Like many of you, I have been praying for the healing of wounded Israeli soldiers, as they recover from their efforts to battle Hamas and rescue abducted innocents from the hands of subterranean terrorists. Towards that end, I make use of lists of soldiers’ names that circulate in groups on social media. While every name is precious and worth lingering over, sometimes one in particular stops me in my tracks. This week one name in particular took my breath away.
Ohr Matok ben Jaqueline.
Ohr Matok means “Sweet Light.” I picture a mother swaddling her newborn son, and singing to him “You Light Up My Life,” with as much feeling as Debby Boone ever mustered. I picture that mother as Yocheved, mother of Moses, who, the midrash says, knew that her baby was special because suddenly her home was filled with light. And as that midrash does, hear in the name the echo of the primordial declaration of G-d: Let there be Light!
More specifically, though, I suggest tracing the name to its Biblical root in the book of Ecclesiastes (11:7): How sweet is the light, what a delight for the eyes to behold the sun! In these waning days of autumn, as clocks change, winter’s heavy step thuds, and light deprivation weighs on our moods, this verse is easily understood literally.
And then imagine what it is for an Ohr Matok to descend into a world of bitter darkness, a Hades of tunnels, where the absence of light renders every step perilous and threatens to engulf hostage and rescuer alike. Ohr Matok, like our patriarch Jacob in next week’s Torah reading, descends into this dungeon and, like Jacob, is wounded, as the struggle goes on.
The name Sweet Light is a fusion of taste and sight, a kind of literary expression of the state of synesthesia, in which those affected experience two senses overflowing each other, and describe one sense in terms of another - pointy colors or tasty words. In fact, this phenomenon was known in the middle ages and Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra found three biblical phrases that approximate it in literary form. The first is our verse in which light is described as sweet. An earlier one occurs when Isaac inhales the aroma of Jacob, who is wearing Esau’s garments, and murmurs, “See, the aroma of my son is like that of a field, blessed by God” (Gen. 27:27). Finally, when the Children of Israel receive the Torah at Sinai, the experience is multisensory and they “See the thunder and lightning” (Ex. 20:15).
This, I believe, is more than a medical curiosity. Scripture chooses to express these experiences in terms of combined senses for a common reason. Isaac, deprived of sight, desperately sought a substitute sense to referee between his hearing and touch. The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are those of Esau. When he smelled the aroma of Esau’s garments, he decided that the sense of smell could replace the sight of his sightless eyes.
Light is sweet because even when we cannot see it in the darkest moments, we can still taste it and ward off danger. It is like the Phial of Galadriel in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings saga. Frodo, the hero who must enter the realm of darkness is told, “In this Phial is caught the light of Earendil’s star, set amid the waters of my fountain.” Light and taste mingle.
Finally, when the ancient Israelites received the Law, God made sure that there was no image or physical representation of a Deity to lead them astray. (Even so, they would later make one themselves in the form of the Golden Calf.) Nevertheless, God wanted to grant the Hebrews a sense of certainty through the thunder, as surely as if they had seen Him with their own eyes. He enabled them to “see” the thunder. In each of these cases, normal light is unavailable, but an alternate route to Divine guidance is provided.
In a week when we shall read of 12 of Jacob’s 13 children being named, let us remember that each child brings infinite sweet light into the world.
At a time when we need Divine guidance more than ever, may the sweet light of Ohr Matok, the bracing aroma of Jacob’s garments, and the ethereal light of the Torah be our guides. May they help us reach the magically illuminated days of Chanukah in which the hidden light of creation reemerges to perform miracles.
Beautiful.
Amen