Sermon: Acharei Mot - Kedoshim
May 5, 2012
Phil Rizzuto had a famous saying, “Holy cow!”
I’ve heard people declare, “Holy Moses,” or its lesser version, “Holy Moly”.
I’ve heard Batman’s Robin say, “Holy (fill-in-the-blank), Batman!”
I’ve even heard people swear, excuse the language, “Holy crap!”
What does Holy really mean?
The second portion of today’s reading is called Kedoshim. It begins with one of the most beautiful, famous, and profound lines in the Torah
''You shall be holy, for I, the Lord, your G-d, am holy."
Our sages in the Midrash added a line of elaboration to this particular verse, and they said that “the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Israel,
'because I sanctified you for my namesake even before I created the world, for that reason you should be holy, just as I am holy.’”
The rabbis didn’t make frivolous comments just to fill in the paper. What were they trying to tell us? What difference does it make whether Israel was sanctified before the creation of the world or after the creation?
The Magid of Dubno, master of speech and parables, said it’s easy to understand why G-d hallowed us before the world was made and he explained it with the following parable:
There was a wealthy man from a small town who had only one daughter and he was seeking a husband for her. As was the custom in those days, he went to one of the Yeshivoth and asked the head of the academy to give him a son-in-law. He wanted him to be a student who had shown the greatest piety, the greatest erudition and eagerness for study from the entire Yeshiva.
He said, “If you find me such a young man for my daughter, I’ll donate a large sum of money for any good cause that you would choose.”
The head of the Yeshiva excused himself and a few minutes later returned with a student who he praised highly as the most pious and clever of all the young men.
“His zeal for study is so great,” the Rabbi said, “that he turns the night into daytime in order to miss no opportunity to study.”
Obviously, the wealthy man was very impressed. He took the youth home with him, married him to his daughter in a very elaborate wedding. Sometime later the father-in-law noticed that the young husband was spending less and less time on his studies and he called him to account for his laziness.
The son-in-law looked at the older man with poorly concealed contempt, he said,
“You can ask the shames of the house of study if I’m not the most regular, and industrious, scholar in the entire town. Even if I don’t study all day long I’m still better than most of the other men. Why they often let a whole week pass without even looking at a holy book, but I still spend at least two hours every day in study. In fact, if I should stop studying altogether I would still know much, much more that all the others put together.”
The father-in-law was no dummy. In his anger he responded sternly,
“Have I brought you here just to be able to say that you’re the best student in my little town? Remember, I picked you from among all the students of a great Yeshiva because they told me you were the most outstanding, most zealous student in the entire institution. It was because of your great potential as a scholar that I wanted you as a husband for my daughter. It’s not enough for me that you are simply content to know more than all the other young men in this town. I’m not asking you to compare yourself to the others. What I want is to have you continue studying so that you may realize all the potential that your rabbi said that you possessed.”
The Magid explained that the Children of Israel could easily be compared to that conceited Yeshiva student.
Had the people of Israel been chosen from among all the other nations after the creation of the world, Israel might easily have fallen prey to the delusion that whatever you do, or fail to do, it would still be better than any other nation on earth, for had not G-d looked at them all and found them all wanting in comparison to the Jewish people? But that’s not what G-d desired.
What He required of Israel was that the Jews realize the unique potential of their holiness with which it has been divinely bestowed. And, therefore, he said to the people of Israel,
“Remember, I sanctified you long before I made the world and all the other people who dwell on it. I did it then and not later, for you not to compare your spiritual growth with the other nations and be lulled into complacency by the knowledge that you can still surpass them. No, you shall be holy, even as I, the Lord, your G-d, am holy,” - unique, special and beyond all comparison.
That is our destiny, my friends. It’s not chauvinistic, it’s not a putdown of other people, it’s not that we are better than others, it’s simply a statement of religious fact that as Jewish people, our legacy and heritage is that we are different and special. We are kadosh, holy, to G-d. We have it built into our genetic makeup, into our collective consciousness as Jews, that we are obligated to a special lifestyle, that we have a potentiality to fulfill that holiness.
It’s easy to say that everyone cheats, that it’s a dog eat dog world out there, that in order to survive I have to sink down to the level of the lowest common denominator.
It’s easy to say “Rabbi, you don’t know what you’re talking about with this holiness and “special” business.
I was born Jewish – big deal – it means nothing. All human beings are the same. They scratch, they pull, they claw, they clutch at anything to pull themselves a little bit ahead of another. Don’t give us this business that we should be different, that we are different, that being holy and G-d’s people matters.”
To them, to that prevalent and too dominant point of view, I must share an experience from a book written by Dr. Victor Frankel entitled From the Death Camp to Existentialism.
Dr. Frankel was a German-Jewish psychiatrist and survived the Nazi concentration camps. His book is a study of one of the most puzzling questions of what took place with the inmates. Why did some men, having been subjected to the most terrible of sufferings, become tzadikim (saints) while others degenerated into chayot (wild beasts).
And Dr. Frankel says, “We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offered others sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing – the last of his freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Dr. Frankel entered the concentration camp a robust, young, brilliant psychiatrist with a tremendous future ahead of him. He left, a bag of skin and bones. He goes on to say,
“Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food, and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became, was the result of an inner decision and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp….. It is this spiritual freedom which cannot be taken away, that makes life meaningful and purposeful.”
Dr. Frankel has observed and validated the verse of our Torah Reading, that we are holy, that people have the capacity inside them to be special, to be different, to emulate the Lord, for indeed G-d loves us, and that love is expressed through an unlimited capacity, an unlimited potentiality, to improve our life and our society around us.
We can do anything we want once we understand our uniqueness with the Lord, the Creator. The key is to understand our relationship.
A father noticed that his 2nd grader had his eyes glued to the television set so he was prompted to ask him, “Don’t you have any homework tonight?”
“No,” the little boy said, “I got all my work done in school.”
Well, not to be put off the father persisted,
“Well, let’s see how you’re doing in your Hebrew School work. Now tell me, why did G-d make you?”
The little 7 year old hesitated but not for long. He simply said,
“G-d made me because He likes kids.”
That’s a simple formulation of a very complex and revolutionary idea that Judaism brought into the world. We’re not here by accident, we’re not here in horror and in dread; ancient man believed that the world was filled with hatred, nature was the enemy, thunder was to be feared, lightning was a direct threat. The entire world was permeated with dread and horror; even those enlightened Greeks believed in the Moyra (predetermination) – the Romans called it Fatum (or fate), that everything was predetermined for you, you had no control.
Judaism came along with the profound declaration of G-d’s love, and His hope for man.
G-d loves us; He made us holy and special and taught us that we are in control, that we can determine the nature of our existence. Judaism is the cement in that concept – that it’s out of G-d’s love that man’s unlimited capacity to improve, to change, is possible. And we Jews have the greatest possibilities of all.
Man was placed into a neutral environment where he was given the ability to flourish with the newly created world.
But the Jews were given a head start – they were chosen to be holy and special, even before the world was created.
Don’t succumb to the temptation of saying “but everyone else is doing it.” Let your mind shout out, “No, I’m a Jew – I’m holy, I’m special.”
When our children say,
“Enough of religious school, it competes with baseball, look at all the other kids,” we have to say, “We’re not other kids, we’re special, we’re holy.”
When all the teenagers invite their friends over Friday night for parties and our children are invited we have to say,
“Not Friday night, it’s a special night, it’s a holy night, because we’re Jewish, we are special, we are holy.”
The examples are numerous, the principle is the same. You are special, G-d loves each and every one of us, and He has given us the path and the strength to express that love, to be different.
Tap into it, feel the power of the reservoir of that strength – each Jew feeding off of the same power line, reinforcing each other, and then there is nothing in this world that we can’t overcome.
“You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy!”
