April 24th: Acharay Mot and Kedoshim
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
When I was a boy, my Mom would occasionally run to the grocery store before dinner—calling out as she went through the door, “Don’t eat any cookies!”
The Apostle Paul (of Christianity) had a lot to say about the problems with rules and laws. By reminding you of what not to do, they introduce temptations and often lead to sin. As a child, I had not yet studied Antinomianism, but I think I understood something of it. Before my Mother gave her command, I might not have been thinking about cookies at all. However, her instructions brought my eternal hunger front and center.
My brother and I were then faced with another ancient and even Biblical situation. When my Mother was in the car or at the grocery store, was she also still at home? By that I mean, was her influence strong enough to dissuade our ravenous hunger? Could she have been both at-home and not-at-home at the same time?
Both of these philosophical issues come to the fore in our Torah portion. Known as the Holiness Code, Chapter 19 of Leviticus begins with God’s invocation of holiness, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy,” and continues with a list of laws and rules.
Keep the Sabbath, honor your parents, worship only God and be respectful about it.
Share your bounty with the poor, do not steal or deal falsely or tell lies.
Do not swear falsely by God’s Name. Pay your employees.
Do not curse the deaf or trip the blind.
Be righteous in judgment—showing fairness to both poor and rich.
Do not be a gossip; do not hold grudges. Love your neighbor as yourself.
In practical terms, these mitzvot tell us how to be holy—providing a working definition of Kedushah/Holiness.
Though Holiness is a word we all know, most of us have difficulty defining it without using equally difficult-to-define terms—words like Sacred or Sanctity. Kodesh/Holy can mean special, but more than just the usual specialness. The earliest Hebrew usages involve marriage ceremonies—where the groom declares the bride kedushin, separated from all other women in the world. Kedushin is still the Hebrew term for marriage. Some liken Kodesh to things set aside for religious celebration—like special Shabbos Clothes for Jews and Sunday-Go-to-Meeting Clothes for early American Christians. These outfits are special not just because they are fancy but also because they are set aside (separate) for religious purposes.
Of course, clothes are not the only things set aside for religious purposes. In Exodus 19, we find that we are set aside—we, God’s Chosen People: “You shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples. Indeed, all the earth is Mine, but you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” The exact meaning of this honor is unclear. Does it mean that we are better than everyone else? Or that we are the only ones willing to take on God’s covenant? Or that we are chosen for a task—and not as a sign of special approval? In any event, this double assignment from God seems to involve holy/priestly duties. Jewish Literature is full of mitzvot and their attendant behaviors, but the overarching goal of Kedushah/Holiness remains ambiguous.
Rabbi Marcia Prager of Philadelphia explores this ambiguity in her wonderful book, The Path of Blessing, and explores the nuances of separateness and differentness. If God is Kadosh—Holy or separate or different, and God is the ultimate, then God’s specialness or separateness would be more special than any other in the cosmos. Since every other thing is either present or not present, Rabbi Prager suggests that God’s ultimate specialness and separation is that God could be both here and not here, both present and not present at the same time.
Theology tells us that God is omnipresent—present everywhere all the time, but there are certainly times of evil or abandonment when God seems to be shut out or not present. In such times, God’s absence calls out for remedy, and the challenge is to invoke God—to somehow get God manifested. This is our job, explains Rabbi Prager: we can bring God into godless moments. We can bring forth God in times and places where the Divine seems absent.
We are all aware of the terrible stories—often from the Holocaust but from far too many other times—when evil and cruelty triumph, and pain and suffering prevail. Horrible and godless acts have too often devoured humanity, but we have also heard stories where, even in the darkest of moments, a human steps forward and does something kind, good, or godly. These acts may be small, but metaphysically they bring light into the darkness—and manifest God in a godless place. (Sometimes, these acts are not small, and great blessings can be brought to the world.)
Rabbi Prager sees this elusive quality of Kedushah as God’s ultimate separateness. God is present everywhere, but until we bring godliness to bear, it is as though God is absent. God is Holy, but we need to be Holy and bring God’s Presence into the world.
This gets us back to Paul who is often interpreted as being against the Law—against the path of Torah. As with many historical figures, there are a lot of conflicting statements and interpretations, and Christianity debates these issues perennially. However, even though the Law—meaning the rules of behavior that the Torah and every other religious tradition insist are mandated by God—can remind us of temptations and off-the-path behaviors, the fact is that we need guidance. We need advice and specific instructions so that we can know how to live good lives. Even if we reduce all the mitzvot to Leviticus 19.18, “Ýou shall love your neighbor as yourself,” we still have a lot to contemplate about the specifics this mitzvah entails.
Back to our initial childhood quandary: When my Mother went to the grocery store, was her presence still at home? Perhaps an answer comes from Martin Buber’s Ten Rungs, in an exchange between the Rabbi of Sadagora and his Hasidim: “You can learn from everything,” the rabbi of Sadagora once said to his hasidim. “Everything can teach us something, and not only everything God has created. What man has made has also something to teach us.” “What can we learn from a train?” one hasid asked dubiously, “That because of one second one can miss everything.” “And from the telegraph?” “That every word is counted and charged.” “And the telephone?” “That what we say here is heard there.”