Visions of Holiness - A Shabbat Message

 

This week’s Torah reading Acharei Mot - Kedoshim deals with the idea of holiness. 

 

Kedoshim Tehiyu, Ki Kadosh Ani Adon-ai Elohechem.

You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God, am Holy (Leviticus 19:2)

 

Yet in truth, the Bible's vision for achieving it differs radically from our own. 

What is the message of holiness that is so often passed off true devekut, or connection with G-d?  If I were to ask you for an image or an example, what might you suggest?

When I ask this question of young people, they often give me an answer based upon our society’s vision.  Older, separate, denying the pleasures of the flesh.  Gurus, personal spiritual guides, etc. Or worse, I hear in their descriptions and visions echoes of the selfishness and the narcissism that has invaded every aspect of American culture. 

Judaism seems to add little to their sense of holiness, or its relevance.  But it should.  Because 2000 years after most if not all of the Priestly obligations of holiness have faded, the personal aspects are still the animating force in Jewish life, and indeed, every attempt to fashion a Judaism that has ignored these aspects has not lasted a generation.

I spent some time this week looking to see how some great thinkers of all faiths explained their approach to holiness:

Stephen F. Winward

Progress in holiness can best be measured not by the length of time we spend in prayer, not by the number of times we go to church, not by the amount of money we contribute to God’s work, not by the range and depth of our knowledge of the Bible, but rather by the quality of our personal relationships.

Dag Hammarskjold

In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.

Kaufmann Kohler, "Jewish Theology"

Holiness is the essence of all moral perfection.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

My call for a spiritual revolution is thus not a call for a religious revolution. Nor is it a reference to a way of life that is somehow other-worldly, still less to something magical or mysterious. Rather, it is a call for a radical re-orientation away from our habitual preoccupation with self towards concern for the wider community of beings with whom we are connected, and for conduct which recognizes others’ interests alongside our own.

 

Long before the faith that any of these distinguished religious and political leaders, with all due respect to them, began their various ministries, the Torah taught the very same principles of holiness simply yet powerfully.  Forgiveness, respect for the sanctity of all life, moderation and sanctification of human sexuality, equal justice, concern for the poor, the widow, the stranger, and the elderly--all framed not in language of virtue or goodness, whose standards are temporal, but rather in the language and rhetoric of law, so that like other concepts, we understand them as values that are to be observed at all times, in all places, and under all conditions. 

Holiness is not to be achieved by separating ourselves from all that is around us in order to serve ourselves, but rather, to experience the goodness and potential with which we have been blessed, while doing what we can to enable others on their life’s journey as well.

 

Shabbat Shalom