Let There Be Light: The First Words of Love

18 Tishrei 5787

"And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." (Genesis 1:3)

In the beginning. Bereishit. That was it: all of God's Love, held in a single word. The first sentence of our sacred book should not be read as simply as the words suggest. Before anything was spoken, the Love was already whole. The Zohar describes this moment as Divine thought that "bore in silence without making a sound."

And then, va-yomer, "and God said." God's Love, already complete, moved out of Divine thought and into the first words, so that it could be received. I ask you not to skim past what is taking place here. Read it as Love in its very essence, at a higher level of comprehension than the ordinary awareness we live in.

Yehi or. "Let there be light." The Zohar teaches that these words allude to "the perfect love, called great love." This is the Perfect Love, spoken so that His creation, us, can experience it in all its Glory.

How do we understand this great Light, this Love? Picture it pouring down from above in golden rays, falling on us the way morning sun falls on a face turned upward. It warms the skin first, then sinks deeper, past the body and into the soul, until there is no place in us it does not touch. We don't have to earn it or reach for it. We only have to stand in it, open and still, and let it in. Light and Love are not two things. They come forth together as one, each giving rise to the other. The Tanya teaches that on the first day of Creation, God created the light through the attribute of chesed, kindness. Kindness is where Light and Love meet. It is the mixture of the two, and it is how that golden warmth reaches us.

This is our connection to the One. What God gave through kindness, we give back through kindness to the people in our lives. The Meor Einayim teaches that when a person speaks for God's sake, "his speaking then kindles light." Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh calls our response or chozer, the returning light that rises back to its Source. Kindness to another person is using our words for God.

God created the world by speaking words of Love, and that same Love lives inside each of us. We were created to speak those words too, to emulate the Love of God within us and to honor the beauty of humanity. Kindness is both something we do and something we say. Through the power of speech we take part in shaping our reality, just as His first words brought forth the light.

Let there be light. And through us, there is light.

Sources

• Zohar, Bereshit, on Genesis 1:3 (the birth in silence; Soncino translation); Zohar, Introduction, on the second precept (the perfect love, called great love)

• Tanya, Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah, chapter 10

• Meor Einayim, Bereshit

• Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, on the light that returns in our response to Divine Providence, https://inner.org/divine-providence-and-the-way-we-react-to-it/

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