Let My People Know

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz: “Man is an array of lights.”

“In a famous book of Kabbalistic commentary, Sefer Hasidim (“The Book of the Devout”), the 613 limbs and organs of the human body are associated with the 613 commandments of the Torah.

Each commandment corresponds to a specific part of the body.
Man is an array of lights, and each mitzvah gives off its own small light.
Our lives consist of lighting one light here, one light there.
All these lights together make up a human being, the ideal image of the person, as though man were merely a brace, or a stand, for the 613 lights.”
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

 


From The Seven Lights by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, p. 340-341