By Marco Del Monte
The secret of seven
Parashat Beha'alotecha opens with the lighting of the Menorah, one of the most mysterious and symbolic objects in the entire Mishkan.
A single block, a whole albeit composed of seven lights: six branches that develop on the sides and converge towards a single central branch. It is not simply the number seven that repeats itself in the Torah, but a precise spiritual architecture: six elements that find unity and meaning in a centre. This structure runs through the whole of creation. The first example is the week itself, the beginning of the structuring of space-time-matter. The world is created in six days and culminates in the seventh, Shabbat. This is not simply a day added to the others, but the central point that gives meaning to the entire week. The six days represent activity, work, movement; the seventh represents direction, purpose, the encounter with the Creator: it is "non-creation" that creates rest. The same structure appears in the Magen David: six extremities of space, north, south, east, west, high and low, defined by the movements of the Lulav. Six directions with a centre that unifies them all, the human being. The representation of this cosmic pattern is found in a powerful mystical symbol, the Magen David: six points facing towards the extremities and a central core that holds them together. The universe is not a random set of directions moving away from one another; it possesses a centre, a common source, a Presence that holds together everything that exists. My teacher Rav Yehudah Kahaloun zt"l together with the great teacher Rav David Menashe zt"l taught us many meanings of these two cosmic-spiritual structures. Even six colours, corresponding to six sefirot, painted on the six points of the Magen David, if made to spin dynamically like Newton's disc produced a central colour: White, precisely the colour of Shabbat. Even the Torah itself seems built according to this model. The teachers teach that the passage of "Vayehi binsoa haAron" constitutes an autonomous book of two parts. In this way the Torah is no longer composed of five books but of seven. At the centre of this structure is the Ark that guards the Torah. As if to teach us that at the centre of history, trials, wanderings and even crises, there is always the presence of the Torah that holds everything else together. But the most surprising place where we find this pattern is man himself. The human face has seven openings: two eyes, two ears, two nostrils and a mouth. Once again six and one. The Sages teach that man is a microcosm, a small universe. The same structure that Hashem impressed upon creation has also been impressed upon the face of the human being. The eyes observe the world, the ears listen to it, the nostrils perceive it, but everything converges towards the mouth, the place of speech, of Torah, of Tefillah and of blessing. In the spiritual states of the world according to Kabbalah, man is the medaber, the speaking being. What we see, hear and perceive must not be dispersed in the infinite directions of the world, but elevated towards a higher purpose: the expression of the Torah. The Torah thus teaches us that seven is not merely a number. It is the very blueprint of the universe. Six forces tending outward and a centre gathering them. Six days and Shabbat. Six directions and their centre. Six branches and the ner ma'aravi of the Menorah. Six openings of the face and the mouth. Six parts around the heart of the Magen David. Even the Torah, according to the Chachamim, is built according to this model; it is not by chance that the teachers teach us that Hashem looked at the Torah and created the world. Kabbalah tells us that Israel, Torah and Hashem are "one" (cf. Divrei Yaakov): Hashem turns His "face" (kiviachol) towards the Torah, mirrors Himself in it and creates from it a universe which in turn is designed upon the face of man: the face of Hashem in the world and in man, as the Birchat Kohanim illustrates to us. "Beha'alotecha et haNerot" does not just mean lighting the lights, but elevating them. Because the most important light of the Menorah was not in the Mishkan, but inside every human being: "The lamp of Hashem is the soul of man", the "breath of D-o" that lives within the human being. If seven is the blueprint of creation, present in the Menorah, in Shabbat, in the Magen David, in the Torah and even in the human face, then the soul-Ner represents its highest point. And perhaps the whole Torah, from the first page to the last, is nothing other than Hashem's invitation to take that flame which He has kindled by breathing within us and help it rise higher and higher, because the task of a Jew is not merely to guard one's own light, but to transform it into a flame that ascends ceaselessly towards Heaven.
Shabbat Shalom
Translated from the Italian with Google Gemini. The Italian text is the original.