| Oil cannot burn by itself.
A wick is required to serve as an interface between the oil and the fire. This is comparable to the role of man, a soul within a body, who fulfills the mitzvot with his physical actions. The mitzvot are meaningless and insubstantial without man (the wick) who actualizes them. So it is the human being who causes the good deeds, the mitzvot, to come to fruition and have meaning. Only when a human being, with his body, and with a soul inhabiting his body, performs the mitzvot, does the Divine Presence take hold of him, burning and shining through him into the world. Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz |