Kabbalat Shabbat Kavannah | Rabbi Felicia Sol | February 27, 2026

In December of 1996,

this sanctuary was rededicated. Was

anyone here for it? Anyone? Handful of

people. Um, after the ceiling had

collapsed in 1991.

I was a new staff member to the

community at the time while I was in

rabbitical school and I was sitting in

the balcony up there for the ceremony.

And when it came time to light the ner

tamid, which is uh beautiful right here,

often translated as eternal light, Naomi

Meyer, the wife of BJ's refounding rabbi

Marshall Meyer, opened the door right

here to the robing room and flipped the

switch.

It was at once glorious and utterly

mundane.

The light that symbolizes God's

presence, the enduring covenant, the

eternality of the Torah was illuminated

by the flick of a switch.

And yet the irony is that the ner tamid

is something of a misnomer.

Tamid doesn't not actually mean eternal.

It means continual

or regular or ongoing.

And in this week's para we read,

"You shall further instruct the

Israelites to bring you clear oil of

beaten olives for lighting for kindling

lamps regularly." Tam

in the Mishan and later in the temple,

the priests did not have the luxury

Naomi Meyer had. There was no switch to

flip once and to forget. The light

required daily tending

and oil had to be brought, wicks had to

be prepared, the flame had to be kindled

again and again. The harim notes that

although the cohain although the cohane

lit the manora only once each day, the

Torah calls it always tamid causing

because the lighting caused the lamp to

stay lit throughout the day and

therefore it was considered tamid always

or eternal as we translate it ongoing.

The act of lighting was intentional and

renewed and created a certain sense of

continuity.

He connects this to a teaching in the

Talmud from 99B where Rabbi Yanan says

in the name of Rabbi Shimon Bariohai

that even one who merely recites the

Shama morning and evening fulfills the

vi verse the Torah shall not depart from

your lips. How can a few moments of

recitation count as day and night?

His answer is it's just like the

neramid.

If those anchor points keep a person

connected and illuminated by Torah, then

they generate tamid, a sense of

continuity and ongoingness.

The brief faithful act makes possible

the tamid the sense of continuity of

ongoingness. What is continual perhaps

even what feels eternal.

Later in the same parasa parasit we

encounter another tamid which is the

daily offering. Two yearling lamps each

day tamid regularly.

Yakov of Lisa, Rabbi Yakov of Lisa

teaches that a Jew must carry two

tamidim, two tamides every day. On the

one hand, Shiviti

tamid

I place be God before me continually

and

my sin is before me. tamid continually

holding the sense that these two verses

have the word tamid and he says well

therefore that means that there are two

guiding truths. We are connected to God

and we must always keep God before us

and we are fallible and we make

mistakes.

We are living in a very fragile world.

So few things feel constant. Not our

democracy,

not the things that we can count on all

the time, not even security. Everyone is

waiting to see what happens this

weekend, whether there'll be an attack

in Iran. Very little feels constant and

anchoring and eternal.

But constancy is not the flick of a

switch.

It is a cultivated practice.

We light our souls and then we tend the

flame.

We anchor ourselves in Torah morning and

night so that in the hours in between we

have something to return to. We call

upon what is most divine within us and

we remember our humanness, our capacity

to air and our capacity to change.

A spiritual life does not guarantee

forever.

It asks us to cultivate the possibility

of forever.

endurance,

light, hope, and also contrition

in the unsettled waters of living. The

tamid,

the continuity that feels like

eternality, actually depends upon us,

not upon God.

Shabbat may be when we touch that most

deeply. Every seven days we return to

the well of rest, of love, of vision and

renewal, a taste of the world to come,

what is eternal. May this Shabbat grant

us the desire and the discipline for

what can become tamid, what can become

always. Sometimes light comes with a

flick of a switch, but more often it is

a steady day to day, week to week

tending the flame that grants us our

truest access to what is enduring and

what is holy. Shabbat shalom.