Having established the centrality of holiness in Judaism, it behooves us to try to define this abstract concept. Perhaps, the easiest way to define it is by exploring how holiness is attained. Within a legal context, kedushah (holiness or sanctity) is usually attained through separation, self-discipline, and refinement. By distancing ourselves from evil, impurity, and various worldly energies that block our spiritual channels and sensitivities, we become proper vessels, capable of receiving and radiating holiness. Indeed, one of the fundamental premises underlying the mitzvot is the constant requirement to separate and distinguish between good and evil, pure and impure, permitted and forbidden, holy time and mundane time, and holy space and mundane space. The final verses in Kedoshim spell out this relationship between holiness and separation quite explicitly:
I am God, your God, Who has separated you from the peoples. You shall distinguish between the pure animal and the impure, and between the pure bird and the impure; and you shall not render your souls abominable through such animals and birds, and through anything that creeps on the grounds, which I have set apart for you to render impure. You shall be holy for Me, for I God am holy; and I have separated you from the peoples to be Mine. (Leviticus 20:24-26)
The nation of Israel is holy because God separated it from the other peoples and it must maintain this holiness by, in this case, distancing itself from impure animals and crawling things.
However, along with the notion of separation, holiness is also associated with designating, assigning, and choosing. In the Temple period, an animal or object that was chosen and then designated to be sacrificed or donated to the Temple was called hekdesh (a word which stems from the same root as “holiness” and which literally means “sanctified”). Thus, choice, in and of itself, seems to be fundamentally connected to the concept of holiness.
This is especially true when it is God who chooses. It is important to note that most of the concepts we associate with holiness, such as the Hebrew language, Torah, Shabbat, the Jewish people, the Land of Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple, attained this stature because God chose them. In order to deepen our understanding of this relationship between choice and holiness, we will now explore each of God’s choices one-by-one.
The Hebrew letters and the Torah are in their own class as they both existed before the creation of the world. As we discussed in Bereishit, God created the world using the Hebrew letters. Indeed, according to the mystical tradition, the letters are conduits of infinite Divine wisdom and the building blocks of creation. It is through these letters that make up the Torah that God’s will is revealed to the Jewish people and all humanity. The Torah actually existed before the world was created as the Zohar (2:161b) teaches: “God looked into the Torah [the blueprint for creation] and created the world.” Ultimately, God sanctified Israel by giving it His unique Torah and Israel chose to sanctify itself by receiving the Torah and living by its laws.
The root word for holiness and sanctification appears in the Torah for the first time when God designates the seventh day – Shabbat – as holy:
And the heavens and earth were completed and all their array. By the seventh day God completed His work that He had done, and He abstained on the seventh day from all his work that He had done. God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it (vayikadesh, from the infinitive verb “to be holy”), for on it He rested from His work, which God created to make. (Genesis 2:1-3)
Thus, the seventh day became not only the culminating act and implicit sanctification of the entire Divine creative process, but the cycle of seven was established as the primary pattern for all temporal cycles. Indeed, we mark time’s continual flow by the basic division of our days, weeks, months, years, and millennia into seven.
Shabbat has become the central axis around which all Jewish life revolves – like the seven-branched candelabrum, whose central column is the main pillar balancing the three branches on each side of it. By continually observing Shabbat, we plug ourselves into a Divine energy source and learn to live in a temporal pattern that recreates the very process of creation every week.
God’s choice of the Jewish people began with his selection of Abraham. Although Abraham certainly exercised his own intellect to “discover” that only one God exists, we might ask what thoughts caused Abraham to embark on such a unique spiritual quest. The Ishbitzer Rebbe, in his classic work entitled Mei Hashiloach, poses this question and provides his own answer: It was actually God who “planted” these inquisitive thoughts in Abraham’s head, for He had already realized Abraham’s potential and chosen him from among all the peoples to reveal His oneness to the world. Paradoxically, God chose Abraham and Abraham chose God.
The inherent holiness of the Land of Israel is apparent from the first instruction God gave Abraham: “go … to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). Clearly, Abraham was not being instructed to wander until he happened to find a place he liked. Rather, Abraham was being led to a specific land that God had already chosen. The fact that God brought him to a particular place implies that the land possessed particular spiritual qualities and energies that God wanted available for Abraham and his descendants’ use.
In Re’eh, in the book of Deuteronomy, we will revisit some of these matters, especially those relating to God’s choice of the Temple’s site in Jerusalem. For now, we will suffice with the following verse, which stresses God’s choice of the site for the Temple: “Rather, only at the place that God, your God, will choose from among all your tribes to place His name, there shall you seek out His Presence and come there” (Deuteronomy 12:5).
Notably, we are taught that God had already chosen this spot long ago when he told Abraham to take Isaac there: And it happened after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham,” and he replied, “Here I am.” And He said, “Please take your son, your only one, whom you love – Isaac – and go to the land of Moriah; bring him there as an offering upon one of the mountains which I shall tell you.” (Genesis 22: 1-2)
That mountain according to tradition was the Temple Mount. The Sages also teach that Jacob was promised that he would inherit the Land of Israel and had his archetypal dream about the angels ascending and descending a ladder at this very location. Indeed, the Midrash teaches that God caused the sun to set quickly to force Jacob to spend the night in that exact spot (Bereishit Rabbah 68:10).
Ultimately, those objects, times, places, or people that God chose became holy specifically because He chose, designated and separated them for a special task or mission. What does this teach us about the relationship between choice and our search for holiness? The Sages taught that “a dream follows its interpretation” (Berachot 55b). In other words, if we put a good “spin” on a dream and interpret it in a positive way, it will manifest positively. In this sense life is very much like a dream. Daily events and occurrences are open to a myriad of interpretations. The way we experience life is ultimately determined by how we choose to interpret what happens to us.
A life of holiness is ultimately the result of our choosing to be involved with those things that God has chosen to be special and holy. The more we surround ourselves with Torah, learn it in the original Hebrew, give honor to and enjoy the Shabbat, and connect to the Land of Israel and Jerusalem, the more we can understand and ultimately integrate holiness into our lives.
Yet, above and beyond all that we have said regarding attaining holiness, the Slonimer Rebbe stresses another dimension numerous times in his Netivot Shalom: ultimately holiness is a gift from God. We of course have to do our part, by making our will His will and by fulfilling the Torah to the best of our abilities, but ultimately holiness is bestowed upon us from above. By choosing a lifestyle infused with Torah, mitzvot, and good deeds, we greatly increase the likelihood of our being granted the unique and special quality we call holiness.
