As Long As There Is Light! #Light #Fire #Judaism

There's a story with [music] Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, a great, great tzaddik, and he was walking late at night and it was very, very dark. He was with a bunch of his students and [music] they saw a little light coming from a little, little home. And he was so curious, it's so late at night, why is somebody up? >> [music] >> And they go knock on the door and it was a shoemaker. And they asked the shoemaker, "What are you doing? How are you able to be still working [music] at such a late hour in the night?" And the shoemaker said something incredible. He said, "As long as [music] there's a light that's on, as long as the fire's lit, I can still prepare the shoes." And Rabbi Yisrael [music] Salanter took this as a message for himself and as a message to teach his students [music] and as a message for all of us. And that was this, and I'm going to tell you in Hebrew, kol zman sheha'ner doleik efshar od letaken. As long as the fire is doleik, as long [music] as the fire is lit, it's still possible to continue to fix. Whether it's shoes, whether [music] it's yourself. And guess what? There's a secret to this story. Because the eish tamid, the soul of a man, "Ki ner Hashem [music] nishmat adam", the soul of a man is something that is atamid. It's constant. It doesn't go out. >> [music] >> Kol zman sheha'ner doleik, as long as the ner is lit. And guess what? The ner is always lit. Just sometimes it's concealed. [music] Sometimes it's covered up. And our job during this time period of the three weeks is to try to uncover [music] that a little bit more, to try to see that that spark exists.