Light Divine, a prayer on the quest for illumination in apparent darkness (CCAR 1923)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Unknown and Central Conference of American Rabbis [CCAR]

Shared on:

5 March 2026 under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication

Categories:

Tags:

20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., divine light, English vernacular prayer, illuminatus, Inner light, Seasonal Affective Disorder, teḥinot in English

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	Many say: ‘Oh that we could see some good.’ Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us. (Psalms 4:7)
	The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalms 27:1)
	The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. (Isaiah 9:1)
	O send out Thy light and Thy truth, let them lead me. (Psalm 43:3)
	For with Thee is the fountain of life; in Thy light do we see light. (Psalms 86:10)
	Rabbi Alexandrai uttered this prayer: May it be Thy will, O Lord our God, to set us in a place of light and not of darkness; suffer not our hearts to languish, nor gloom to enshroud our eyes. (Berakhot 17a.2)
	Saith the Holy One, praised be He: “Let My light be in thy hand, and thy light shall be in Mine.” The light of the Lord is His divine law, for it saith: ‘The commandment is a lamp and the teaching is a light’ (Proverbs 6:23). When a man performeth a righteous deed, it is as if he kindles a light before the Lord. Through his righteousness man giveth life unto his soul. For just as one candle can kindle a thousand lights and its own light remain undiminished, so will God preserve from harm those who perform His commandments. (adapted from Shemot Rabba 36.8)
	Light is symbolic of knowledge; it is also symbolic of joy. Our wisdom and our happiness are the light of our life. But contrasted with the fitful light of worldly knowledge, and the feeble glow of the joy founded on creature comforts and gratifications, there shines, in steady light, the knowledge which grows from righteousness and the radiant joy of God’s nearness— the light divine. Earthly knowledge is an uncertain guide. It soon discovers its own limitations and recoils in disappointment and despair from mysteries it cannot penetrate. In such ‘wisdom is much vexation.’ Material joys are precarious. The mind that is fed upon them alone, must inevitably undergo distraction and despair when earthly pleasures are impaired or withdrawn. Earthly knowledge and earthly joys, are but partial blessings. They lessen our darkness, but are too feeble to light our way into eternity.
	We seek the light divine to find a knowledge that cannot fail. When God enters our hearts, mysteries cease. Nature gains a Master and history a goal. The past brings a lesson, and the future a hope. God sends forth His light and His truth to lead us.
	We seek the light divine, to find joy that cannot fade. When the Lord is our strength and our song, earthly joys grow calm, and even adversity loses its bitterness. Prosperity brings the satisfactions of duty, and poverty the consolations of fortitude.
	We may not reject earthly wisdom or material joy. We must acquire their light and ennoble it. We must go from the knowledge of earthly things to the knowledge of their Creator, and from earthly happiness to joy in the Lord. If we seek His presence continually, the night will pass, and in the dawn, the Lord will be our light and our salvation.
	In Thy light, O Lord, do we seek light. When we stray from Thee we grope in darkness. Therefore, O Light Divine, do Thou shine into our hearts. Send forth Thy light to lead us. Teach us how to rest in Thee. Teach us how to rejoice in Thee. Enlighten our spirit that we may see that Thou and Thou only canst be our unalloyed good. Deliver us from the illusion that aught except Thee can give us true contentment. Grant that all our joys be hallowed by the sense of Thy presence; so that our knowledge lead us to the knowledge of Thee. Amen.

“Light Divine” is the twentieth prayer found in ברכה ותהלה Blessing and Praise: A Book of Meditations and Prayers for Individual and Home Devotion (CCAR 1923), pp. 71-73. Unfortunately, we do not yet know of a resource providing clear attribution of authorship for any of the prayers in this volume. Adjacent to the theme shared in this prayer is the concept of the divine spark, or scintillula, and the pintele yid — each elaborated upon and related to one another in Rabbi Louis Jacobs’s “The Doctrine of the ‘Divine Spark’ in Man in Jewish Sources” Studies in Rationalism, Judaism and Universalism, ed. Raphael Loewe (Humanities: 1966) 87-114.

Source(s)

Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer transcriber for the Open Siddur Project. If you find any mistakes in his transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeni שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also translates prayers and contributes his own original work besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project and its website, opensiddur.org.)

Unknown

Sometimes the best we can do in attributing a historical work is to indicate the period and place it was written, the first prayer book it may have been printed in, or the archival collection in which the manuscript was found. We invite the public to help to attribute all works to their original composers. If you know something not mentioned in the commentary offered, please leave a comment or contact us.

Central Conference of American Rabbis [CCAR]

The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), founded in 1889 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, is the principal organization of Reform rabbis in the United States and Canada.

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=66426

Associated Image:

A unique supergiant star (potw2531a) (credit: ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. Siebert et al., license: CC BY-SA)

(This image is set to automatically show as the "featured image" in shared links on social media.)

Terms of Use: Be a mentsch (a conscientious, considerate person) and adhere to the following guidelines:

Properly attribute the work to Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Unknown and Central Conference of American Rabbis [CCAR].
Clearly indicate the date you accessed the work and in what ways, if any, you modified it. (If you have adapted the work, let us know so that the contributor might consider endorsing your revision.)
Provide the stable link to this resource: <https://opensiddur.org/?p=66426>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication. (To redistribute or remix this work in any format, modified or unmodified, you must refer to the terms of the license under which the work is shared.)

Additional Notes:

The views expressed in this work represent the views of their creator(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Open Siddur Project's developers, its diverse community of volunteer contributors, or its institutional partners.
We strongly advise against printing sacred texts and art containing divine names as these copies must be regarded with reverence, complicating their casual treatment and disposal.
If you must dispose of a printed sacred text (one containing Divine Names), please locate the closest genizah (often established by a synagogue) and contact its custodians for further instructions. We also recommend using Morah Yehudis Fishman's Prayer for Adding a Work to the Genizah.

Support this work: The Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-commercial, non-denominational, non-prescriptive, gratis & libre Open Access archive of contemplative praxes, liturgical readings, and Jewish prayer literature (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure) composed in every era, region, and language Jews have ever prayed. Our goal is to provide a platform for sharing open-source resources, tools, and content for individuals and communities crafting their own prayerbook (siddur). Through this we hope to empower personal autonomy, preserve customs, and foster creativity in religious culture.

ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו׃ (תהלים צ:יז) · "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." (Psalms 90:17)

Light Divine, a prayer on the quest for illumination in apparent darkness (CCAR 1923)

Source(s)

Read a comment / Leave a comment (moderated)

Leave a Reply Cancel reply