20th Elul Two Great Lights

Half way through the days of creation, two great lights were put into the firmament to act as signs for the seasons, days and years. They were not put there to create light – that was done on the first day, but to mark the passage of time. Why two lights? They mark time differently – the sun’s movement appears fixed and unchanging to the ordinary viewer, rising in the East and setting in the West. But the moon waxes and wanes over the month, and wanders through the night sky. Together they remind us both that time inexorably passes and we shall grow old, and that that we can grow and change many times in our lives, make new beginnings even as we grow older. We do not to create the light which was present since day one, but we can notice and reflect the ever changing perspectives of it. The constancy and the wandering work together – we stay the same and we renew, we are fixed yet also changing. Our journey is both predictable yet filled with possibility.

Sylvia Rothschild LBC 1987 London and Milan