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The Kedusha Secret

Parashas Kedoshim, Sefer VaYikra

Parashas Kedoshim opens up with the quintessential Jewish maxim, be holy. Sounds good. Sounds religious:

“Hashem spoke to Moshe (Moses), saying: Speak to the entire assembly of the Children of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for holy am I, Hashem, your G-d.” (VaYikra-Leviticus 19:1-2)

But then the examples start flowing in:

“You shall not steal, you shall not deny falsely, and you shall not lie one man to his fellow… You shall not cheat your fellow…a worker’s wage shall not remain with you overnight until morning… You shall not curse the deaf, and you shall not place a stumbling block before the blind… With righteousness shall you judge your fellow… You shall not be gossipmonger among your people, you shall not stand aside while your fellow’s blood is shed… You shall not hate your brother in your heart… You shall not take revenge and you shall not bear a grudge against the members of your people…” (ibid 11-18)

All culminating in the famous verse beseeching us to “love your fellow as yourself” (ibid).

Holiness in Torah means things like paying workers on time and avoiding gossip. But it’s kind of funny. Why are there no Jewish ashrams or convents? You would think it would be easier to avoid gossip on a mountaintop than in a busy office.

The answer is that it would be easier. And it would entirely miss the point.

Getting Away From It All

Today Yitzchak Fanger is a rabbi wearing a suit and a black fedora. A few years ago, though, he looked a little different. They didn’t wear suits in the Dalai Lama’s ashram. Think long orange robes, clean shaven heads, and wooden necklaces instead. His months-long speech fast in a solitary hut in the backwater woods of Northern India broke when he suddenly started blurting out the Hebrew Torah verses he had last heard at his own bar mitzvah decades earlier. No one was more shocked than he was.

It took several more strangely Judaic wake-up calls, including a close brush with death, before Yitzchak hopped a plane back to Israel. He was sitting in an Arachim class the next day.

Parashas Kedoshim deals with what it means to be kadosh. But our “holy” is not like anyone else’s “holy”. If Hashem wanted us to build wooden huts and get away from it all, He would tell us as much. Instead, He tells us to avoid lying and gossiping and withholding salaries. Why? Because He expects us to contend with these challenges.

Jewish holiness means facing the water cooler and winning – no gossip. Sure, it’s easier to avoid hurting your wife’s feelings if you don’t have a wife, but Torah calls marriage kidushin – “to make holy”. Small children are so loud and distracting that my friend the former world-traveling yoga instructor, now Jerusalemite ultra-orthodox Jew and busy mother, sometimes feels like tearing her hair out for want of a little vipassana. But Torah extols again and again the holiness of the Jewish home and family.

If running away to a mountaintop would be missing the point, what is the point? If attaining kedusha means changing diapers then what is this thing called kedusha anyway?

G-d’s Blackberry

The answer to the mysterious definition of the word kedusha is hidden in the very verse commanding it: “You shall be holy, for holy am I.”  

Holy am I: It’s easy to gloss over that one. Sure G-d is holy. But if you stop and think about it for a minute, you crack the code: to figure out what “holy” looks like, just watch G-d. All we need is a copy of G-d’s schedule. What’s on His blackberry?

Good thing He synced us everything at Sinai. Our sages explain, “Just as He is merciful, so you be merciful. Just as He is gracious, so you be gracious.” In His love-letter to the universe, G-d explains that no matter what events may look or feel like on the surface, He is always making things happen for our benefit.

Just to illustrate the point, you know the question, “What do you get the guy who has everything?” Well, what about a Being Who is infinite, omnipotent, and omnipresent? What do you get Him? Needless to say that He doesn’t need anything. He created the concept of “need”. To say that He’s got it all in His pocket would just be another one of those terrifically absurd understatements you can’t help falling into every time you try to talk about Him. But multiply it by a power of infinity and you’re going in the right direction.

G-d doesn’t need anything. All He “wants” is the opportunity to give. And that was precisely why He made you. (And the rest of the world.) His schedule? He spends all day, every day, taking care of us.

If you wanted to choreograph a dance expressing the idea “You shall be holy, for holy am I,” it would probably look like “You shall not steal… You shall not cheat your fellow…a worker’s wage shall not remain with you overnight until morning…” because you’re busy getting down to business with “love your fellow as yourself”.

To a Jew, real life is exactly what holiness looks like. Real life lived like G-d.

Love is a Verb

Rabbi Leib Kelemen explains, “Closeness in the physical world is measured by inches. Closeness in the spiritual world is measured by similarity.” The more similar to G-d you become, the closer you grow to Him.

Coming close to G-d just doesn’t happen by spending your life alone on a mountaintop. It may feel spiritual, but real spirituality is in the diaper changing, in the taking care of others. Love lived as a verb. Strange but true.

It’s not that religious Jews go to work, and since we happen to be going to work anyway, Torah teaches us how to enhance the experience. If He had said He wanted us to go hang out in pretzel position all day, we’d be there.

Rather, Torah goes ahead and turns the tables on everything. Turns out that spiritual materialism – gimme, gimme, gimme in a spiritual sense – is exactly the same as physical materialism. Neither is really about coming close to Him. Both are all about the smallest and most selfish version of a person.

We face the challenges of the workplace in order to take care of our families – like Hashem. We confront the potential quicksand of physical life in order to transform our relationship with it from one of self-absorption to one of joyous altruism – like Hashem. We get married and have children not because of the good feelings these people give us but because we have chosen to dedicate our lives to giving to them – like Hashem.

If Torah is G-d’s curriculum for us, then the world is our workbook. Every object and moment is a tool, a key.

But to unlock the kedusha you don’t have to travel to India or become an ascetic. Sometimes the most unexpected hiding place is the one that is the most obvious. The big secret about kedusha is that it is right in front of you all the time. In potential, that is. All it takes is your willingness to try to trust Him, serve Him, connect with Him, emulate Him...

After all, we are never lost. He’s been here all along. He’s here right now. Right here.

Based on Parasha U’Pishra by Rabbi Moshe Grylak

Written for http://www.arachimusa.org/

Why I Started This Blog

Pet peeve: lumping Judaism together with a whole bunch of dogma that has nothing to do with it at all. It’s so hard not to do for the simple reason that we speak English. Our entire web of associations takes place in the context of our language and culture. When you hear the word “holiness”, you might have any number of associations ranging from solemn-looking old men walking slowly down a thin corridor in a room glutted with incense to singing at the top of your lungs in a chorus of off-key ten-year-olds. Could be. Could be something else. I’m just saying that where you are from, culturally and socially, creates your way of understanding the world.

It is simple to say but really not so easy to fully understand: Judaism is not like anything else. Especially not the culture and perspectives represented by the English language. Because Judaism is so unique, translations play smoke-and-mirror tricks at best and usually, at worst, are completely misleading. That’s why one of the fast days Jews are commanded to observe once a year is Asara B’Teves. It commemorates the day that the Torah was first translated. It so happened that the first time the Torah was translated, it was translated into Greek. But it didn’t really matter what language it was straight-jacketed into. The point was that the fulcrum, the marrow, the simple and utterly irreplaceable truth of what Torah was shattered.

Of course, the seventy rabbis whom the Greeks had holed up, each in individual solitary confinement, to go through with the translation project did produce the exact same Greek wording for the entire text. What do they say? Great minds think alike? Maybe. In this case, it was more like great minds take the same precautions.

Because their translation of the Torah wasn’t a full translation or a comprehensive translation or even what we mean when we say an authoritative translation, in the sense that when you read it you become an authority.

Rather, it was a tremendously careful translation that glossed over as many points as were necessary to avoid at least the grossest misconceptions that the foreign wording could have fallen into. It took a living, breathing, white dove, alive and glorious in flight against a pristine crystal blue sky, and turned it into a cartoon. Even worse – a stick figure. Sure, if you happened to know what a dove looked like you would have been able to decipher what the stick figure represented. But if you didn’t? At least you wouldn’t think it was an elephant. Hopefully.

We fast, we mourn that day, because even as much as the rabbis heroically tried to avoid the most blatant misconceptions, nonetheless misconceptions became almost inevitable. And today they are rife. If you don’t study Torah from a living, breathing, authentic representative of the living tradition, then you have never seen the dove. I promise you. Again, it’s simple but true: Judaism is not like anything else.

I want to explain to the world that Judaism – real Torah, the Torah that Rav Elyashiv practices, the Torah that we kept as we wandered through the Sinai desert following a pillar of fire three thousand-odd years ago – doesn’t discriminate against women, doesn’t participate in the universalism-versus-individualism conflict, doesn’t believe in an angry god. I want to take apart the ideas, the words, that lead people to believe that by covering my hair I am denying my right to – what? Freedom? Individuality? Social value?

I want to take the words apart like a puzzle, give the world a breath of fresh air on what Torah really has to say, the inside look, the perspective of a person who has learned Hebrew not from Ben Yehuda, whose so-called Hebrew is for the most part really just a translated English, but from people who actually learn the Book. Who know the Book in their skin. In their lives. In their relationships. In how and who and what they are.

I want to become one of those people and, like them, like my teachers, shine that clarity and simplicity and uniqueness to everyone I am privileged to connect with. And, yeah, I’m giving it a shot.

True Romance

Parashas Achrey Mos, Sefer VaYikra

How do you know if somebody really loves you? Because you don’t have to say a thing and he just knows what you need? “It’s like magic, it’s amazing, it’s like we have some sort of a spiritual bond…”

Right?

Not so much.

Look at it this way. Governments enlist laws to make people do things that they otherwise would not do. I’m talking basics here: Respecting public property. Throwing garbage in garbage cans instead of littering up the park. Avoiding things like theft, violence, and murder. Waiting until pedestrians are done crossing the street.

Just visit Manhattan at rush hour to find out why laws like these were enacted. People have to be legally forced to be nice. What we usually count for virtue, though, is when people do nice things like that on their own accord. You helped the old lady cross the street without being exhorted or paid to do it? Ka-ching! One up for the moral compass. You win. Socially, that is.

It works for cities and most of us think it works for relationships. We judge the virtuous in our spouses the same way we judge the virtuous in society at large. Really good guys take out the trash without having to be nagged, oops, I mean asked, to do it, right?

Insert stereotypically nasal female voice here: “If I have to aaaask you to do it, it’s not really coming from your heaaaart.” Where’s the magic?

The old yarn about women expecting men to read their minds is getting a little bit old – it’s practically biblical – but we can roll our eyes and groan from now until the cows come home. It won’t change the fact that this perspective seems to be hardwired into a majority of women’s (and, shh, probably also men’s) brains. Most of us believe that real love is the stuff that gets done without being asked for.

Which is precisely why the Torah’s stance on this seems a little off-kilter: “Greater is the one who is commanded and does than one who is not commanded and does.” (Talmud Baba Kama 87a)

Picture this strange statement in romantic comedy terms: In scene one, Harry brings Sally roses without being asked and Sally squeezes out a grateful, yet fairly nonplussed level of grin. Sure it’s nice, but no big deal. In scene two, Sally asks Harry to bring her roses, Harry goes ahead and does it, and Sally is thrilled! Cue the violins! Crescendo!

Sound realistic?

Not for Hollywood. But maybe for real life.

Welcome to the Real World, Enjoy Your Stay

It comes as a hard-hitting surprise to most of us when, by hook or by crook, somewhere along the line life introduces us to the fact that other people really are different than we are. Making bad jokes about gender differences is easy. It doesn’t penetrate at all. Only once we get married and let our respective hair down does it usually begin to hit: She/he is not like me!

Try to explain this to the newly engaged and they just grin at you with those characteristically glazed eyes murmuring assenting burbles, all the while blissfully picturing the fun they’ll have with Significant Other “working out” and “talking about” all the exciting, adorable little “differences” they have been told that they will discover. Yes. Let them dream. And give them about two weeks after the wedding to come back to you looking bewildered.

Every gender is unique, but it gets even worse than that (or better, depending on your perspective), because every human being is unique even more so. You cannot put your spouse in your pocket any more than you can stand up right this second and dictate to me the anatomy of a skunk.

I mean, if you think you might have to spend a little while learning a thing or two before you could drop and give me twenty about how to dissect a cartoonish black and white rodent, you just can’t begin to imagine how much more learning you would need to do to attain a mastery of what your spouse is really like.

Every human being is gloriously complex and layered and mysterious and frankly incredible. Much more than a skunk! Even the fairly straightforward-seeming ones would take more than a lifetime to fully understand. There’s just so much going on there. We aren’t called “created in the image of G-d” for nothing. You think G-d is that simple?

You Are Not the Prototype of the Human Race

Nonetheless, most of us go around projecting and assuming that other people think or at least feel the same way we do near constantly. We’re particularly confident that we have our spouses in our pockets. Because we assume that they think the way we do, we expect our needs and wants to be obvious.

“But don’t you know…”

“Of course you knew.”

“Oh yeah right you didn’t know…”

Because we assume that he/she thinks exactly the way we do, we assume that we understand him/her perfectly, too. No need for all that messy communication business. Romantic, right?

Again, not so much.

Thinking that your spouse can read your mind – or thinking that you can read his – is basically assuming that you are the prototype for the human race. Actually, you’re not. (Sorry.)

But don’t feel bad – it’s really quite difficult to remember all this on a moment to moment basis. As mentioned before, it takes a good few years of life to begin to grasp quite how different people are from one another in how they think, how they process emotion, in their use of language, and in so many other ways. It’s quite shocking. Getting to know another person is like walking to the end of the known universe, finding a little red door, turning the knob and walking through into an alternate reality. You just don’t know what is behind that door.

In fact, if this article even makes sense to you so far at all, you’re way ahead of the game. Just realizing there is a door is a massive first step. A lot of people don’t make it that far and end up living very lonely, confused, frustrated lives. They feel like other people are disappointing them, but what they are really being betrayed by are their misplaced expectations and closed minds.

Opening The Door

But back to our romantic comedy. Consider Sally’s experience in scene two. When Sally asks Harry to bring her roses, Sally opens herself up to rejection. She opens herself up to being refused, or even worse, overlooked. By sharing her needs with Harry, Sally makes herself vulnerable. That means that when Harry comes through for her, it isn’t just another momentary trinket of affection passing in the laugh-track-speckled wind. It lands. It hits home, smack in the spot in Sally’s heart where she had risked trusting him.

It’s when you put yourself on the line that the other person’s caring for you really sinks in.

We’re all closed-circuit systems. It takes effort to break out of our own loop. But when we communicate to another person what we want, think, need, feel, we are inviting them in. When we listen to what another person wants, thinks, needs, feels, we are connecting with them.

Sally reaches out of her world and makes herself vulnerable enough to give Harry a way in. Harry reaches out of his world to take in the way Sally thinks, the way Sally sees things, the way Sally wants it, and makes that a reality. Two very different people connect, not by chance, but because each went to the effort of opening up and making contact with the other person’s world. That’s love. That’s romance.

Our sages throw in another legitimate explanation of this issue: People don’t like being told what to do. Just think about it. There’s a reason why it feels so good to get behind the iconoclastically American value of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Because they’re your bootstraps, and no one is going to be able to tell you what to do, so help you. As human beings, and maybe especially as Jews, we don’t really like to submit to authority. We don’t really like to submit to anything, actually. A stiff necked people...

Even when I do something nice for another person, if I am doing it because I think it is a good idea, I still retain authority. However, when I do it because the other person asked me to, I have given the reins over to them. To put it plainly, are you getting her flowers because you want flowers or are you getting her flowers because she wants flowers?

G-d’s commandments in the Torah give us the opportunity to give Him flowers because He wants flowers. How do we know? Because He told us so. He opened up and put Himself on the line. And that’s pretty powerful.

Letting Us In

Now we see the Talmud’s statement in an entirely new light. Through the commandments in His Torah, G-d is letting us in. They are our opportunity to connect with His world, the way He wants it. As in all relationships, breaking out of our closed-circuit shells and connecting with the Other means listening to Him and trying things His way. It’s not hard. It’s a thrill.

This week, Parashas Achrey Mos lists dozens of commandments ending in the words “I am Hashem” not because He is a megalomaniac but because He is saying, “Hey, guys. This is really Me. I am being real with you here.”

The word mitzvah, commandment, is related to the word tzavta, connection. The commandments are His way of saying, “I love you. I want you. I trust you.”

And when we fulfill them we are responding back in kind. How’s that for true romance?

It takes communication. It takes being aware that the other person (or G-d) is, in fact, other. It takes not only passively respecting but actively loving and honoring those differences. It goes way, way beyond cute accidental encounters, violins, and laugh tracks. And, if we decide to live up to it, it can be the story of our lives. Our lives, plural. I think you know Who I mean.

Based on http://www.lehavin.co.il/Index.asp?ArticleID=598&CategoryID=249&Page=1
Written for www.ArachimUSA.org