Emor

Holidays

I realize that we do not agree on the necessity of ritual laws. They may have lost their significance and usefulness as script or sign language. But their necessity as a unifying bond of our people has not been lost. This unifying bond will, I believe have to be preserved in the plans of Providence as long as polytheism, and religious usurpation are rampant in the world. As long as these tormentors of reason are united against us, genuine theists must also create some kind of unifying bond among themselves lest the others gain the upper hand completely. But of what should this bond consist? Of principles and beliefs? We should then get articles of faith, symbols, doctrinal formulas – all shackling our reason. It is of acts that the bond must consist, and of meaningful acts at that…

Moses Mendelssohn (18^th Century)

In opening up these books and exploring their meaning with other human beings, we join the timeless dialogue about who and what we want to be. Those are the questions that serious Jewish education would have us ask. Our tradition suggests that becoming “Jewishly educated” is not merely becoming familiar with holidays, traditional texts, Jewish philosophy, or culture; it is a matter of bringing these traditions, texts, metaphors, and insights to bear on our modern and timeless struggle to discover who we want to become.

Daniel Gordis (Contemporary)

Now the great question arises: How can man, an earthly creature, made of dust, profane or sanctify God, the source of holiness. Indeed, is not any holiness that he may reach at all merely an “imitation” of Divine holiness, in the spirit of the commandment, “You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy.” What strange commandment is this that enjoins us, who are not holy, to sanctify God’s name? The answer may be found if we distinguish between the essential holiness of God which transcends time and place, unaffected and unchanged by them, and the holiness of His name, i.e., the propagation of human acknowledgement and recognition of His omnipotence and His holiness…The paradoxical function that has been imposed upon us, in which the slave is called upon to crown the King of Kings, in which a mortal ephemeral being is bidden to magnify the eternal Name of God, is echoed in (tradition)…

Nechama Leibowitz (20^th Century)

Holiness is the Jewish answer to the problem of human existence. Mankind has always sought to ascribe some metaphysical meaning to physical life, feeling that if man is not somehow more than human, he is less than human. Thus attempts to transcend this temporal life through art, eros, religion and immortality. Judaism taught that it is holiness that can add this extra dimension to our lives, not by escaping from life, but rather by striving to “be holy” in this world and in this life. Many of the laws spelled out in the Torah combine together to serve as a practical day-to-day manual on how to live a life of holiness, for (everyone)…

Pinchas Peli (20^th Century)