When Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mt.
Everest in 1953, they
achieved a feat never before accomplished by human
beings. The very image of a mountain suggests both aspiration and challenge. We
have reached the apex of the Torah.
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| Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay |
Imagine the Torah—all five books—as Mount Sinai. Genesis
ascends from the ground on one side, ceding turf to Exodus, which
occupies the slopes above it. Deuteronomy rises from the ground on the
other side, and Numbers continues the upward climb. Leviticus
occupies the uppermost slopes, and at the very top is Parshat Kedoshim—the
peak, the pinnacle, the apogee.
וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר. דַּבֵּר אֶל-כָּל-עֲדַת בְּנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ: כִּי קָדוֹשׁ, אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם.
Adonai spoke to Moses, saying: “Speak
to the whole Israelite community and say to them: ‘You shall be holy, for I,
Adonai your God, am holy.’” (Leviticus 19:1-2)
Parshat Kedoshim articulates the paramount goal of Torah: to mold us into a holy
people for whom life is both a gift and a charge. Unlike the summit of Mt.
Everest, this is a mountain we can all scale and each of us can plant a flag on
the peak. Parshat Kedoshim teaches us that we do not live by
ourselves or for ourselves, alone, but rather should strive to make the
welfare of others a high priority. That is why we find in this parashah,
in particular, laws designed to protect the poor, create a civil and safe
society for all, insure open and straight-forward business and social dealings
and an honest and upright judiciary, and set standards for moral interpersonal
relationships.
Given this Torah
portion’s preeminence, isn’t it
curious that the first three mitzvot—articulated succinctly and without
elaboration—concern honoring one’s parents, keeping shabbat, and refraining
from idolatry? Here they are:
אִישׁ אִמּוֹ וְאָבִיו תִּירָאוּ, וְאֶת-שַׁבְּתֹתַי תִּשְׁמֹרוּ: אֲנִי, יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם. ד אַל-תִּפְנוּ, אֶל-הָאֱלִילִם, וֵאלֹהֵי מַסֵּכָה, לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ לָכֶם: אֲנִי, יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם.
You shall each revere your mother and
your father, and keep My sabbaths; I, Adonai, am your God. Do not turn to idols
or make molten gods for yourselves: I, Adonai, am your God. (Leviticus 19:3-4)
Why are these three
the headliners? To answer that question, let’s consider, for a moment, the meaning of holiness. The Maggid of
Mezeritch, Dov Baer Friedman (d. 1772), understood holiness to be life itself.
He quotes midrash Tanna de-bei Eliyahu Zuta which says that holiness
means, “There will be no death in your midst.” This is similar to what King
David said, “I shall not die but live; I will proclaim the deeds of Adonai” (Psalm
118:17). In Or Torah, the Maggid tells us:
The Zohar teaches that any
prayer or word of Torah that does not come forth from the depth of the heart
with reverence and love does not fly upward.[1] Anyone who brings forth a word of
Torah or prayer, heaven forbid, without love and reverence, meaning pure
thought and an understanding heart, is called “dead,” because such a person has
no place in Life, the name Yah, [which refers to the sefirot] Chochmah
(Wisdom) and Binah (Insight),[2] as is known. The dead will not
praise God (Psalm 115:17).
Holiness, the Maggid is telling us, is the
quintessence of life. But “holy” is less an adjective describing a state of
being (as we are, perhaps, accustomed to thinking of the term) than it is a way
of being in the world and the attributes though which one relates to everything
and everybody in the world: Holiness is a deep and abiding attachment to the
Source of Life—to God whose Presence and Reality fills and contains the
universe—which is forged by living a life of reverence and love. That’s a
pretty heady idea for most of us to grasp and keep in mind, day by day, or even
hour by hour. And so the Maggid helps us by identifying the middot (character
attributes) of reverence and love that help us make the connection and hold
onto holiness in our day to day lives. By practicing reverence and love—which
is to say, treating everything and everyone with respect and appreciation—our
prayers, our thoughts, our words, and our Torah all rise to the level of Chochmah
and Binah, the sefirot (emanations) that come directly from God.
Honoring one’s parents, keeping shabbat, and refraining from
idolatry provide the living framework for nurturing these attributes in
ourselves. Let’s consider each, in turn, beginning with honoring one’s parents.
Our Sages taught: there are three
partners in the creation of a human being: the Holy One Blessed be God, the
father, and the mother. When a person honors his father and mother, the Holy
Blessed One says, “I ascribe merit to them as though I had dwelled among them
and they had honored Me.” (BT Kiddushin
30b[3])
The Rabbis understood
that parents are our first model for trying to conceive God. Even more,
honoring one’s parents is both the
most obvious mitzvah and, as the Rabbis note, also the chamur she-b’chamurot—the
hardest of the hard. A child naturally (and properly) strives for independence,
but that often clashes with hakarat ha-tov, the gratitude one owes one’s
parents. Parents often want closeness and connection on their schedule, which
might not synch with a child’s growth pattern and needs, or stage of life. The
relationship between a child and parent involves emotional intimacy and
constancy in an ever-changing relationship—children and parents both grow,
mature, and change in different ways. But if we can succeed in honoring our
parents despite the inherent challenges to our self-image, self-esteem,
personal goals, and independence, we are well on the way to cultivating
reverence and love—indeed we need to have cultivated the middot of
reverence and love to succeed in fulfilling this mitzvah. Additionally, the
Rabbis understood that the family is the basic unit of society. Honoring one’s
parents is the glue that holds the family together, just as families are the
glue that holds a society together.
Shabbat is a gift—a day off! Shabbat is a day of rest on which to
enjoy life, visit with family and friends, eat and pray and study and make
love. Yet keeping shabbat entails preparation and work—a commitment of time and
resources. Ironically, it isn’t easy to carve out shabbat and make it joyous
and meaningful. But it grounds us in community so that our lives are
intertwined with others. If family is the first social unit in which we learn
to function with reverence and love, community (friends and beyond) is the next
social unit in which we make our reverence and love manifest to others.
The prohibition
against idolatry caps the first three mitzvot of Kedoshim,
reminding us that everything we do in life is mediated by our priorities,
whether or not we are conscious of that fact. All our deeds—and especially our
relationships—can be about holiness, or about idolatry depending upon the goals
that motivate them. When we raise our thinking to a conscious level and
approach all that we do through the middot of reverence and love, the
result cannot be idolatry; it must be holiness.
Taken together, the
first three mitzvot of Kedoshim are a primer in living a life of holiness. Easier
or harder than scaling Mt. Everest? But it’s not Everest we need to climb—it’s
Mount Sinai. And these days between Pesach and Shavuot are a great time to take
stock in ourselves, our mountaineering equipment, and our technique. The view
from Sinai is great—the possibility to create holiness 360 degrees around.
© Rabbi Amy
Scheinerman
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| Panorama taken from the peak of "Mt. Sinai" |
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