The light we make. The great moment has come. For seven days beginning on the 23rd of Adar,

Moses had consecrated Aaron and the priests, and now on Roche-Khodish Nissen, the time has arrived for Aaron

to begin his service ministering to the people on behalf of God. And he came to Pasbi Yomashmini

on the eighth day that Moses called to Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel,

and he said to Aaron, take a young bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering without blemish and offer them before the Lord.

What is the significance of Biamashmini on the eighth day?

The phrase that gives our Parashai its name, to understand the

profound symbolism of the number eight, we have to go back to creation itself. In the beginning,

when all was waste and void, God created the universe. Day by day, the world unfolded. First,

there were the domains, light and dark, upper and lower waters, sea and dry land.

Then there were the objects that filled the domains, the sun, moon and stars, then the fish and the

birds, finally the land animals culminating in humankind. Then came Shabbat the seventh day,

the day of limits and of holiness, on which first God then is covenantal people

rested in order to show that there are boundaries to creation. There's an integrity to nature.

Everything has its proper place, its ecological niche, and its function and dignity in the

totality of being. Holiness consists in respecting boundaries,

recognizing limits, and honoring the natural order.

So, seven days.

But what of the eighth day, the day after creation?

For this we have to turn to Torah Shaba al-Pheh, the oral tradition.

It was on the sixth day that God made his most

fateful decision to create a being who, like himself, had the capacity to create. Admittedly,

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