The Fire in the Rock

You want some fire. You can get some from an existing flame burning a coal, or you can create it from new by hitting a stone against a hard surface. Each method has its advantages, and Chasidus loves to use this as a parable for life’s deepest secrets.

The fire on the coal is easily accessible with no hard work necessary. On the other hand sooner or later the fire will extinguish. Moreover, if you throw the coal into a challenging environment, such as a body of water, the fire is gone. You hold a stone in your hand, its cold. Soak in water for a year, and you didn’t diminish it’s fire producing potential in the slightest.

Look at the stone carefully; does the fire exist within it? Not if you are looking for fire as we know it. But within the stone there sure is fire, in a more powerful way, fire as it is in its source, the essence of fire. The fire in the stone is too lofty to be felt but it has its advantage, it cant be challenged it will always exist.

G-dly light can be compared to a flame, majestic, bright, hot, visible. It’s inspiring to appreciate, it’s easy to get, and easy to loose. Then there is the essence of G-d, very much present everywhere, like the fire in the stone you can’t eliminate it from ant creation. Its presence is, however, sublime. It is only accessible with great effort, as with the spark bursting out of the stone being impacted with great force.

The Jew who is challenged with a bloody war against his evil inclination, who must hit the animal within himself with great force before he can see a spark of G-dliness, is reaching the essence of G-d. The essence of G-d which exist everywhere, even within a stone. In the words of the kabalists “when we subdue the ‘other side’, we reveal the light of G-d which is everywhere”.

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