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In this shiur, Rav Dov Ber Cohen explores the depth of Shabbat candle lighting as one of the most spiritually charged moments of the week. Drawing from the Arizal, the Zohar, and the inner dimensions
The Rabbi Dov Ber Cohen Podcast explores Jewish mindfulness, emotional mastery, relationships, and real inner avodah.
In each shiur, Rabbi Dov Ber shares practical Torah wisdom for navigating anxiety, deepening connection, strengthening emunah, and living with greater presence and purpose.
Rooted in Chassidic depth yet grounded in everyday life, these teachings are experiential, honest, and transformative.
If you’re seeking clarity without pressure, growth without guilt, and spirituality that actually changes how you live - this podcast is for you.
So we're we're learning about Shabbat. Shabbat, it's the seventh day of the week, and it's much, much more than that. We said that Shabbat is really represents the whole purpose of life. And we said the whole purpose of life is presence. To be present. We're running around a lot, trying to achieve things, trying to get to some future goal, and the point of life isn't that. The point of life is to be present, very present. Because most people are living in the future, really. Or in the past. I guess when you're young you're living in the future, and when you're old you're living in the past. When you're 90 years old you're thinking about your past and what you did, and when you're 20 years old you think about the future. But many people are missing life, which is in the present moment. And Judaism says that the present moment, more than anything, really means God. That's what Hashem is in Judaism. Hashem is the experience of divine presence. That's a nice I just made that up, but that was nice. You liked that, didn't you? That sounds cool to me. So, Hashem, we believe, is the infinite, conscious, loving creator of the universe. Hashem is the backdrop of everything. And the purpose of the creation of the universe, of an other—you have Hashem, and then Hashem created the universe, so there's an other, a seemingly other thing—is for relationship. We want to have a relationship. And relationship we defined as four emotional states. There are four emotional states that really define all relationships. The first one being ahava, love. The primary state being ahava, love. A feeling of connection, and kindness, and safety, and security, and and being held, love. I was sitting in the park. Every Shabbat I go for a walk in the park with my daughter, 14-year-old daughter. And we hold hands and we walk around the park, and it's the it's just amazing. And we went and we sat, found a shady place to sit, and some people came up, and some of my students, and they said, \"Look, it's you you guys love each other. You and your daughter, amazing love.\" And I said, \"Yeah, well, it's been 14 years, and you know, from when she was a baby. I was holding her when she was a tiny little baby, and singing to her, and watching her grow up, and giving I spent I've basically spent 14 years giving love to this child, and so there's a there's a beautiful love there.\" So we're meant to have love with with firstly we said with ourselves. All relationships start with your relationship with yourself. And then love those who are very close to you, your family. And then going beyond that to everyone else. And then loving Hashem, and that Hashem loves us. The second one being yira. Yira means reverence and respect. So I look up to my wife. I revere her, I respect her. I think she's an amazing woman, and I praise her for this, and that's really part of our relationship. And by the way, you should revere yourself. It's called self-respect. I look up to myself when I do the right thing, when I do what I'm meant to be doing, when I don't let myself down, when I live up to my values, when I do what I'm meant to do, then I look up to myself. It's harder to look up to myself when I let myself down, but Judaism says even in that case you don't beat yourself up, you don't put yourself down, you're not allowed to hate yourself. You just dust yourself off, and you get up, and you try harder, and then you can respect yourself for bouncing back from your fall. So Judaism is very, very, very into not falling from your fall. Getting up from your fall. So you respect yourself when you don't fall, and when you fall and get up, you respect yourself even more in a way, for getting up from your fall. Yes? Well, I feel that if you don't have any reaction whatsoever to letting yourself down, then you Correct. continue to repeat those mistakes. Correct. There must be a moment of remorse, otherwise you won't get up from your fall. You're exactly right. So when I say Does that remorse, is it really remorse if it's just like five seconds? Is that really remorse? Yeah, if it's real remorse. Real remorse can happen very quickly. If you really feel, \"Ow! Ow! Oh, my goodness!\" Mine usually lasts a bit longer. What? A bit longer. Okay. Okay, so it could be a day. Yeah. But it's never Remorse, we are told, is never feeling bad about yourself. Remorse isn't \"I'm bad, I'm bad.\" Remorse is \"I did a but I'm good. I'm great. I'm a piece of God. I'm perfect and pure and holy and wonderful, and I let myself down.\" And that's what I feel bad about. So I don't feel bad about myself. I feel bad about what I did. And then, you're right, through that I can grow. Basically, this is the difference between remorse and guilt and shame. One is actually keeping me down, and one is propelling me and motivating me to get better. That's healthy remorse. It's the pain that I felt when I let myself down that motivated me not to let myself down next time. Very important difference. The third one we said was simcha, joy. There needs to be joy in a relationship. If I love someone and I respect them, but there's no joy, I don't enjoy being around them, and it doesn't make me feel happy, then that's not a very healthy relationship. And then we said there's another one called deveikut, deveikus, which means a feeling of intrinsic oneness. We're together. We're we're part of one soul, one journey, one at least one Jewish people. And we're all part of one I feel that we're all part of one higher nation spiritual entity. When I when I see every Jew, I feel deeply, deeply connected to that person, and that is actually how we can fulfill the mitzvah of ve'ahavta lere'acha kamocha, loving your fellow as yourself, even when you really can't stand someone. How do you love What was three and four again? Can you say them again? Simcha and deveikut. Ahava, yirah, simcha, and deveikut. Love, reverence, joy, and attachment, oneness. So that's how you can love really horrible, annoying people. You can love them on a soul level. Just feel like we're really part of the we're part of one soul. Very hard to love them on a on a ego level, on a character traits level, on a actions level. You can't love evil people on that level, but you can love them on a higher. Fine, so that's what we're trying to do. And Shabbat is really meant to be that time when we tap into these ideas, to really be able to sit with ourselves, the ability to be alone without being lonely. Just be like, you know what? I love who I am, I respect who I am, I I enjoy being with myself, and and I feel deeply connected to myself. But then, obviously, to others. Shabbat is a day to be with other people, and to love other people, and have connections, and to Hashem, obviously, definitely. So what we're doing is we're really going through The main book we're using is called Beyam Darkecha. It's a book of the deeper penimiyut haTorah, the deeper ideas behind what we do, but written in a on a level that I can understand, which is good. What's the name of the book again? It's called Beyam Darkecha. It's by a student of Rav Yitzchok Meir Morgenstern, who is a major kabbalist in Israel, and it's it it brings beautiful, deep, penimius, inner ideas, but in a way that can I understand, which is good, because I'm a very, very, very simple person, which is a wonderful thing. It makes my life easier. Many people are very overcomplicated and over-analytical and overthinking and And thank God, I just don't do that. I'll tell you why not, because, firstly, I don't have time. I got better things to do. Secondly, it doesn't really help. Thirdly, not only does it not help, it it hinders. It it's quite annoying when your mind is just doing over-analytical, useless, negative, critical stuff. So we want to try and get rid of that. So we're preparing for Shabbat, and we come to really one of the main, most powerful ideas about Shabbat, which is neirot Shabbat, lighting Shabbat candles. And often, when you think of Shabbat, you think of Shabbat candles. If you were going to have a thumbnail for a Shabbat class, you'd probably have Shabbat candles, and a challah, and a a glass of wine or something, but Shabbat candles is really how we lift off Shabbat. And up until this point, we've been to speak about Friday, getting ready on Friday, going shopping, and cooking, and getting dressed, and cleaning the house, and getting ready, and now we're really now bringing in Shabbat. And we said what we're going to do is going to talk about Kabbalas Shabbat in a few classes from now. Kabbalas Shabbat means to receive Shabbat. But you need In order to receive something, you need to be a vessel. You have to make yourself ready to receive the Shabbat. So this is really the main part of making bringing light into the world to receive Shabbat. So here we go. Katav ha-Arizal, the Arizal, the famous kabbalist said, שאף שהדלקת הנר היא מצוה על האשה בעלת הבית מכל מקום האיש צריך להזהר לתקן להכין את הנרות. So we know that the lighting of the candles is the woman's mitzvah, and we're going to see why, but the woman is really, in many places in the Talmud, in the Kabbalah, the woman brings spiritual light into the home. The woman brings brings the blessing, the bracha into the home. The woman brings the kedusha into the home. The woman is basically, as we'll see in a second, I'll read it, but the woman represents really represents the Shechina, which is the divine feminine presence in the world. And so still when I see my wife, especially on Shabbat, she comes down wearing white on Shabbat, I call I say, \"Ah, the Shechina has arrived.\" My wife is like the Shechina. But the Arizal says that the man has to be the one who sets the candles up. You've got to be very, very careful that when you get married, if you're a man, you're setting up the candles for your wife. And when you get married, you ask your husband, say, \"Excuse me, but one of...\" When you're dating, when you're dating, you say, \"I just want you to know, it's very important that you set up my Shabbat candles for me.\" וזה שהאיש צריך להכין את הנרות זה חלק מכלל פעולות והכנה לשבת. And so this is one of the things that the man has to think about when he's getting ready for Shabbat, and really for me this is the main thing. If I'm going away for Shabbat, which I try to do not so often, but sometimes I go to America for Shabbat, I leave on Thursday night, but I'll set up my wife's Shabbat candles then, before I leave, because I want to I've done this. שהם כלי לאור בשבת, because the lights the kli is the vessel. So I'm creating the vessel, I'm I'm building the vessel and then my wife can then come and bring the light. She just, \"Fwooh!\" And my wife's very, very holy. My wife lights her Shabbat candles, she just looks at them. She lights them with her eyes. She's like, \"Fwooh!\" She's like, it's amazing. We lived, when we first got married, we lived in a building that apparently was cursed by a Kabbalist by the shuk. And apparently, many, many years ago, there were shops open in the shuk on Shabbat, and this Kabbalist cursed this building. And we got one of the houses, and and those shops eventually got turned into houses because they closed down because of the Kabbalist's curse. So we got one of the shops, we we got one of the apartments. That that's where we lived for I think about 2 years, 3 years maybe, in this little apartment in the shuk. That was cursed. But this is what I say, and I think it's true, is the first night we were there, the first Shabbat we were there, when my wife lit her Shabbat candles, she took away the curse. She took away the curse. My wife's Shabbat and now the apartments have turned back into shops that are not open on Shabbat, and they're all doing really well, because my wife took away the curse. No, we moved 12 years 14 years ago we moved. 2 years. It's cool. Just you see how holy my wife is. You see how holy my wife is anyway, but when she's lighting Shabbat candles, it's like, pfft. I knew like something's going on there. My wife's Shabbat candles. Now we're going to learn a lot about light and candles and see how that works. But I make a point of lighting of setting them up, and there's a whole leshem yichud for the setting up the Shabbat candles, a whole kabbalistic intention for the man to say whilst he's setting up the Shabbat candles. This is like everything in Judaism. You have to put your body, heart, and mind, and soul into it to give it a soul. So you could just light the Shabbat candles, go light the candles, ברוך אתה ה' אלקינו מלך העולם אשר קדשנו במצותיו וצונו להדליק נר של שבת, and my wife says kodesh at the end. There is a nusach that says kodesh, and then walk away. In fact, I had a cousin who grew up in a traditional South African home, and she called me once and she was like she was like, \"I'm going to India! I'm going to find true spirituality.\" And I I said, \"Where where are you going?\" She's going, \"I'm going to this ashram.\" And I said, \"What are you going to do in the ashram is you're going to do trataka. Trataka is a Hindu type of meditation where you stare at a candle, and you just look at the light of the candle, and you merge your consciousness into the light of the candle. And you don't have external thoughts, and you don't even judge or analyze the candle. You just merge your The the perceiver and the perceived and the perceiving all become one.\" And she's like, \"That's amazing! That's so spiritual. Judaism's not spiritual at all, and I want to go and find true spirituality.\" And I said, \"Do you light Shabbat candles though, now?\" And she said, \"Yeah, you know, that's what we do.\" And I said, \"I bet you just light them and you just mumbled the bracha, and you light them and you walk away.\" And she goes, \"Yeah.\" And I said, \"You don't need to go to India.\" I said, \"You don't need to go to India. You could just look at your Shabbat candles.\" And she's actually frum now, baruch Hashem, married and... Yeah. Well, it took a few years more, I think. I'm not sure if she if she even went to India. Maybe she did, but now she's frum, married a Breslov guy, they got some kid. Well, he's a Chabad-Breslov guy. they got. Amazing. So, I said, so the more you put into something, the more you get out of it. So, if you're putting on tefillin, and you're just putting on your tefillin and you say the bracha and then you take them off, and you did a ritual, and you ticked the box, it's cute, but you missed the whole purpose. The purpose is the relationship. So, if you put on your tefillin and you feel ahava, yira, simcha, and deveikus, then you did something. But if you don't, then it's not—you did something, but you just did a body without a soul. Havdalah, when you go to a shabbaton and everyone does these musical havdalahs: Hinei Kel Yeshuati, and everyone's loving it, and then you go to someone's house and they're just like Hinei Kel Yeshuati. I'm doing that Hinei Kel Yeshuati every week. I'm singing it, I'm loving it, why? Because you get out what you put in. So the more you understand what you're doing, and the more heart you do it with, the more meaningful it becomes, and the more powerful it becomes, and the more connecting it becomes. So we want to see the whole of Judaism as a mindfulness tool to connecting you, and really there's no greater thing than the lighting of the candles. It says in the Zohar Hakadosh—I'm going to read the Hebrew translation: ואשה צריכה בחדוה של לב ורצון להדליק נר שבת. A woman has to, with immense joy and immense yearning, light her Shabbat candles. You've got to be very excited, it is amazing, very exciting. Which means you've got to get the preparations finished early, you've probably got to get the kids out of the way. I've actually got a 17-minute Shabbat candle lighting guided meditation. I think I sent it to you once. Did I send it to you? 17-minute. Anyway, it's hard to do if you've got kids running around. That's a good idea, actually. You did send it to me once. Yeah, שהרי כבוד עליון הוא לה. It's an amazing honor to be able to light the Shabbat candles. וזכות גדולה לעצמה לזכות לבנים קדושים, and it's an amazing merit for her, and for her to have good, healthy, holy children, שיאירו העולם בתורה ביראה, so that that that their kedusha and their holiness and their Torah will light up the world. When should you listen to that 17-minute? Right before you light, or like days before? As you light. As you light? No, you light, it sets you up and it gets you in the right mood to light, and it builds you up for the bracha, and then you—it means that someone else has to take whatever you're listening to has to take it away afterwards, because now you're in Shabbat. But or you could just get your phone to turn off afterwards, whatever. You could just leave it. You could just leave your phone there. Or you get someone to take it. That could be part of your husband's job to take your phone away. וירבה שלום בארץ, and it creates immense peace in the world. ונותנת לבעלה חיים ארוכים, gives a long life. לכן צריכה להזהר בה. So we've really got to take this opportunity. נר של שבת ניתן להדליק לנשים סוד העמוק הזה. Why does the woman, what's the sod, what's the secret of why the women light the candles? Sukkat shalom zo. It's a it's a Sukkah of peace, which means the Shechina HaKedosha. Hi geviret ha'olam. The the Shechina, the Hashem's divine feminine presence is the the feminine presence in the world. It's peaceful, connected, holy, perfect divine presence. ונשמות שהם נרות עליונים, and the souls, which are these immensely high spiritual lights, bahem shorot, they have they come in lines, ulachen hagevirah, the woman, ba'alas habayis, the the woman of the house, shetzrichah lehadlik, שהרי במקומה של השכינה נאחזת האשה עושה מעשה. So she's basically bringing in her lighting of the Shabbat candles, she's bringing down the divine presence, she's bringing down peace into the home, she's bringing down kedusha into the home. That's what's really happening. You say that the Shabbat candles are more important than Chanukah candles. If you only have enough money to buy either Chanukah candles or Shabbat candles, you buy Shabbat candles because of this this reason. ורב גודל מעלת הזמן הקדוש של כניסת שבת. So this is an immensely holy holy, amazing amazing holy time of the week. And my wife, obviously, it's a time also to like breathe out, cuz all the week you're running around and you're holding your breath, especially on Friday, you're getting ready and there guests are coming and the kids or whatever, to be able to light your Shabbat candles and just be like, \"Ah, now I can just rest and become present.\" So it's a very, very holy time. And it's a time שהוא קישוט נפלא לשכינה הקדושה. It's a beautiful decoration and ornamentation for the holy Shechina. לכן נהגו הנשים בזמן הדלקת הנר להתחנן לפני השם יתברך. And that's why it's a good time to daven, to pray to Hashem, Hashem should bring more presence into the world, daven for children, daven for anything we need. והנה הדלקת נר נקרא בלשון הגמרא שלום בית. So lighting the candles is called in the Gemara shalom bayis, bringing peace in the house. ופנימיות העניין היא שאור הנר מאיר את אור האמונה בתוך לבבות ישראל. What is it really saying? Your soul is a candle. Your soul is compared to a candle. So when you light candles, you should feel—and we do this on Chanukah as well—but you should feel that you're really lighting up yourself. I stand, when I can, next to my wife while she's lighting, and as she's lighting, I feel that she's lighting up our neshamos, our souls as well, giving me this extra Shabbat kedusha, this extra Shabbat light. And feeling, feeling the light of my neshama. But it's also tapping us into emunah. emunah means trust and and faithfulness, that I believe I believe, I know that there's deeper meaning behind everything, I know that there's a spiritual world, I know that even the difficult and painful things in my life, there's a reason, and that I'll understand at some point in my life. I have this emunah, and that brings shalom. emunah, this trust in Hashem that everything is actually meaningful and everything's going to be good in the end, and all my tefillos are going to be answered in the end, in this world, in the next world, at some point, I'm going to understand everything, that creates shalom, that creates peace. You have peace of mind. Most of our peace of mind comes from our lack of emunah, from our lack of belief that everything's okay. Most of our jealousy comes from, it's not fair, I wish I had what they had. That means we don't know that everything we have is what we have and what what we want and what we need. Everything's working in our favor, actually. Even the difficult things in our life, they're actually working in our favor. והאמונה היא הדבר שמביא שלום אמיתי. Once you have true emunah, you let go a little bit, which means you do what you need to do in your business, for example. I've got to make the business deal, so you do what you can, and then you let go. emunah says, \"I'm letting go now. I did what I can. I'm going to let go now, now I have shalom.\" So whether the deal comes through or not, I'm at peace with that. I've done I've done my part. אדם לעצמו, אדם לחברו. It gives you this trust between you and yourself, and between you and other people. You're just more present, you're more relaxed, you're more focused, you're more connected to Hashem. Suddenly the world isn't so scary anymore. Well, not so scary, because you understand that everything's meaningful. צריך לכוון בעת הדלקת הנר, שבעת הסתכלות בנר, להדליק, להאיר בנפשנו את האור אלוקי, אור אמונה. So when you're lighting the candles, at that moment, and let's say you're not you didn't light the candles, when you come home from shul, then you can take a few moments to sit and look at the candles. You can still take that time. We see that we have this tradition that the woman, after she lights the candle or before, she brings her hands to her face. So she's like bringing the light of the the spiritual light into her from the light of the candles. Because we understand that everything we're going to read about it soon that everything in the physical world is really a physical representation of a spiritual idea. Everything in the physical world is a physical representation of a spiritual idea. So, for example, your hand. Your hand, that you can see this physical hand, is actually just an analogy for a spiritual idea called a hand. As it says in the Torah, God took you out of Egypt with a strong right hand. So it doesn't mean a physical hand, there's some spiritual idea called called a and the right hand represents loving-kindness. So there's nothing more spirit physically spiritual or spiritually physical than fire. Fire really in itself represents spirituality. It's always yearning upwards, it has this glow to it. Hashem is compared to an eish, is compared to a fire. You can't grasp a fire. Fire gives off light. So when we light up the fire, we really we're saying to ourselves, \"I'm lighting up and I'm illuminating within my soul the divine light within me and the divine light of emunah,\" עד שנכיר ונחיה בבהירות שהכל זה רק הוא יתברך, to until we really understand and we internalize, and we start feeling that really the whole universe is just enlivened by Hashem's light. It's all just light, the whole universe verse is light. Now, in a way it covers up Hashem's light. The physical world covers up Hashem's light, but it's really also meant to be megaleh, to reveal Hashem's light in this physical world. That's what we're trying to do, is to reveal Hashem's light in the physical world. And וכל הבריאה וכל הנמצאים אינם נפרדים ממנו, and there's nothing separate from Hashem. It's not like there's Hashem and then the physical world. Hashem is enlivening every particle, Hashem is within every particle of the physical world. Obviously, Hashem is infinitely beyond the world and above time and space, but He's inli- it's all just Hashem's light. So, we're going to have to return we're going to try and link everything back to Hashem's light. כי זה תכלית ההדלקה להדליק את אור הייחוד בתחתונים. So, the purpose of the lighting of the candles, and the purpose of everything we're doing really, every act of kindness we do, and every mitzvah we do, and everything we do, ve'ahavta lerei'acha kamocha, everything we're doing nice for other people, we're really doing it to bring Godliness into the world. We're meant to be Godly and bring Godliness into the world. לזכות לראות בכל דבר את יד השם, and then we can really see within everything et yad Hashem, that Hashem's hand is behind all of this. So, I'm going to read a little bit from a different book. It's called Hashabbos Bekabbalah Vachassidus. It's a Chabad book actually, but he speaks about many different aspects of Kabbalah and Chassidut. HaRav Yosef Karasik says this: Ner and ohr is very special in Jewish thinking. We speak a lot about ner, for many reasons. הקדוש ברוך הוא מתואר כנר. Hashem Himself is compared and defined and likened to fire, like candles. Atah neri Hashem, you are my light Hashem, you are my candle Hashem. ה' אלוקיך אש הוא, Hashem our God is fire. ההשפעות האלוקיות לעולם מכונות בתורת הקבלה בשם אורות. The divine influence and power in the world in Kabbalah is called orot, God's lighting, God's power, light. For example, the we've been speaking a lot about the sefirot, chesed, gevurah, tiferet, netzach, hod, yesod, malchut, that's called lights, they're lights. Speak a lot about orot vekeilim, there are vessels and lights. So, this spiritual influx that is coming into the world, we called we call that lights. אור הוא הדבר הראשון שנברא בעולם. Light is the first thing that was created in the world, and that really means ohr Ein Sof, Hashem's divine emanation. We have Hashem's infinite essence, which we can't grasp, and then Hashem creates the His light, He gives off light. נשמת אדם נקראת נר, your soul is called a ner, as it says, נר ה' נשמת אדם. נשמה שניתנה בכם קרויה נר, the soul that we are given is compared to a candle. תורה ומצוות קרויים נר, Torah and mitzvahs are also called candles, as it says, נר מצוה ותורה אור. אחד הכלים המקודשים ביותר במקדש, the holiest vessel in the Beit HaMikdash was the menorah. Why was that the holiest thing? Because it was giving off light, it was giving off Hashem's light. So, we're very, very obsessed with light and candles in Judaism because that really represents spirituality, ruchniyut. Like the fire candle is always going upwards, even if you hold a candle upside down, the flame will keep going upwards. So, too, our neshama is always looking for more, looking for more spirituality, always going upwards, trying to uplift everything, trying to uplift the physical world, trying to uplift other people. Spiritually connected people never put other people down, always trying to light other people up, bring warmth to other people, bring life to other people. So. What if a person though does something so bad that you can't dress it up in any positive way? Some people do very, very bad things. That means they're completely have covered up their divine light. They're not acting as who they are, so it's complete- pletely a a misrepresentation of their spiritual essence. So, you can't We're not You send them to prison. We're not trying to to justify people's evil. We do still have this idea of trying to judge people favorably and say, \"Look, this abusive, horrible person was abused as a kid.\" We still have to send him to prison, it doesn't justify what he did, but the idea of judging other people favorably is to say this person does still have this divine light within them, and try and find that divine light within them, and don't be in toxic relationships, obviously. But someone who's, once they're in prison, yeah, yeah. So you you can still always see through and know and if you have to do this for yourself, as well, to know that the essence of everyone is is divine and light and good, but it's been so horribly, awfully covered up that then the it's playing no role in their life, they're not receiving any of the light of the neshama. Rebbe Nachman says the more you can find the good in other people, the more you help light up the light in their own neshama, and that helps them do teshuva. Says here, kol davar shemachs- This is how light is different to anything else, and this is why it's related to spirituality. כל דבר שמחסירים ממנו משהו הוא מתמעט. Anything that loses something gets smaller. So, for example, אם נשפוך מעט מים מכוס מלאה, if you pour out a little bit of water from a full cup, הכוס לא תישאר מלאה, the glass will not stay full. אבל אש, גם אם נדליק ממנה להבות נוספות, היא לא מתמעטת ונחסרה. But fire, even if you give the fire to something else, it didn't lose. So I could light your candle with my candle, and I don't lose anything. With any other physical thing in the world, if I have 10 apples, and I give you one apple, I now have nine apples. I lost something. But if I have a candle, and I light your candle, I didn't lose anything. Pardon? Then I lost an apple seed. Great, so she benefits, but I lost from it. But you're right. But if I give her a candle, she can do everything with the candle, and she didn't lose anything. One of my favorite Tu B'Shvat Torahs is, it doesn't take a genius to work out how many seeds in an apple, but to work out how many apples in a seed. The second thing that makes light completely different from any other physical thing, and makes it comparable to Hashem, מכוס אחד מים לא נוכל למלא יותר מכוס אחרת כמותה. If you've got one glass of water, I can't fill up more than one other glass of water with my glass. Not only do I lose, but I can only fill up one. אבל מנר אחד יכולים להדליק נרות רבים אחרים. I can, with my one candle, I can light your candle, and your candle, and your candle, and your candle, and your candle. So, this is completely different to any other physical thing. So, this is why it's compared to spirituality and the neshama. The more love I give, the more love there is. I'm not losing by giving love. The more kindness I give, the more kindness is there. You don't lose by giving spirituality and love and kindness from the correct place, you're not losing anything by doing that. And now, the next one: נפח להבת האש גדול יותר מנפח חומרי הבערה מהם היא בוערת. The The material, the volume of a fire is actually much greater than the material it comes from. So, you can get a tiny bit of oil, but the fire is much bigger than the oil it comes from. Nothing else is like that. אבל דברים אחרים, כאמור, מכוס מים אחד לעולם לא נוכל להפיק נפח גדול יותר. You can't increase the volume of water. You You've just got the amount of water you got, and that's what you got. גם באורך חיי האש ניתן להבחין בכוח על טבעי. You can see the length of the life of fire. אש יכולה לבעור זמן בלתי מוגבל, ותכבה רק כשחומרי הבערה יגמרו. Fire goes on forever. As long as it's got fuel, it's going to burn forever and ever and ever. It never runs out. As long as you're just giving it fuel, it's going to keep burning and burning and burning and burning. Other things, they they finish after a while. You drink water, it's gone. Although water's cool, because there's the same amount of water today as there was in Creation. Water's just recycling itself. There's never been any more or less water in Creation than I wonder what that volume of water is. When water was Hashem created a certain amount of water, and since Hashem created that certain amount of water, there's never been more or less water ever. It's just been recycled. So maybe your water that you're drinking now, maybe Avraham Avinu drank that water. That would be cool. That's what you should think whilst you're drinking this water, maybe this water was used on the Beis HaMikdash. You just don't know where this water's been. It's been filtered and cleaned by now, so I'm sure it's perfect and pure. כל מה שקיים בטבע מוצא את אורך חייו הולך ומתיישן. Everything else in nature gets older. Ledugma, shemen, for example, oil. אי אפשר להשוות את טבעו ועוצמתו של שמן חדש וטרי לשמן עתיק ומיושן. Old, old oil gets old. I guess the only thing in nature that gets better when it gets old? Wine. Wine. And tea. You. The older you get, the greater you get. Isn't that cool? Only wine and human beings could get greater. Right. Some human beings don't get greater. Some human beings don't. But in terms of if you're working on your character traits, and you're doing mitzvot, and you're learning, and you're meditating, and you're praying, do you know how amazing you're going to be in 40 years from now? You're going to be a tzaddik. You're going to be a perfect, enlightened human being. There's nothing really stopping you from becoming, basically, enlightened in the next 40 years. Well, there is. There's your own mind and your laziness and your stuff. But if you just do what you need to do for the next 40 years, you know how amazing you're going to be? It's going to be awesome. That's what I'm planning to do with my life, unless you can suggest anything better to do. I'm going to go for that one. אבל האש אינו מתיישנת, ואורך חייה אינו משפיע ומשנה בה מאומה. No, the esh never gets old, and it never changes. It never gets worse and worse and worse and worse, it just stays. האם יש הבדל בין אש חדשה לאש ישנה? There's no difference between an old fire and a new fire. It just doesn't make sense. וכן אור מסמל את הקדוש ברוך הוא. That's why light is how we refer to Hashem. כי יש דמיונות ויחסים לאור עם הדברים הרוחניים. Because there's many, many things, relationships and images that are similar between light and spirituality. כיוון שבין כל הדברים שבעולם יש בו את הדמיון הכי גדול לכוחות השם הבלתי מוגבלים, הבלתי משתנים בשינויי הזמנים. So that nothing else in the whole of creation represents Hashem as well as fire and light. So when it's talking about light then, it's the analogy, it's not sunlight? It's not talking about sunlight. We know it's not talking about sunlight because it says the first thing that was created was light, vayehi or, but the sun was only created on the fourth day. Yeah, that's why I'm asking about the analogy of what you were saying. No, the truth is the light that's given off by flame. Yes. But the the before electricity, which was how long ago? 150 years ago, there was no such thing as light apart from sunlight and spirituality. Isn't that an amazing thing to think? Well, there was flame. Yeah, fire. But sun, sun is fire. Isn't that amazing? There was only light, natural light: sunlight, this light, and, you know, fire, flames. So that's really representing the light of spirituality in this world. So this is what we're thinking when we're lighting our Shabbat candles: we're bringing Hashem's light into the world, we're bringing shalom into the world, we're bringing emunah into the world, we're bringing ahavah, yirah, simchah, deveikus into the world. But we're really coming into this presence. And and that's why it's very important to spend some time in basking in the light of the candles. Baruch Hashem. So that's lighting candles. There's a lot, a lot more about candles, but we're going to be moving on. Could you say, do you mind saying those five things again, about when you light candles you're bringing When you're lighting your Shabbat candles, you're firstly becoming very present, because it's the end of the week, there's nothing Once you've lit your Shabbat candles as a woman, that's it, you're in Shabbat. You're not checking your phone, you're not running around, you're not You're there. But your kavana, your intention when you're lighting your candles is to bring Hashem's light into the world, and to bring emunah into the world, and to bring shalom, peace, into the world. That's why we say Shabbat Shalom. Shabbat means lashevet, to sit down, and shalom, to just become present, then you experience real, true, inner peace. And then we're thinking You could be thinking all these beautiful ideas about what light is, what fire is, what presence is, what And really lighting up your own ner, your own neshama, your the fire of your soul. And then what That's what we want to be doing. We want to be spreading Hashem's light into the world through us, through ourselves. Unless you've got anything better to do, that's what That's what I'm going to be doing this week. Okay, b'ezras Hashem, we're carry- we're carrying on tomorrow. I think I'm on every day this week. Thank you very much.