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In this week’s Torah portion, Tzav, we read that the fire must be kept burning on the sacrificial altar. “The fire will burn forever upon the altar; it will never be put out.” (Leviticus 6:6) 

Having spent a significant amount of time around fire pits since 2020, I’ve learned that fires require continuous care. Wood must often be added to fuel the fire. Logs must frequently be rearranged in order to keep the coals glowing. Fire maintenance – safe fire maintenance – is an intense gig!

Imagine therefore the care the sacrificial fire required. There must have been several priests whose job it was to tend to this fire. They must have worked in shifts around the clock. There must have been others as well who had to collect the wood. To keep a fire going every minute of every hour of every day that was hot enough to turn the sacrificial animals completely into smoke was no easy task and required enormous effort. Yet in ancient times this was the priests’ chosen task; this was their holy duty. And so I also imagine that they did even this menial and demanding labor with love and devotion. They believed that the world depended on the sacrifices and altar fires they tended.

Today our fires are not animal sacrifice – today, we offer spiritual fires. Today there are no priests to care for our spiritual fires; rather, this job falls on each of us. Yet still the command is the same: “It will never be put out.” Tending these fires cannot be left to rabbis or cantors, teachers or tutors. Our spiritual fires are in our own hands. It is we who must tend to them; it is we who must care for them. We must nurture them each and every minute, each and every hour, each and every day.

My hope is that we will each pause from the immediate to focus on the important work of caring for our spiritual fires this Shabbat. And who knows? We find it less tedious than we imagined, more inspiring than we hoped, and perhaps, just perhaps, we will incorporate spiritual maintenance into our everyday routine.

Shabbat Shalom.