I was recently visiting a relative in NY who showed me this little gadget which can change the colors of light that are coming out of a light bulb in his kitchen. For some added fun, the light bulb can also stream music straight from their Spotify music list. These days with gadgets like these or using Alexa or other similar devices, one simply issues an instruction like, “turn on the lights” or “turn on the music”, and a second later the lights are on and lit up or the music is blasting.
While Google and others may be the driving force behind this tech revolution that is changing our homes and office spaces into Smart homes, where simple verbal instructions yield amazing results, they aren’t actually the originators of this concept. You see, when G-d wanted some light in the universe, G-d simply said, “let there be light”, and then “there was light”. Likewise with nearly all other creations besides humans, G-d issues verbal instructions for things to form, and that is exactly what happens.
While the scientific and Kabbalistic explanations for this concept are important, I will leave that for another article. What I would like to focus on, is on one particular verbal command of these first “Ten Utterances” that formed creation, and that is the command “let there be light”.
Why was “turning on the lights” the very first item on the agenda? After all, humans and animals were not around yet and light didn’t quite seem like the first priority? While we would probably question the reasoning for any first item, the Torah teaches that everything is exact and precise and there is what to learn from every little detail.
Chassidic teachings address this question and pose a beautiful response which I will share below.
Imagine you are going to embark on a building project and you are all excited about doing some construction. Before you even begin, you need to know what you are building and what is going to be its purpose. Is it going to be a barn, a house, a factory, a storage facility or whatever else? Once you have decided what it is going to be, then you can convey that theme through the development of the project and align the construction to fit that need.
Likewise, with the very first Divine utterance, G-d wanted to share the very purpose and underlying goal of the creation of the Universe, “share light, increase light, and make the world into a beautiful and welcoming place that reflects the positive values that G-d intended it to become”. While technically physical light could wait, it being placed first, set the tone of the goal of creation.
Tomorrow we start reading the Torah once again, and as we do so, we will continue to learn and take life lessons each week, making sure that we continue to be people who bring light to others and the world around us, constantly and steadily making the world into the bright place that G-d intended it to be.
Shabbat Shalom