blogs/cantor-phil-baron

Parasha: Acharei Mot/K'doshim by Cantor Phil Baron

This week's parasha, Acharei Mot begins the section of Torah that is known as the “Holiness Code.”

In thinking about this parasha I was struck with a nagging question: how do you define holiness?  The Torah sets out to specifically teach us how to achieve a state of holiness by doing certain things and refraining from others.  But this state is external.  We may look quite holy on the outside, but what is going on in our hearts?

My son-in-law Marc is getting used to me throwing these deep questions at him, so I posed this problem to him. He quickly answered that any discussion about holiness should start with a definition of goodness. Goodness was easy to describe, he said. You needed to love your neighbor, give tz'dakah, be kind to strangers, respectful to elders, and honest in your business dealings. Holiness, on the other hand, involved going to synagogue, praying, and other religious activities.

Nice answer, but this also felt too external, and I didn't really agree. Holiness had to be a combination of belief, ritual, andaction.  It occurred to me that, as in prayer, holiness was about intention. Maimonides taught that giving is elevated when done with a full heart.  Any kindness can be achieved automatically, but is only holy when done with kavanah �" with direction.  Now I was getting somewhere.  Marc said he saw my point (after all he had to respect his elder).

With a renewed sense of purpose I grabbed a book off my shelf and opened to a random spot where I had stuck some papers. I gasped as I read the title on the page: “The Holy and the Good.”  I had opened Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' “To Heal a Fractured World," having no idea that he dealt with the subject of holiness! Clearly the rabbi and my son-in-law were in cahoots.

As I read the chapter in earnest I soon realized what the Holiness Code boils down to. Humankind needs the commandments, statutes and judgments found in Acharei Mot and its partner, parashat K'doshim. As Rabbi Sacks teaches, “there is nothing inevitable about human virtue.  The life of the commandments is an ongoing exercise in character formation, a sustained seminar in Judaism's ‘habits of the heart.'” The rabbi writes that these habits do indeed become holy when we remember that we are made in the image of God, and that “life belongs to Him, not us.”  In this is transcendence. As Rabbis Schulweis and Feinstein would say, we are therefore co-creators with God.

So the Holiness code is a roadmap, leading us through action to that elusive state of holiness. “Our prayers, texts and rituals hold before us a vision of how the world might be.  The holy is where we enter the ideal; the good is how we make it real.”

But here is where I would respectfully add to the equation that Rabbi Sacks and my son-in-law put forward, for there is a step missing.  How do we enter the ideal?  Here I would return to Maimonides.  The Holiness Code repeatedly commands us to do (or refrain from doing) things because “I am the Lord.” This is like a parent saying “because I said so.”  The Rambam writes, “It is not right to serve God…out of fear.”  However, “whoever serves God out of love…impelled by no external motive whatsoever…such a person does what is truly right.” Love, or “direction of the heart” is what takes the external commandments of Acharei Mot and elevates them to theholy. It is willing action, based on the love of God's commandments.