Kiss of Life(להבת ה'חיים)

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Tractate Shabbat, Chapter 2, Halakhot 1–2:

(1) With what may one light, and with what may one not light? One may not light with lekhesh, nor with hosen, nor with kalakh, nor with the wick of the idan, nor with the desert wick, nor with the green growth upon the surface of the water. Nor with pitch, nor with wax, nor with kik oil, nor with oil designated for burning, nor with tail fat, nor with suet. Nahum the Mede says: One may light with boiled suet. And the Sages say: Whether boiled or not boiled, one may not light with it.

(2) One may not light with oil designated for burning on a Festival. Rabbi Ishmael says: One may not light with tar, because of the honor of Shabbat. And the Sages permit lighting with all oils: sesame oil, nut oil, radish oil, fish oil, pakkuot oil, tar, and naphtha. Rabbi Tarfon says: One may light only with olive oil.

Babylonian Talmud on Tractate Shabbat, Chapter 1, Halakha 1 (folio 23b):

“Rava said: It is obvious to me: The lamp of his home and the Hanukkah lamp—the lamp of his home takes precedence, because of peace in his home. The lamp of his home and the Kiddush of the day—the lamp of his home takes precedence, because of peace in his home. Rava asked: The Hanukkah lamp and the Kiddush of the day—what is the ruling? Does the Kiddush of the day take precedence, because it is frequent, or perhaps the Hanukkah lamp takes precedence, because of publicizing the miracle? After he asked the question, he went back and resolved it: The Hanukkah lamp takes precedence, because of publicizing the miracle.”

The Shabbat lamp takes precedence over the Hanukkah lamp, because peace in the home is more important than the family at large, for the relationship between my wife and me is an international interest, as Meir Ariel’s song says.

The question that remained open, once there exists a relationship that contains attraction, is whether international spirituality, external to the family, is more important than the national, internal spirituality within—or, in other words, the Satmar movement or the Mizrachi movement. Rava, who answered himself out of a need for international recognition that would benefit him and his neighbors, said that precisely the external one is more important: the Satmar movement.

And in my personal opinion, here and now and in the Land of Israel, the answer is the opposite: first of all, private interpersonal spirituality, the Mizrachi movement, and from it everything will already come to its place in peace, speedily and in order, out of the very conduct of life itself in a healthy manner and without multiplying prayers and requests for a goal that cannot truly be realized outside the soil of the Land of Israel, for one cannot, nor is it fitting to, call any place by the name of the soil of Jerusalem—a city of Shem, Yerushalem—which is an inheritance for us when we become truly worthy of the complete man, who lived for ten generations and for hundreds of years alongside an old man, Abraham, who was a faithful descendant and was awestruck by the age and quality of life of that man who knew the secret of complete life: Shem—he is Malki-Tzedek—and only from him did Abraham truly agree to receive whatever he gave, because he did so with a whole heart, as is the way of every father/grandfather, and certainly across a distance of ten generations. He is Shem, and the encounter between them is what gave birth to the place whose name was Shalem, and over the generations that same request to bequeath the place to that descendant became fixed in our language, and by this name the city was called because of that intergenerational encounter: “Yerush–Sh(e[l])m” — ירוש־ש(ל)ם.