B"H

In Parashat Tzav, the Torah speaks about the offerings and about the fire that must remain constantly burning on the Mizbeach, on the altar. The Zohar asks a very deep question on this. Why did this fire have to remain eternal? Why could they not simply bring a new fire every day? And why specifically are the Kohanim the ones who are involved in arranging this fire, bringing the wood, and sustaining it?

On a deeper level, the Zohar explains that fire represents judgment, intensity, and power. Fire can go in different directions. There is a fire of holiness, a fire of love, a fire of longing for G-d, a fire of devotion, a fire of truth. But there is also a different kind of fire, a fire that gets misdirected. A fire of impulse, ego, anger, craving, confusion, negativity, and all the places where a person loses alignment with who they really are.

This is why the Zohar connects the eternal fire of the altar to the inner life of the person.

When a person sins, or when a person makes a mistake, it is not because the deepest essence of that person is corrupt. The mistake is real, and it needs rectification. That is why there were offerings. That is why there was avodah in the Temple. There was always a process of healing, sweetening, and returning things to their source. But the Zohar says something even deeper: beneath the external mistake, there is still a pure fire burning. There is still an inner fire that belongs to holiness.

In other words, even when a person falls into the fire of the other side, the root of that fire is still a distorted version of the soul’s longing. The deepest fire that a person has is really a fire for G-d. It is really a fire of the neshama. It is really an innocent fire, a holy fire, an eternal fire.

This is why the fire on the altar could not go out.

Because the altar is not only a place in the Temple. It is also a map of the inner person. The Mizbeach is the altar of the heart. And within the heart, many things are happening. There are many desires, many movements, many conflicting pulls, many emotions, many distractions. But underneath all of it, there is something deeper. There is an eish tamid, an eternal fire, that never truly goes out.

The Zohar also says something very beautiful about the Kohanim. Kabbalistically, the Kohanim come from the side of Chesed, from the right side. The Levites are more connected to the left side, to Gevurah, to strength, discipline, and a more fiery constriction. So why is it that the Kohanim, who come from Chesed, are the ones tending the fire?

Because the holy fire is not sustained by harshness. It is sustained by Chesed.

The fire of holiness, the fire that heals, the fire that uplifts, the fire that consumes negativity, is drawn specifically through loving-kindness, through blessing, through alignment, through returning to essence. The Kohen is the one who knows how to draw down that fire properly. Not as destructive fire, but as sacred fire. Not as a fire that burns the person, but as a fire that purifies the person.

And that is why every morning the Kohanim would arrange the wood and tend the fire.

Morning is the time of Chesed. Morning is the time of renewal. Morning is the time when a person wakes up and begins again. No matter what happened the day before, no matter how much confusion there was, no matter how much a person was pulled in all kinds of directions, the morning says: begin again. Return again. Remember again. The deepest truth about you has not changed.

This is one of the great messages of the Zohar here.

You are not defined by the external fire that took hold of you. You are not defined by the distortion. You are not defined by the fall. On the deepest level, you are defined by the eternal fire of your neshama.

The Zohar connects this also to Adam. The place of the altar is the place from which Adam was created. And our sages teach that this is the place of atonement, the place of rectification. Meaning, embedded into the very structure of creation is the possibility of return. Embedded into who we are is the capacity for healing. The human being was never meant to remain stuck in the fall. The remedy is already there. The altar is already there. The eternal fire is already there.

So the work is not to create holiness from nothing. The work is to uncover it.

The work is to remember that beneath all the external layers, beneath the fear, beneath the habits, beneath the false attachments, beneath the inner idolatry, there is already a holy fire. And this is why Tzav can also be understood in connection to the battle against idolatry. Idolatry is not only bowing to an external false god. Idolatry is anytime we give our life-force over to something outside of our true center. It is when we forget the One and become trapped in the many. It is when we forget the soul and get lost in the surface.

How do we combat that?

By strengthening the eternal fire.

By going back to the altar of the heart.

By awakening the inner Kohen within us, that place of Chesed, that place of blessing, that place that knows how to draw down holy fire and let it burn through the negativity.

The Zohar says that there is a fire that consumes a fire. The holy fire consumes the negative fire. The fire of holiness consumes the fire of the other side. The fire of Chesed, of love, of truth, of devotion, of connection, has the power to burn away the distorted fires that take us away from ourselves.

This is such an important teaching, especially now. During war. Internal and external war...

So many people feel that they have gone too far, fallen too many times, become too distracted, too heavy, too confused, too late. But the message of the eternal fire is that it is never too late to return to your essence. There is always something deeper within you that has never been extinguished.

That is the eish tamid.

That is the eternal fire on the altar.

That is the eternal fire of the neshama.

And all we really need to do is dig deeply enough, become quiet enough, become honest enough, and reconnect to that place. To the place in us that still longs for truth, still longs for holiness, still longs for G-d, still longs to live from the deepest part of who we are.

May we merit to reveal that eternal fire within ourselves. May the fire of holiness consume all negativity, all confusion, all distortion, all inner and outer idolatry. And may we once again see the fire upon the Mizbeach in its revealed form, with the coming of Mashiach, במהרה בימינו, אמן.