What God Can Do
Saturday night is Havdalah, the closing of the Sabbath. The word means "separation". The blessings involved honor God for making distinctions between things - between Israel and the other nations, between light and darkness, between the Sabbath and the six working days. We also say blessings on a cup of wine, a container of spices, and the light of a candle that looks like this:
Someone once told me why the candle has to have more than one wick, but I've forgotten the reason. We can, in a pinch, use two regular candles, as long as we hold them in such a way that the flames merge into one.
Well, this past Saturday, Little Miss asked if we could go to the beach in Santa Monica and make havdalah there. Sounded like a good idea to me, so we packed up and drove down. When we got there, though, we discovered that we had forgotten the candle.
Oh well. Cold night, dark beach, no one anywhere within eyeshot. We lay down in the sand and watched the planes go by and talked about this and that, figuring we'd enjoy the view for a while and then go home for havdalah.
Suddenly we hear this voice: "You guys need candles?"
We sat up, and there was another couple standing over us with two regular candles and one in a glass bowl. By their accents I could tell they were from Israel.
Little Miss asked, "Did you do havdalah?" They looked a little confused, like they didn't know what that was, so Little Miss explained it. They still looked confused.
Well, we took the candles, the other couple wished us "Shabbat Shalom," and we made our havdalah.
I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation for this incident, but I'm not at all sure that the rational explanation is the true one. Two people suddenly appear out of nowhere with exactly what we need, without apparently realizing why we might need them, and ask us if we need them without any evident way of observing that we need candles specifically? Rational explanation or no, I say God was watching out for us right then.
And who knows, maybe they were angels.
Benshlomo says, Don't let's ignore the possibility of miracles.
Someone once told me why the candle has to have more than one wick, but I've forgotten the reason. We can, in a pinch, use two regular candles, as long as we hold them in such a way that the flames merge into one.
Well, this past Saturday, Little Miss asked if we could go to the beach in Santa Monica and make havdalah there. Sounded like a good idea to me, so we packed up and drove down. When we got there, though, we discovered that we had forgotten the candle.
Oh well. Cold night, dark beach, no one anywhere within eyeshot. We lay down in the sand and watched the planes go by and talked about this and that, figuring we'd enjoy the view for a while and then go home for havdalah.
Suddenly we hear this voice: "You guys need candles?"
We sat up, and there was another couple standing over us with two regular candles and one in a glass bowl. By their accents I could tell they were from Israel.
Little Miss asked, "Did you do havdalah?" They looked a little confused, like they didn't know what that was, so Little Miss explained it. They still looked confused.
Well, we took the candles, the other couple wished us "Shabbat Shalom," and we made our havdalah.
I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation for this incident, but I'm not at all sure that the rational explanation is the true one. Two people suddenly appear out of nowhere with exactly what we need, without apparently realizing why we might need them, and ask us if we need them without any evident way of observing that we need candles specifically? Rational explanation or no, I say God was watching out for us right then.
And who knows, maybe they were angels.
Benshlomo says, Don't let's ignore the possibility of miracles.
posted by benshlomo at 10:31 AM
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