In this week’s Parshat Behaalotcha, we read of the mitzvah to kindle the Menorah in the Mishkan: “Behaalotcha et ha-neirot — “When you raise up the flames…” (Bamidbar 8:2). Rashi famously comments: “Shetehei ha-shalhevet oleh mei’eileha — “You must hold the flame to the wick until the flame rises on its own.”
Rashi isn’t giving us a lighting tutorial. He’s touching on a timeless truth about the Jewish soul and how we nurture it in others: Just as every wick holds the potential for fire, every Jew carries within them a hidden spark — the pintele yid – that indestructible point of holiness we possess even before we come into this world. The great Chasidic master, the Sefat Emet, teaches that the Menorah represents every Jewish soul, already containing divine light. Rav Kook echoes this idea when he writes that teshuvah — return — is not about becoming someone else but rather uncovering who we already are. Judaism doesn’t ask us to adopt a foreign identity; it invites us to return to our truest self.
This is something I write a great deal about in my upcoming book, “The Jewish Experience: Discovering the Soul of Jewish Thought and Practice,” to be released, please God, by Koren Publishers before Rosh Hashanah. Judaism strongly endorses the idea that we enter the world with a deep spiritual component. The Talmud teaches that we are created with a preexisting sense of God: “A fetus is taught the entire Torah while in the womb…. And once the fetus emerges into the airspace of the world, an angel comes and slaps it on its mouth, causing it to forget the entire Torah” (Niddah 30b). Whether this passage is meant to be read literally – that there is an actual angel teaching Torah to a fetus – or metaphorically, the question arises: If a child is forced to forget his learning upon birth, why was the child in utero taught the Torah in the first place? Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik suggests that it is to teach us how the soul comes into the world: “Learning is the recollection of something familiar. The Jew studying Torah is like the amnesia victim who tries to reconstruct from fragments the beautiful world he once experienced. In other words, by learning Torah man returns to his own self; man finds himself” (Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “Redemption, Prayer and Talmud Torah,” Tradition 17, no. 2, 1978, page 69).
Based on this passage from the Talmud, Rabbi Soloveitchik suggests we are born with an already existing spiritual familiarity, a metaphysical part of us that is already connected to something beyond. As such, children and students are not simply blank slates who can only learn and grow by having their parents and teachers impose their knowledge and values upon them. Instead, children enter the world already possessing some spiritual connection or wisdom which a parent or teacher must unearth.
One of my teachers, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, taught that the job of a parent or teacher is not to mold, but to extract— to uncover the greatness that lies within each child. Extracting presupposes that one already possesses something uniquely spiritual. Our task, whether we are educators, parents or just caring friends is not to impose holiness, but to reveal it. The soul already burns; it just needs help remembering.
In a post–October 7 world, where Jewish identity is being tested and reawakened, this message is more vital than ever. We’re seeing Jews long disconnected from Jewish life feeling a strange pull — to Shabbat, to Israel, to Jewish community. Where is that coming from?
Just about a month after October 7, a young Jewish man came to see me in my office. He shared that he had never been to Israel and that his only Jewish experience growing up was attending services on Yom Kippur. After the horrific attack on October 7, he said he felt like he wanted to do something Jewish, something spiritual. Given his lack of connection to Israel and to Judaism, he asked me where I thought that feeling was coming from. I told him simply: It must be your Pintele Yid. Another young man, who joined us at MJE for our Shavuot all night learning, shared that despite never knowing what Tefillin were, he has been putting them on every morning since October 7.
Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the Baal Hatanya, wrote that many simple Jews, not learned or observant, when forced to choose between martyrdom and converting to Christianity, chose the former. Why? The Pintele Yid, he said.
But that divine spark does not ignite on its own. Like Aharon standing by the Menorah, it needs someone to hold the flame close long enough for the soul to catch fire. October 7 awakened something buried. But awakening is just the beginning. We can’t wait for Jewish souls to find their way back on their own. We must go out and hold the flame close. Not with pressure. Not with guilt. But with respect and love and with the faith that the spark is there — that even the most distant Jew is only one meaningful encounter away from remembering who they are.
Rabbi Mark Wildes, founder, Manhattan Jewish Experience (MJE), a highly successful Jewish outreach program which engages 20’s/30’s in Jewish life and which has facilitated 383 marriages.
