Bella Duwe - Dvar Torah

Good morning everyone, I’m Bella and I’d like to tell you about my portion in the Torah, Tetzaveh. This Torah portion is about the Cohenim and their garments and what they did, but what it’s also about is light, in various forms. 

The beginning of my Parshah is about the menorah which in those times, was lit and stayed up everyday. Our shabbat candles, which every shabbos are lit beautifully and can't be forgotten to be set up. There is also the Ner Tamid, this beautiful light in the Shul which stays up all day everyday, even when we have to go through load shedding. Notice how every single one of these things is lit religiously without fail, which is like some things in our lives, our routines. Just like when we brush our teeth, make our breakfast, go into the shower. You can start making your routines better and better as you grow up.  I pray every night to myself and just talk to Hashem when I love to. And it always makes me feel good after.

Something special to my family would be a yahrzeit candle, which is a candle of remembrance for our loved ones that have died. A personal use of a yahrzeit candle for me is for my great grandmother, my dad’s bubba. She passed on the 2nd September 2010 and we have remembered her ever since. We keep close to the people we love whether they’re dead or alive and I believe we always should. 

Light represents my life in so many other different ways, such as the literal sun, which I love; spending my time at the beach and outdoors, and also metaphorically speaking, the light that my loved ones bring me. I’ve always felt so comfortable around my close friends and family and it’s just being around them that makes me happy. Even if there are so many things going on, life feels better when around the people you have true fun with. Your friends, your family, your pets. Really just anyone that brings you light. My friendship group is made up of new and old friends, some that have known me since I was 2 and some since I started High School, but we all have the fact that we love laughing and hanging out together in common, and it is this light that people bring to those they love that I want to focus on today. 

As we grow up and become adults I know that life gets more challenging and we have more responsibility, but I believe that if we remember to focus on moments of light and laughter, these challenges get easier. Obviously there are some things that you can’t control, like the work you have to do but overall, when you focus and get things done, you feel like you can control everything. Just like my bat mitzvah, This whole thing took so long for our family to plan. The decorations, the guest list, the practice, the dress, the list goes on and on, but now that it’s really here, it feels like it's going along so smoothly as if nothing was even planned in the first place. So I want to say thank you to my parents and everyone else involved for all of this hard work and energy.

In life, you work so insanely hard to get through the big and small things that you forget about fun, and then when you have the fun, you forget about the work. All of the responsibilities you’ll have to face turn into all the good, all the fun, all the light. 

Much like life is meant to be, and how I hope my adulthood becomes. Shabbat Shalom