May 6/06 - Shabbat Acharei Mot / Kedoshim

Commentary by Rabbi Alan Green

“And God spoke to Moses, saying: ‘Speak to the entire congregation of the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘You shall be holy, because I, the Lord Your God, am holy.’” Leviticus 19:1-2

As we read these challenging words, we might well conclude that God isn’t being very fair here. We should be holy, because God is holy? It’s easy for God to be holy. The prophet Isaiah even tells us that “He who abides in eternity—KADOSH (holy) is His name” (57:15). In colloquial English, Isaiah would probably say that “’Holy’ is God’s middle name.” Well and good. But this is hardly the case with God’s frail, flawed human creatures. So, by what right can the all-powerful, holy Master of creation insist that weak human beings should be holy, alongside Him?

The beginning of an answer is found in one of the foundations of Jewish and Western theology: that God created human beings in His image. Perhaps we have become so used to this astonishing statement that it no longer carries the impact that it should. But consider the vast difference between human beings and the Master of creation: He infinite, we infinitesimal; He all-powerful, we powerless; He all-knowing and all-conscious, and we just barely aware.

Yet there is something deep within us that connects to, and directly participates in the life of the Creator. In more contemporary language, we could say that at the depths of our being, we are hard-wired into the flow of the Divine current. It is this Divine life, flowing within us and within creation that makes it possible for human beings to indeed be holy, and in the process, to sanctify the whole world in which we live. How do we go about sanctifying ourselves, and our world? There are two different, opposing answers. But neither invalidates the other. And this is what Rebbe Nachman of Breslav has to say about them: “There are two kinds of spirit, and they are like backward and forward. There is one spirit that a person attains in the course of time. But there is another spirit that overwhelms a person in great abundance, in great haste, swifter than a moment. For this spirit is beyond time, and for this spirit, no time is needed.”

In other words, there is on one hand the painstaking work that a person must do to attain holiness on a daily basis. This is the realm of the Mitzvot—the daily routine of blessings and commandments that keep us on the straight and narrow, and allow us to cultivate the essential habits that slowly, surely promote wholeness and holiness in our lives.

The importance of putting constant effort into this daily spiritual discipline cannot be overemphasized. This is the stable basis upon which our spiritual development proceeds with the greatest possible power and efficiency. As Rabbi Tarfon teaches in Pirkei Avot (2:20), “The day is short; the task is great; the workers, indolent; the reward, bountiful; and the Master, insistent!”

On the other hand, there is another mode of being which, according to Rebbe Nachman, overtakes a person more swiftly than the blink of an eye. This is what Christians often refer to as “the grace of God”—a term which comes straight out of Judaism, as when God tells Moses, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and merciful to whom I will be merciful” (Exodus 33:19). Unfortunately, Divine grace is a reality with which most modern Jews are unfamiliar.

What does it mean for God to be gracious to us? Sometimes God does a favour for us. Sometimes God gives us a wink. Through some coincidence, or through some thought or perception, God subtly but unmistakably reminds us that He’s there. And it happens not because we deserve it, but rather because God, from His side, and for His own reasons, decides in some way, shape, or form that it’s time for our ship to come in. Then we receive an undeserved bounty of bliss and fulfillment—the “bountiful reward” referred to by Rabbi Tarfon above.

However, this phenomenon of undeserved grace doesn’t have to be entirely haphazard. We actually improve our chances for receiving the grace of God by consciously cultivating holiness in our lives. Certainly, we can do this through the practice of the Mitzvot as our tradition has outlined them for us. But there is also a powerful supplementary path that is worth mentioning as well. This is the path of meditation, the path of gaining awareness of our essential “hard-wiring” to the Divine One.

As Rabbi Rami Shapiro writes (“Meditation From The Heart of Judaism”), “Does the Torah say, ‘become holy’?...It says ‘be holy’ (Leviticus 19:2). There is no becoming, no need to change, no sense of time, progress, transformation, or journey.

“Meditation will not make you holy. You are already holy. Meditation does not make you into someone else. Meditation allows you to be who you truly are. Therefore the Psalmist says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46:11). If you would be still, quieting body, heart, and mind, and opening to the greater silence, then you would know that ‘I’—the self that you are this very moment—is a manifestation of God.”

This, ultimately, is the reason why “we can be holy because God is holy.” Who we really are, is nothing more or less than a manifestation of God—the holy Master of creation. When this perception becomes the living reality of our lives, then we will be able to fulfill the ideal of “you shall be holy, for I the Lord Your God am holy” in every impulse of our thought, speech, and action. And what a different world that will be!

Shabbat Shalom.