Kabbalat Shabbat Kavannah | Rabbi Roly Matalon & Rabbi Felicia Sol | June 5, 2026

Shabbat Shalom to everyone.

But so Solomon.

So in person.

And, It begins

with the lighting of the menorah, and the.

The parsha begins by God saying to Moshe,

speak to our own and say to him, when you mount the lamps,

let the seven lamps give light at the front of the lamp, some lamp stand,

and then the famous phrase comes after that is given a lot of attention via us.

Can, Aaron and Aaron did so,

and the commentators, well, Rashi is the most known,

commentator on this phrase, which is he teaches

that Aaron didn't change a thing, that he he was precise.

Right.

What what else would you say about that?

What Rashi meant by that.

But he did exactly the way they did every single day.

The same thing.

The way he was told by Moshe.

Every single day. He didn't change anything.

He went always exactly the same.

So the value there is then it's like spiritual life is about precision rate.

It's about being. I don't know if we might.

Not deviating.

Right to the left, nor to the right that it was like, should be exactly as so.

And he didn't do anything that would make it seem any difference.

The way I prayed yesterday

with what I said yesterday, I say today, I will say tomorrow.

Zero.

Zero. That's it.

Do you find that inspiring?

Sometimes I do, actually.

I didn't find that inspiring.

But once I was in the presence of a professor of mine

at the seminary who was a Holocaust survivor,

and he said, my life and our lives

were so immensely disrupted

that I find comfort

in the fact that it's always the same doesn't change.

I find comfort by living in that he's good at in that frame of framework

where nothing changes is predictable.

Right?

Which in some sense we we always joke

that when people are like, why did you change the.

Right.

Like you stole my life.

One time somebody came up to me and says, you killed my Shabbat.

I kill the Shabbat.

You change the middle of the night, right?

Right, right.

So there is a sense that there is a power, obviously,

to kind of regularity, precision and stuff.

But the Hasidic masters.

But what about the regularity?

I think that when you have the, the, the framework of regularity

and the and, and the sameness,

if you live in that, in that strictness,

there's also room because you internalize it.

There's also room to sort of improvise or to.

Write since there is something born from that.

Exactly. Yeah.

You know, I think I always, you know, it's like every morning

get up in the oven and it's mostly not an ecstatic experience.

Right?

But every once in a while, something emerges from the consistency.

Because if you don't have that, you can't ever find that insight.

Right?

And the Hasidic masters, I think, were,

understood Rashi.

But they found it unsatisfying. Right?

So they came up with different meanings around what various can our own was.

And I just we'll just kind of looking.

Know I think it's one of my favorite ones.

Which one is your favorite one?

My favorite one is that he by asking around.

He did it exactly the same with the same intention that he did the first time.

Yes. In other words, that every single day he had to find

or rediscover the newness of doing it for the first time.

So it's a completely different mindset, right?

Is to say, every single day I have to do it

as if it were the first time.

And that's really hard.

Right?

And actually, you know, when when Rashi says that,

he says, actually, this is the praise of Aharon, right?

That this is what makes him praiseworthy is that he he did it with such precision.

And that's what,

that, the cut score and the

gotten a villainous say about that, which is like his praise within us

was that he was able to find the command, like it was the first time.

Which means that there's something new all the time to light the fire.

Right.

So then there's, the red barrel of misery.

It's,

It's told the story about singing, seeing Levy.

You talk of bearded chef, who was davening, like, with his whole body,

you know, like crazy with ecstatic and and he said to

he said to him, if our own did it that way,

he would have spilled the oil and the menorah would have gone over like,

you know, maybe there's something little like, chill out, honey, you know,

but but the answer given to that was actually that Aron was able

to, on the outside, have the discipline to do it with restraint.

But on the inside, he had fire, right?

That he you don't actually have to express the ecstatic.

I mean, sometimes we do that actually being embodied in that way

is a very powerful idea that the the fire

on the inside actually penetrates outside.

But in this case, Aaron was able to contain his fire on the inside in the form

that he could actually light the menorah, which is also a very powerful idea.

He was able to do it with precision, but it didn't diminish his.

He loved his fire on the inside, which is a beautiful idea.

Like how?

I mean, it's connected in the notion of lighting the fire anew each

time is that we want to feel that kind of,

that, that passion.

Right.

Sometimes some of the Hasidic

practices are that you have to move on the outside

because if nothing is lit on the inside, maybe the moving on

the outside will help close the flame on the inside through actually

to come out and to, to, to, to emerge.

And sometimes, you know,

if you're if you're in a static place and nothing's happening spiritually

and nothing is producing and you and you get anxious

because you really want to, you want something to happen.

You want the connection to want the fire.

So sometimes you have to do something on the outside.

Right, to weaken it. Right.

And sometimes it's also I mean, we might sometimes look at it

with skepticism that it's a little bit performative, that the

the outside could actually be actually empty on the inside.

And so this is like a push to say you actually have to light it on the inside.

And finally, this not the met, says that

that I mean, it's

connected to the idea that he brought it the like the first time every time.

But he says that, that

that meant that no two days were the same.

And Aharon drew down a new light each day into the world,

which is a slight difference.

It's the idea is that obviously

there was something new every time, or it was like the first time, every time.

But in this idea, actually, he he says, Moshe called him

morning, meaning like the morning would arise.

Like that God lights a new day every day.

And that that part of spiritual life is trying to find

a new ness because of ness teaches us that we have no imagination.

Sometimes.

So what do you make of the package of all the teaching?

I think all these things live together.

You know, it's a it's not either or.

I mean, spiritual life has room for all these.

A spiritual life has a room and more than room has a need

for all of these different venues or approaches.

And and you can't stay with just one.

Sometimes this one is helpful. Sometimes this one is help.

Sometimes you are this alone, sometimes you are that alone.

And yeah, you have to try different things and and the spiritual life is dynamic

and it has to be moving around all these different things and, and

and bring them together. Yeah.

I think also that, you know, I feel like for many years at this point

or a handful of years, we, we've been talking how hard the world is

and is outside and sometimes actually, we just need to focus

a little bit on what's happening in here and to a little isolate ourselves,

which spiritual life is meant to actually push us outside eventually.

But there is something to cultivating

what's alive with discipline and with passion

and with pursuit and with the possibility of newness,

because that's the engine by which we live.

And if we don't have that engine which gets renewed on Shabbat,

we needed to live in this world.

And so we should be blessed, to have both

what's when our hands in with precision, but also with him.

The Harvard with passion.

We turn now to the tragedy.