites wandering in the desert fed the pillar of fire with wood, the priests tended the fire with wood and fed it with the fruits of a harvest, and the Maccabees provided oil (and perhaps a very conservationminded wick). Today we fan the electric flames of the Ner Tamid in synagogue with our prayers, and we stoke the “zohar muzar,” our inner flamer, with our flamboyant support of one another and ourselves. Inspired by this theme, Rabbi J. B. Sacks, one of the first openly gay Conservative rabbis, wrote, “it becomes a holy task to be as flaming as G-d compels us to be, to weave this new flame into our greater identity as a people, and so to live with greater integrity and honor.” Rabbi Sacks noted that Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that “every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart,” and then Rabbi Sacks continued by saying, “may we continue to stoke our inner flame, so that we might attain the greatest achievement of all: to live not merely with ourselves but as ourselves, before God and with humanity.” "