Acharei Mot – Kedoshim
You shall be holy for I, the Lord am holy.
In Hebrew, the original meaning of the word “holy” is
“set apart.” At the outset, God’s
working is the quiet, almost inaudible work of first beginning; and there, for
the time being, everything remains just as it is…God is the Holy One who sets
himself apart, and everywhere He sets something apart, effecting something
unheard of, election, holiness…Without the revealed miracles of this day, the
hidden miracles of everyday would be invisible, invisible at least as
miracles…The question as to why miracles do not come to pass “today” as they
used to “once” upon a time,” is simply stupid.
Miracles never “came to pass” anyway.
The atmosphere of the past blights all miracles. The Bible itself explains the miracle of the
Franz Rosenzweig (20th
Century)
Eternity needs no holiness; it is man’s desires and wishes, his needful temporal life that alone requires
sanctification. Thus the “holy land” is
not the never-never land of the Jew’s longing that is to separate him from all
these worldly attachment to any land, but the land that because it is the land
of Jews is the most conducive place on earth for the sanctification of the life
of an entire people.
Eliezer Berkovits
(Contemporary)
Holiness, in the religious sense…is nothing but halakhic observance; the specific intentional acts
dedicated to the service of God. Any
other deed – whether regarded as good or bad, whether material or spiritual –
that a man may perform in his own interest or for the
satisfaction of a human need is profane.
Sacred and profane are fundamental religious categories. Within institutional religion…the distinction
between them is an essential aspect of religious perception…the idea of
holiness as an immanent property of certain things – persons, locations,
institutions, objects, or events – is a magical mystical concept which smacks
of idolatry…
Yishayahu
Leibowitz (20th Century)
Where are the Jewish saints? In other communions, you have a long list of
saints, Where are the Jewish saints?
Jewish saints do not form a sect apart.
You find them in the very midst of the community. They are not raised on a special pedestal,
because a man who works as a doctor can be a saint, a man who works as a
laborer can be a saint. It is sometimes
possible even to achieve a degree of holiness in the pulpit – surprising as
that may be.
Solomon Schechter (20th Century)
We have here an approach to a Jewish sense of the path
toward holiness. It is a march, it is a walking on the way. We never have the smugness to say we have arrived, nor the equal smugness of saying the ideal is
not achievable. Rather we are asked to
see ourselves on a pilgrimage. That is
what it means to part of the system of halakhah. It means always to be on the way…Ritual
involves the same progress…Without fixed rules defining the ritual there would
be no ritual at all. Yet if one just
lingers on the level of technical proficiency then one has left off the
religious life. We’ve all met such
observant types, adept at religious ritual, who know the right thing to do so
well that they always make you feel inferior…they’ve stopped understanding
holiness as a process of transformation and are satisfied to understand Judaism
as law…The demand of holiness is to enter into the ritual so that it becomes a
moment when the heart is effected…It would be wrong to see the demand of
Judaism as being only legalistic…and equally wrong to see it as only a matter
of the promptings of one’s heart…We must first submit to a command and move
towards the transformation that can take place within us.
Edward Feld (Contemporary)
Holiness is active.
While its potential is present in all human beings, the requirements for
actually being holy involve specific deeds and responses…There is no
distinction between what we might consider to be “ritual” and “ethical”
categories of behavior…Holiness happens on an individual level. While many of the commandments in this parsha
are addressed to the people in the plural, the actual nature of what is being
commanded demands fulfillment on an individual basis. It is only as individuals that we can have an
appropriate relationship with our parents…Details are important. Thus, the Torah discusses such ostensibly
trivial matters as the mixing of wool and linen in clothing and names each of
the specific weights which must be observed justly…
T. Drorah Setel (Contemporary)