Surrender and Merge

Day by Day - Kislev 25 (See today's Hayom Yom here. )
Friday is the quality of Yesod - complete surrender of identity as in intimacy, where it’s not me, it’s we. Hayom Yom turns its attention to Chanukah, leaving only a hint of the nature of Friday. In the daily Tanya reading for that day, we are introduced to the fact that every Jew, righteous and sinful, has two souls- a holy soul and an animal soul.

How apt for Friday: On the Friday of creation, G-d saw all He had made and it was “very good.” The good inclination was good, the evil inclination, very good. (Inclining man towards evil forces him to try harder, thus making him “very good.”) Friday introduces the tension between two inclinations. Tanya introduces the tension between two souls.

Now the choice we must make is which soul will be our mate? With which soul will we identify to the point of intimacy? And that is the quality of Friday, Yesod. Mutual love does not make two people one. Only when they rise beyond love to intimacy, “Yesod,” do they surrender and merge into one.

And here’s the hint in the Hayom Yom. There are many laws and customs in the kindling of the Menorah. The Rebbe mentions only a select few. One of them is the concern for which direction the Menorah faces. But, he writes, “The Menorah can be placed facing either east to west or north to south.” There’s the link to intimacy: This very same spiritual concern also exists in Jewish law regarding the placement of the marital beds.