Behaalothecha: Playing with Fire

This is a dangerous parsha.  Gd tells Aaron how to light the menorah. He follows the rules. All is well, Following the rules is the approved way of dealing with divine instruction. Consistency counts, 

The second, annual Passover is announced. This Pasover ritual was always protrayed as an annual event, but it doesn't count until it is done. 

But there are times when the rules cannot be followed.  Hence the  polluted people cannot participate, Surprisingly, the request generates a unique, unanticipated alternative;  a second chance to do the ritual one month later.  The best possible solution. 

But when the people express a desire for meat: that brings the flames of destruction This desire for meat to supplement or replace the (delicious) manna is not greeted kindly.  This is not a request for an opportunity to serve Gd by participation in the sacrificial rite, It is a desire for flavor and texture, it is a longing for Egypt,  an undoig of Pesach. 

Gd again provides a surprising solution: give them exactly what they want... and then make them pay...with their lives.  That is, perhaps, the nature of earthly desire.  You can get what you want, but you pay with your life. You pay with your time.  The desire is like fire.  It is insubstantial and it consumes

I am in Poland.  For me, the image of the ritual flame is the yahrzeit candle, the flame commemorating the departed, the murdered, the cremated.  In my house, even  the shabbath candles were also memorial candles. 

The flame symbolizes an image of the killed. The body descends into the grave and the soul ascends. The flame  violates gravity.  It is delicate,  it ascends. It is insubstantial, but it illuminates and warms. What we can get from the memory of the dead is that warmth and light,  The history is a narrative, a fire that can burn