podcast #66: Parashat K'doshim

Shalom Shlomo and Shalom Alisha. Parashat Kedoshim is a rare parasha that appears on its own. It is considered the core of the entire Torah and focuses on intimacy. Being holy means being set apart and also being part of the whole ecosystem. It is a democratic concept that applies to every person, not just priests. The goal is to make the whole world moral, ethical, and stable. Shalom Shlomo. Shalom Alisha. Hi everyone. It's a Tuesday, midday Tuesday. Tuesday is a blessed day and we're on a blessed, very very blessed, is that a word, blessed or blessed? Yes, blessed. Blessed, okay. Absolutely. Very blessed parasha. It's very rare that parashat Kedoshim appears on its own. Usually it's with achremot. Not only, you know, there are seven leap years in every 19 years, but even when there are leap years and parashat that are usually joined are separated, achremot and Kedoshim are not often separated. So it's really rare that we have parashat Kedoshim on its own. Right. There's a reason for that. There are supposedly 54 parashat, so really it's 53 and then Chagim and Shabbatot and so on. So very often achremot and Kedoshim are combined and Alisha, here I want to lodge a strong protest because we've done a podcast about achremot Kedoshim. Achremot gets the attention. There's a lot of stuff in there. Little Kedoshim, it's only 868 words. It's a crucial parashat in the Torah and you point that out and I didn't realize it. So I protest. I would like Kedoshim to stand on its own because it deserves it. There's stuff in here, Alisha, that is vital and I didn't realize it because it's in Leviticus, in Sefer HaKoanim, with the sacrifices, really? The core of the Torah and your drashah makes this point. Let me read this. Kedoshim may be considered the core of the entire Torah. Holy cow! So let's read it by itself. Good heavens! So here is our chance. This is Shabbat. This is our chance. And everybody knows it because it's v'ahavta l're-achakamocha, love thy neighbor as yourself. That's in the parashah and in fact it's also the middle of the Torah as well. If you go to simply the middle, the center of the Torah, this is the parashah where once we cross this parashah we start making our way towards Simchat Torah again. Exactly. So Alisha, what is this core of the Torah? What is it? So we could say so many things about it but since we're following a particular drashah, it's a drashah that was written in 2015. It actually appears in the book of drashot that came out I think in 2018, if I'm not mistaken. So my claim is, and I'm probably not the only one, that it's a parashah that really deals with intimacy. And it's easy to guess, love thy neighbor as yourself. That's a sign of intimacy. But it's a lot, a lot more than that. The notion of intimacy is very central to the parashah, way beyond this one particular sentence. And let's just remember that intimacy in Judaism is really a corner, a key concept. After all, Yom Kippur for example, last week's parashah was all about Yom Kippur, but Yom Kippur, one is forgiven for transgressions against God. One is not forgiven for transgressions against another person. You can fast for a whole week if you want. God says, I'm sorry, if you hurt another person, you have to make amends and receive his forgiveness. So it really is about intimacy, and I'm sure we'll delve deeper into it. We will, and let's back up a bit. So the parashah begins by saying, God spoke to Moshe saying, speak to all of the congregation of Israel, the choladat b'nei Yisrael, and tell them, you shall be holy, tiu kdoshim. Why? Because I, the Lord, your God, am holy. Period. And this is said three times in the parashah. Now toward the end of that opening paragraph, there is the wonderful, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, and a lot of attention focuses on that. But the core, I think, is, you shall be holy, Elisha. Now, love thy neighbor as thyself, be a blessing, as was said to Abraham. I pretty much know what that means. I kind of know what it tells me to do in my life. But Elisha, be holy, because I, your God, am holy. What does it mean that God is holy? And how do I be holy? Am I holy, Elisha, when before Shabbat, I make sure that I tear the toilet paper so that I don't do any, heaven forbid, work on Shabbat. Is that holy? What does it mean to be holy? You have a radical take on this, radical intimacy, but radical idea. What does it mean for us, in our daily life, to be holy? Right. That's a good question. That's a great question. And there are so many possible answers. Let's be clear on that. So, Rashi, based on the Midrash, on the Sages, Rashi claims, and not only he, Nehmanides and others, although they follow Rashi's lead, that holiness, in Hebrew, means prishut. Prishut. Meaning, someone who is set apart. Now, this is complicated. This is difficult, because it kind of says, Kudoshim, to you, be holy, for I am holy, for I, your God, am holy. Set yourself apart, for I, God, set myself apart. What does that mean? What does it mean to set oneself apart? What does that mean? And it's not easy to understand this. Let's try. We'll try. I think we can look at marriage as an example. We talk of marriage as a holy relationship. And in marriage, one of the things that's important in marriage is we would claim that, in theory, I could be with all the women in the world. I remember when I was young, very young, when I was a teenager, I thought that marriage was such a lousy idea. Like, why on earth would you want to commit to one person? And I had this nightmare. What if I met this one person, and we fell in love, and we had a relationship, and we decided to get married, and the following day, I meet this woman, and oh my God, she is just the love of my life. And what a mistake that is. And obviously, it took me time to understand it just doesn't work that way. It's more of a decision. Yes, you fall in love, which I think is God's biggest joke. You fall in love, you get into a relationship, and then you make a decision. You make a decision. Yes, there are many other women in the world. Yes, some of them are, and many other men in the world, so my wife could say, some of them are prettier than you, some of them are wealthier than you, or more whatever, smarter than you. But we make a choice of, you are the one. You are the one, and we kind of set ourselves apart. And this ability to set ourselves apart, on a very, somewhat superficial level, is what wholeness is all about. But if you go deeper, then it basically comes to say, we are able to see things as special, as unique. When something is special, we set it apart. It's not mundane. It's not like everything else. It is special. And what makes it special? I make it special. When we get married, or under the Chuppah, we are declaring to the world, guys, we love you all, but we are setting ourselves apart. We are forming, we are literally building a wall around us. The Chuppah has come like a transparent wall. Here, we always declare, we are building a new home in Israel. Home is erecting walls around you. Kind of saying, now we have doors, we have windows, it's all true, but we are setting ourselves apart, and by that we are saying, I have the ability to make you special unto me, and I am special unto you. And that's a facet of holiness. It goes much deeper than that, but I'll stop here for a second to see how the conversation goes. Okay, so I'm going to give an 180 degree opposite interpretation, based on your own Rosh Hashanah. So, I think to be holy, is to be holy, W-H-O-L-L-Y, to be whole, W-H-O-L-E, and you point this out as well. One of the newest sciences is ecology, and ecology is the science of this amazing system in our planet that combines the air, the water, the people, the land, the insects, the animals, this whole amazing planet that God has created, and it's a very delicate interrelated system, and we human beings were part of it, and we're not the rulers of the system, we're a part of the system, and to be holy, is to relate to this amazing ecosystem that I am a part of, and that I am responsible for. I am responsible for my part in it, and every part in the ecosystem has a role, including insects. If you take away mosquitoes, if you take away ants, if you take away worms, you mess it up, you mess it up really badly, and we've discovered this to our great sorrow. So, to be holy, to be holy, first of all, there's a radical idea in this, and others have pointed it out, Rabbi Sachs and others, it's often said, there's no democracy in the Torah. Democracy, the Greeks had the word, but long before that, 3,000 years ago, the Torah didn't know what democracy was. Wrong, Elisha, wrong, because gather Adet B'nai Israel, gather the whole of Israel, and tell them, be holy, every single one of you, be holy. Compare this with other religions. So you have priests in the Catholic religion, who are not allowed to marry, they're celibate, nuns, who are not allowed to marry, they're holy, they are holy by being separate. That's not holy. How can you be holy, if you're not part of life, and part of people, part of society? Holy means being part of the whole, W-H-O-L-E, and we never accepted celibacy, or anything of that sort. So, there is democracy in the Torah, it's here in Kedoshim, and it's democratic, because it says, every person is to be holy, not just the priests. So a lot of, the book of Leviticus, the book of the Iconium, is about the priests being holy, and what they have to do to be holy, etc. Sure, and then all of a sudden, in the middle of Kedoshim, that stops, and now we go down to ordinary people. Here's what you need to do, in order to be a good person. So, yeah, it's not being separate, it's being a part, and doing your part, to make the whole holy, to make the whole right, and moral, and ethical, and stable, and good. That's part of being holy, I think. Okay, beautiful, beautiful. So, this is a great, great point. It's really beautiful, because we're really hitting the nail on its head, on the, there's a paradox here. And for many years, I had a real difficulty, with Rashi's interpretation, of set yourself apart, because I really believe in oneness. I believe in the value of oneness, of holy, as in W-H-O, and not H-O. So, I agree with you 100%, except for one thing. At the very, very end, you said, we're part of, and that's where the, I think that's where the key is. That's where the secret lies. We are part of. Now, here's the challenge, here's the paradox. On the one hand, we see ourselves as part of, but it's not a soup, where everything's mixed together. We are a unique part of. So, that's why in Judaism, when you get married, you are sanctified, you become holy, you create this holy ceremony, holy relationship. But you're part of a holy people, and you're part of the holy universe. But in order for something to be holy, in order for the one to be one, all the particles in it have to be 100% themselves. As you said, we need every mosquito. I'm going to be really careful not to squish the mosquitoes now. Every mosquito counts. So, if every mosquito counts, then every mosquito is set apart. There's a big difference in Hebrew. The word for oneness is achdut. And there's a word that people very often confuse, achdut with achidut. Achidut means being the same. Achdut means being at one, meant being one. And if we go for achidut, for sameness, that we're all the same, then we cannot be one. I have to be 100% myself in order to bring my share into the one. So, I think it's really, really important to learn. One of the first things that human beings learn as they grow up is boundaries. We talk a lot about boundaries. And holiness, in a way, is boundaries. Shabbat is holiness in time. It's a day set apart in time. It has boundaries. It begins on Friday evening with sunset, ends on Shabbat evening with three stars, and it's set apart. Now, you think, so where's the one if it's set apart? In order to have an experience of the one, you need to be able to set yourself apart. And it's a paradox. And we need, like, in order to, you know, here's a better way of saying it, in order to experience oneness, we need intimacy. Intimacy is the ultimate human experience of oneness. But in order for there to be intimacy, it needs to be you and I. It cannot be with everyone. We cannot be intimate with everyone and everything. I remember in the 70s, the movie Hair. And I'm sure we've discussed it, because I have this, like, déjà vu that we've talked about already. But I remember this amazing scene that made a huge impact on me when I watched, when I saw the film for the first time. I remember this woman. She's this beautiful black woman who is with a gang, with, you know, the band of hippies who are seeking freedom and against the Vietnam War. And she's pregnant. She's pregnant, and she can no longer drag herself to all those gatherings. And she turns to her boyfriend, obviously not her husband, because we're all one. We're all one. And she has this beautiful song. As they're off marching off, demonstrating against someone or something, she is alone there, carrying the baby, and she has this beautiful song. How can people, how can people be so thoughtless? How can they ignore their friend, easy to be, etc., etc. Especially people who care about strangers, who care about evil and social injustice. Do they only care about the bleeding crowds? How about a needing friend? So intimacy, if we are unable to create this one-on-one intimacy, then we cannot be part of the whole. So we're set apart in order to be part of the whole. But there's no whole without being able to set ourselves apart. Very often those radical thinkers had a really hard time being intimate. And a really hard time being holy, because it was all about the workers of the world unite. You know, we're just after the May 1st, not too long ago. So, no, if you cannot be intimate with yourself, first of all, really be able to fully experience your own being, your own self, you cannot know the One. You cannot be intimate with humanity, with the One. So, perfect, you've passed the ball to me to shoot for the basket. And I want to talk about a psychologist, Jerome Brenner, and a philosopher, Martin Buber. And they both dealt with this issue that you said about being one and being unique and separate. So for you as a psychologist focused on cognition, how do you know things? Epistemology. How do you know things? How do you learn things? How does the brain gather information? And that's important. But a psychologist named Jerome Brenner came along. He's Jewish, Harvard psychologist, cognitive psychologist, social psychologist. And he came to Jerusalem to give a talk. Acts of Meaning. Finding Meaning. This is from 1990. He gave a talk at the Hebrew University in 1987. And he deals with the point that you raised. He says, what makes a cultural community, what makes us into a people? Is shared, not just shared beliefs, shared values about what people are like and what the world is like. What may be just as important as these shared values as being similar, being the same. What may be just as important to the coherence of cultures is the existence of, I'm going to interpret this, interpretive procedures for adjudicating the different construals of reality. What he means is, how do we deal with differences? We are a people. We're the Jewish people. We have shared values. We have the shared Torah. And we have a lot of really big differences. And he says, what's crucial here is not just the sameness, but these differences and how we adjudicate them. Meaning, how do we deal with the fact that each person has their own views and their different views. And we're a democratic religion. We accept that the whole Talmud is one big argument. Good heavens. So, I interrupted you? No, the point is that there are sameness and differences and they're both crucial. But it's very sad to read this from me because at least as a people, as a country, we have dealt badly with the second half of being a people, which is adjudicating the differences. And this comes from a view that I'm the right and you're wrong. We believe in strong beliefs but we really have to listen and adjudicate and embrace and love the differences, not just the sameness. Right. That's what pluralism is all about. And that's why I think holiness, which is our topic, holiness begins with love thy neighbor as yourself. There's a neighbor there and there's yourself, which I kind of elaborated a bit in the Derashah. At the end of the day, it's all God. Both I am part of God and thy neighbor is part of God. So it's all one. It's all God. But it clearly says, love thy neighbor as yourself. So honor that there's a neighbor. Love thy neighbor as yourself. And create a relationship between the two. A loving relationship, at least a relationship that respects one another. So all this I think is really, really true. But I would take it even a step further and say, if you want to know God, experience God, really feel God, the way that I know because I'm sure there are other ways and different people have their own ways. But the one way that I know how to do it now, how I do it with myself, in my longing for God, in my quest for God, is I don't go for the idea of the one, the oneness experience, the oneness with all that is. I have to admit, it just doesn't work for me. It doesn't work for me. It doesn't work for me. It doesn't work for others. There are some people who love this meshing with everything and everyone. I do the exact opposite. I close my eyes and go out to nature or do whatever and I would really start focusing on the inner, the sense of being, really feeling, sensing my own beingness. And in that sensation of beingness, that's where I discover God. That's where I experience God because God is the within of the within of the within, deeper and deeper and deeper. And we can't go deeper and deeper by becoming one big soup with everybody and everything else. So I think actually this practice of sensing the body, sensing your own beingness is the key to discovering God, i.e., that's how holiness is created. I agree. So I mentioned Martin Buber and I think Buber would agree with what you just said and there's a little story here. Martin Buber was, of course, a philosopher. He wrote in German. German philosophers were very wordy. Marx wasn't a philosopher but he wrote Das Kapital and that is an impossible thing to read, especially in German and it's six, seven hundred pages. Marx himself said those German dogs, they value books according to their weight. Martin Buber began by writing an introduction to a book and he ended and published the introduction and it was only 132 pages in English called I, Thou. And he makes the point that we have a relationship with God and a key part of the relationship is the I without the I there's no relationship but the Thou, which is God, but it's expressed in I, Thou, God. Me, Elisha and then the third person in the mixture is God and the way we relate to other people is to be holy because God is holy and I'm only holy in the manner in which I relate to other people. And something that bothers me a lot, Elisha, in my own life, we have two ways of relating to people. One way is transactional. What can you do for me? What you do for me and I will do for you. This is a transaction. So you relate to people basically as things that can bring you what you want and this is a large part of the western world because our life is transactional based on what we earn and our wealth and what we can buy and it's natural to translate that to human beings and in my own life I regret deeply often relating to other people in a transactional fashion what can this person do for me but the I, Thou relationship of holiness is a very deep personal one which is not all related to a transaction and that's why the Shema bothers me a lot, Elisha because the Shema seems to be a transactional version of holiness. If you do such and such and such then you will have rain in its time and the sunshine and the crops and if you don't do that then you will have this and that very much transactional and in our new Siddur that we have there's a beautiful explanation which puts the comma in a different place and simply says maybe things are going well for you and you're going to be really complacent but don't be too complacent because that's not what it's about it's not at all transactional our I, Thou relationship with God to be holy is not transactional it's deeply personal so Buber had an insight being holy by the way we relate to the world and to other people right, right and it all connects because let's also remind everyone it says love thy neighbor as thyself which we have to by the way say is a very poor translation it is only a translation and not a good one but let's use this translation for now it's love thy neighbor as yourself I am the Lord that's the whole, the last bit of the verse the last bit of the sentence so being able to love the other we can't love the other if we don't have a relationship with ourselves we can't love ourselves, we know that and we can't have a relationship with anyone if we're not present and if someone is not present then they really can't be part of a relationship so what is God here in this sense God is indeed the totality of it all is being able to respect being able to respect the other person recognize the other person's weight in Hebrew the word for weight is kavod heaviness so by loving the other person requires first of all respecting, honoring the other person to honor means I recognize your presence I recognize your existence I recognize your full separate existence and by recognizing and I can also see you by recognizing that and not wishing to change you and not wishing that you were someone else or something else but really for you to be fully yourself and I'm going to work hard at respecting who you are and seeing the divine within you the divine that you are, because we're all divine so seeing the divine that you are so it all begins again with separateness being able to see that the other person is separate the other person is not there for commodity the other person is not there for transactional agenda the other person there is fully present there and only then I can have a relationship with that fully present thou and the last comment about the Parsha because we're close to running out of time the core of morality is not the 613 meets float and so on the core of morality is love is the way we feel toward other people we think of morality often as something being rational the greatest good for the greatest number of people philosophers talk about that all the time the rationality of morality is an emotion an emotion of love toward the world toward this amazing planet toward the ecosystem that we're a part of real morality begins with love because when you relate to the world with love you're far more likely to treat other people well to treat them with respect and at least you're looking at our terrible mid-east and our neighbors and our borders and the awful things that are going on we are in the exact opposite in the darkness of a lack of morality because of the emotion that's the opposite of love and it's possible to dream of a world in which all people share the Jewish value you feel toward other people the emotion of love and respect and that they are like you or part of you, although you are separate and you may disagree but if we could substitute the basic emotion of love for the terrible and destructive emotion of hate which has ruined the world we would be better off right, that's really well said the only thing is to remember again that if we cannot honor the separateness of the other then we cannot love the other then we'll try and squish the other and turn them into us and turn them into part of me and to have them adapt to my needs and what I need do I have time for a little quick story before we end? yes so yesterday I met with a woman from Arkela the situation is getting her really really down really depressed and she told me, I'm showing this in English I don't think I'll show it in Hebrew even though I'm not mentioning names here she said, you know every Shabbat my husband and I we go out to the demonstrations in Tel Aviv and they meet their oldest son who lives in Tel Aviv and this past Shabbat they were on their way they were on their way back to the car and they walked along the the walkway and there were a bunch of policemen standing there and they wouldn't let them pass and they said, listen we need to get to our car but the policemen were very adamant on not letting them pass and she seemed somewhat heated and what she told me was that one of the policemen actually pushed her husband and her husband fell and it was awful she had to hold her husband really tight so he doesn't start beating the guy up because he could have easily been arrested and she saw it as a change of political climate in Israel with our chief who was a minister of police and I won't say much more about it right now but then eventually they did a detour and they went towards their car and there was another group of policemen and they were really angry and upset and all worked up and the other group of policemen they decided to talk to them and they weren't blocking the path and they started having a conversation they started talking to them and at first they were like hey do you believe in what you're doing we're being obstructive to the protesters we're trying to bring the kidnapped home and the policemen and women were very sweet and a really genuine conversation started and it ended up by saying I recognize those policemen they're also just human beings and they're told what to do and it became really clear that everybody really wants the same thing we really all want love and I said to her I didn't but I really wanted to at the end of the day what we all want is a hug that's all we want the policemen who were standing there and blocking your path they didn't want to be mean they didn't want to intrude on your walking they too at the end of the day they need a smile they need some love they need a hug and if we can come with that perspective you will melt away all the obstacles and she said absolutely by the time we got to our car we were much calmer she still had a hard time going to sleep we have to recognize that there is the other and the other is just like us has the same exact needs we all need to love now I am furious and have a lot of anger and hatred towards Hamas for example deep, deep, deep inside I feel very sad for those Hamas brutal terrorists because only a person who is really sick to the core could do what they did on the 7th of October if someone loved them if someone gave them a hug when it was still possible before they were drugged when they went out on their massacre then things would be very different but love from the consciousness of separates because if we are all one then there is no love if we are all one it is a soup if we are separate and we honor the separateness of the other and recognize the need of the other for love then love is appropriate but as you emphasize the separate when you encounter the police you need to feel empathy empathy is feeling what the other person feels sympathy is to be sorry for someone empathy is to feel as they do imagine Alicia if you spent your days rather than working with the wonderful people imagine if you spent your days working with the worst of the worst imagine those are the people you encountered everyday and then you meet an ordinary citizen your view of the world is terribly, terribly biased you need to feel a bit of empathy toward those people and the awful job that we have assigned to them yes, absolutely, I agree with you empathy is the ability to see the other the other is a whole separate entity holy and whole it's a whole entity and we are also one with them but in order to get to the one with them in order to be able to have empathy you need to first of all have respect and honor their separateness so we do have to end but we will continue exploring these ideas we will, and a big salute to Parashat Kedoshim big surprise, big hidden meaning there yes, it is the core, it's the center it's the heartbeat, it's the heart of Judaism Shabbat Shalom everyone Shabbat Shalom