(((I Will Outlive)))

There is something so sacred about the velvety darkness that is so often deeply underappreciated.

Depicting holiness is often a very bright affair, with blinding lights, white marble, ethereal rays of sun filtering through the clouds, stark white robes that almost seem to glow from within, banks of cumulus clouds piled in a froth against a blazing blue sky, reminding us of the sapphire throne of God.

But how much more sacred is the holy dark?

If God is infinite, what better way to depict or understand that infinity than the endless dark of the universe? Earth, when properly understood in its place in the cosmos, is a bright speck in vast sea of unending black.

Have you ever felt folded up in the dark? Swaddled like an infant, wrapped in its all-encompassing embrace? Dark is restful, dark is peace. Dark is all things hidden and in the safety of that dark, released. Have you ever felt freer to express yourself than when sitting under the night sky with a loved one?

The liturgy speaks of "Tachat Kanfei ha-Shechinah," being brought under the wings of the Divine Presence. I like to imagine this as being held safe under the vast drape of the night sky. As I look up, I see just a fraction - an infinitesimal glimpse - of the Divine Presence in all Her glory, this small bit revealed to us, just like the revelation of Torah is a tiny taste of the infinite creation of the Infinite Creator.

My best prayers are whispered into the quietude of the dark, without the noise and visual distraction of the day. In the silence of the restful dark, one can almost hear the still, small voice speaking straight to your soul.

Even when davening Shacharit to the rising sun, I take a moment during the Amidah to cover my head beneath my tallis, a shadow falls across my siddur, and I imagine the soft underside of my tallit to be cover in the pinprick lights of a million tiny stars.

Remember, darkness came first.

"When G-d begain to create heaven and earth - the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from G-d sweeping over the water - G-d said 'Let there be light'; and there was light."

(Genesis 1: 1-3, Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures, the New JPS Translation, 1998.)

The "day" runs from sunset to sunset (or, if we're being strict, when three stars are visible from when three stars are visible).

Darkness is what comes first.

Darkness is holy, perhaps holier than light, as darkness is the base against which we act.

And yet somehow, the thought of a thousand points of light, a million points of light spilling out from under a tallit, slowly illuminating the darkness with the word of G-d, moves me.

Ma'ariv, being the first set of prayers spoken after sundown, demonstrate the primacy of the sacred darkness. Yes, we start our days with the darkness, with the poetry of this prayer, with rolling light away from darkness.

And here, in the dark, we are made new.