For five weeks I have spoken about ethics.  So often people tell me, “To be a good Jew means to be a good person.”  I always answer, “That is only part of the story.”  Goodness, morals, ethics are vital for the religious life.  But Judaism, and for that matter, all the great faiths of humanity, are about something more – the quest for holiness.
            One of the greatest chapters of the Bible, Leviticus Chapter 19, begins with the words “You shall be holy for I the Lord God am holy.”  Religion at its best calls on its adherents to seek holiness in day-to-day living.  Holiness includes ethical living, plus much more.  Religion is about a call to holiness, a call that the world needs to hear today.
            I vividly remember an experience from the early days of my rabbinate.  I was invited to deliver the opening invocation at the local public high school graduation (illegal today thanks to a Supreme Court ruling.)  A Catholic priest was invited to deliver the closing benediction.  Throughout the graduation ceremony, the youngsters became more and more unruly.  At one point, one of them even turned a mouse loose on the platform where the dignitaries were sitting.  As the graduation ceremony descended into chaos, the priest turned to me and said, “The trouble today is that young people do not know the difference between the holy and the profane.”
            The priest’s words stuck with me.  Certain occasions are holy.  Certain places are holy.  Certain times are holy.  And certain relationships are holy.  Yet we live in a society that has no sense of the holiness of place, of time, and of relationships.  I have watched youngsters who are visiting our synagogue for a bar mitzvah service behave as if they were visiting a stadium for a sporting event.  When youngsters shout out and try to start a wave during worship services, we have lost the sense of the holy.
            I cannot totally blame young people.  They learn from their parents.  And most parents have lost the sense of the sacred.  There once was a time when a family meal was a sacred occasion – the Jewish Sabbath evening dinner or the Christian Sunday night supper.  The best china was used, people dressed a little nicer, guests were invited over, the family ate in the dining room, no television was blaring during the meal, and children were expected to show up and be on their best behavior.  How many families still have such family meals?  How many have any family sacred occasions?
            What do I mean by holiness?  The Hebrew word kadosh means “set apart,” “elevated,” or “made special.”  We set apart certain occasions, certain days, certain places, and certain relationships, designating them as holy.  In Jewish tradition, we say a prayer every Saturday night called havdalah, meaning “separation.”  We thank God for giving us the wisdom to separate the holy from the profane, the special from the ordinary, the sacred from the secular.   It is through the quest for holiness that we rise above the animal within us, and rather encounter the Godliness within us.  For God is holy.
            Holiness is a difficult concept to teach.  I often give an example when I am speaking to young people.  Suppose that it is kol nidre night, the evening of Yom Kippur, the holiest time in the Jewish calendar.  Most Jews, even those minimally observant, recognize Yom Kippur by fasting, lighting candles, going to synagogue.  I tell the young people, suppose your Jewish neighbor had a group of friends over and was out barbecuing steaks that evening.  How would you react?   Jewish students usually answer that the neighbor was being disrespectful and wrong.  I ask, what is he doing wrong?  Is there anything unethical about having friends over for a barbecue?  The problem is not ethical but holiness.  The neighbor’s actions have marred the holiness of the night.
            We need to rediscover a sense of holiness in our lives.  In a world of 24-7, how do we build holy time?   In a world of dress down and relaxed behavior, how do we build holy space?   In a world where our kids have learned “if it feels good, do it,” how do we build holy occasions?  And perhaps most important, in a world of casual, recreational sex and easy divorce, how do we build holy relationships?   These are the questions I want to explore over the next several weeks.

 

HOLINESS – PART 2

THE QUEST FOR HOLINESS

                        How do we achieve holiness in our lives?  There is a hint in the building of the ancient tabernacle as described in the Bible.  At the center of the tabernacle was a place called “The Holy of Holies.”   It was overlaid with gold and precious metals, and covered by a special, handcrafted curtain.  The key was that The Holy of Holies was not accessible to the public.  Only the High Priest could enter.

                        The idea further developed with the building of the Temple in Jerusalem.  The Holy of Holies became the holiest spot on earth.  (Today many Orthodox Jews consider the entire Temple mount to be off limits, because we no longer know the exact location of the Holy of Holies.   Jews do not want to accidentally tread on the spot.)  Only the High Priest could enter, and then only on the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur.  It was only on that day that the priest pronounced the holiest word in the Hebrew language, God’s sacred name.  In the classic play The Dybbuk, there is a speech how these four great holies come together.  On the holiest day of the year, the holiest man goes to the holiest place to pronounce the holiest word of the Hebrew language.  One false thought at this awesome moment could destroy the entire world. 

                        Notice that holiness is achieved through making something off limits, through prohibitions.   Imagine if the holy Temple were built in our more egalitarian age.  Suppose the Holy of Holies was open to everybody at all times, and everybody was able to know and speak God’s name.  Much of the awesomeness, what Rudolf Otto called “the holy other” would be lost.   If familiarity breeds contempt, perhaps familiarity is the opposite of holiness.  Perhaps the Torah is teaching that in order to give something that sense of importance and weightiness, it cannot become too familiar.  Holiness begins with prohibitions, with making certain things off limits.

                        To demonstrate this idea, allow me to share a memory from my own childhood.  My parents had a rule in our home that no children were allowed in their bedroom.   It was a special place, off limits to us kids.   I remember only a handful of times when I was ever allowed in my parents’ room, mostly when I was sick.  And those moments still stand out in my mind is special.  My wife and I are raising our kids very differently.  Our bedroom is wide open to my kids.  Sometimes I will come home to find one of my children lying in my bed watching a movie on DVD.  We have gained something - a relaxed atmosphere in my home.  But I wonder if we have also lost something – that sense that mom and dad’s room is sacred space.  I love my children, but I fear that they are not growing up with the same sense of holiness that I grew up with.

                        So how do we achieve holiness?   Partially, we achieve it by what we prohibit.  We build a holy space by saying that certain activities are not appropriate in this place.  When the children in our religious school enter our sanctuary, we ask them to behave differently than when they are in other parts of the building.  Boys must put a yarmulke on their head.  We ask youngsters not to eat, drink, or chew gum in the sanctuary.  We forbid shouting and the kind of horseplay that children will often do in other parts of the building.  And when they come to Sabbath services, we ask to dress a little nicer than during the week.  We have these rules, not because we are stuffy and old-fashioned, but because we want the children to feel a certain awe of the place.  (I have had children sit in the sanctuary looking at the holy ark say to me, “Rabbi, does God live here?”   I have been tempted to say in a moment of cynicism, “No, this is His business office.”)

                        A similar question is - how do we make holy time?   How do we make the Sabbath and the important festivals holy?   Again, a big part is what we do not do.  One does not need to be an Orthodox Jew to say, one day a week I will avoid some activity.  It may be shopping or housework or unnecessary driving, or even conducting secular business.  Imagine what a difference it would make in our family life if every family learned to say “no” on one evening a week to any distractions during dinner – television, telephone calls, meetings, etc.  Saying no is not necessarily negative, but can be extremely positive.

                  Perhaps holiness begins when we learn to say no to ourselves.  If you think about it, only humans have that ability to say no to our appetites and our desires.   That is part of how we humans rise above the animals.  We share with the animal world the desire for food, drink, recreation, sex, and many other drives.  But unlike the animal world, only humans can train themselves to say no.  And only humans have the ability to achieve holiness. 

HOLINESS – PART 3

HOLY TIME

            After taking two weeks off for the Passover festival, it is time to return to the idea of holiness.  In particular, in a world where everything is 24-7, where stores never close and “the city never sleeps,” how do we create holy time?  Let us explore the Jewish Sabbath, which can be a paradigm for holy time in all religious traditions.   Ahad HaAm, although a secularist and Zionist, wrote,  “More than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel.”  It was the Sabbath, one day of rest and holiness in seven that marked Jewish life.  The Jewish people lost something deep and valuable when they gave up Sabbath observance.

            How do you create a holy day?  I believe there are two parts to this question.  First, what do we do to make the day special?  And second, what do we avoid doing to keep the day from becoming ordinary?  The Ten Commandments uses two different words for Sabbath observance, “remember” and “guard.”   “Remember” speaks of the things we do.  “Guard” speaks of the things we avoid doing.  According to a Rabbinic Midrash, God spoke the words “remember” and “guard” at the same time so they sounded like one word.  (The first verse of the Friday night hymn Lecha Dodi teaches this.  Shamor v’Zachor b’Dibur Ehad.  “Remember and Guard with one word.”)  They are forever linked.  Holiness is built by what we do and what we avoid doing.

            First, what do we do?   I remember seeing an advertising campaign a number of years ago hosted by the Church of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons.)  The advertising called for a “Family Stay at Home Night.”   One night a week would be dedicated to families eating together, talking, planning some activity together, if so inclined, praying together.  The goal was to strengthen family life.  I sent for the material, including a video on “Family Stay at Home Night.”  They sent it to me, together with a request that a missionary visit me.  I politely turned down the visit.

            I was amazed how close the Mormon view was to our own Jewish view.  The Jewish Sabbath begins with a special family meal on Friday night.  In our home we use our better dishes, often eat in the dining room, and try to invite guests.  We have certain traditional rituals which mark the day as the Sabbath – lighting candles, blessing the wine, blessing children, eating a braided bread hallah, singing songs, and chanting the grace after meal.  The key idea is that family is together.  In a traditional Jewish home there is also a formal meal at Saturday lunch, with many of the same rituals.  And a third festive meal is eaten Saturday afternoon in the synagogue.

            Besides meals, there are numerous activities Jews do on the Sabbath day to make it holy.  Worship services are held, with a particular emphasis on the formal reading and study of a portion of the Torah.  The day is built around rest, including a valuable Saturday afternoon nap.  (Please do not disturb me between 2 and 4 pm.)  Families often take walks or visit the park together.  And of course, as somehow every Hebrew school kid knows, conjugal relations are a double mitzvah on the Jewish Sabbath.  If one does all these activities during the Sabbath days, there would hardly be time to worry about what activities to avoid.

            Equally important is what we avoid doing.  A few weeks ago I wrote, “Notice that holiness is achieved through making something off limits, through prohibitions.”  We make something holy by making certain activities off limits.  The Rabbis of the Talmud listed thirty-nine activities forbidden on the Sabbath.  These included all the detailed steps for growing wheat to bake bread, spinning wool to make clothing, preparing a parchment to write, building a building, or making a fire.  Obviously, these were forms of work in Talmudic times.

            Today many Jews religiously adhere to these traditions, avoiding even such activities as driving a car because burning gasoline creates a fire.  Others Jews are looking for a more modern understanding of Sabbath observance.  I tell people, find some weekly secular activity and see if you can avoid it from Friday night at sunset to Saturday night at nightfall.  Avoid shopping and spending money.  (I recently asked some teens, could we live twenty-four hours without the mall?  They said “no!”)  Avoid laundry.  Cooking.  Paying bills.  Doing homework.  Yard work.  And perhaps most important, can we avoid going about our secular work one day a week?  Are we willing to find some area of our lives and say no to ourselves?

            The goal is holiness.  Long ago the Torah taught, “You shall be holy for I the Lord God am holy.”  (Leviticus 19:2)   Rediscovering some part of Sabbath observance would be a major step on the road to holiness. 

HOLINESS – PART 4

THE YOUNG GENERATION

            As we look at holiness one last time, I want to go back to my first thoughts of several weeks ago.  A group of young people had totally disrupted a high school graduation.  A Catholic priest turned to me and said, “The trouble today is that young people do not know the difference between the holy and the profane.”

            That was almost twenty five years ago.   In my mind, the situation seems to have deteriorated since then.  I see more unholiness, less respect, more crude language, more casual sex, greater drug use, more underage drinking, and more irresponsible behavior among young people.  Listen to the rap music, watch the popular teen shows, see the movies, and there appears to be more behavior by young people that I must characterize as unholy, if not downright dangerous.  One of our teenagers said to me in a moment of candor, “Rabbi, what your generation did in college, our generation does in high school.  And what your generation did in high school, our generation does in middle school.”

            Perhaps my generation is to blame.   I came of age in the sixties.  We were the generation that challenged authority, whether our parents or schools, the government or the military, our religious leaders or even God.  “Don’t trust anyone over thirty” was our mantra, until most of us turned thirty.  The sayings of our generation were, “do your own thing” and “if it feels good, do it.”  When I was in college, I had a poster with a saying of Frederick Perls on my wall, “I’m not in this world to satisfy your needs, and you are not in this world to satisfy my needs.”  We were the generation who rebelled against dress codes, the generation who experimented with free love and mind altering drugs, the generation who brought down a president and stopped a war, but also the generation who told university professors what they need to teach us.  We were not a generation that knew how to say “no” to ourselves.

            Now our kids are coming of age.  They have learned their lessons well.  If we tell them that casual sex, recreational drugs, uncontrolled drinking, high stakes poker, driving too fast, and partying too much are unhealthy activities, they answer “Well you did it.”  If we tell them to respect authority, they say, “Did you respect authority?”  And many of us have given up parenting, wanting to be friends rather than authority figures in the lives of our children.  And then we ask - why have our children lost their sense of holiness?

Holiness begins with the ability to say “no” to our appetites.  Holiness is how rise above the animal within us.  Animals do what their instincts and appetites tell them to do.  Human have the ability to say no to themselves, to discipline their appetites and control their inclinations.  “Ben Zoma said, Who is strong?  Whoever controls his or her inclination.”  (Avot 4:1)   Most of the holiness laws in Judaism deal with self-discipline and self-control.  They teach us to say “no” to ourselves.

            The dietary laws teach us to say “no” to our appetite for food.  So do some of the disciplines such as fast days and the special foods of Passover.  The laws of Shabbat teach us to say “no” to our constant need to acquire money and things.  The laws regarding tzedaka (usually translated “charity”) teach us to see money as a gift that we receive in order to give it away.  They overcome our tendency towards greed.  The laws of daily prayer and blessings teach us not to take life’s gifts for granted, but to learn to show gratitude for all of life’s bounty.  The laws against gossip teach us to control our tongue, when our appetites desire nothing more than to talk about other people.

            The laws regarding marriage, adultery, and forbidden sexual relationships teach us to control the most powerful drive in many of us, the sexual drive.  Even within marriage, traditional Jews follow a series of laws often euphemistically entitled “family purity”  that discipline sexual activity between husbands and wives.  Again the purpose is to achieve holiness through self-control.

            I do not expect most of the members of my synagogue to follow most of these laws.  But I do see them as the training ground for self-discipline.  They set an example for our young people.   If we want to teach our young people “just say no”, whether to drugs, smoking, casual sex, foul language, aggressive driving, irresponsible drinking, or late night partying, first we have to learn to say “no” to ourselves.  We have to rediscover the laws and traditions which have made the quest for holiness so central in Jewish life.