Rabbi Klonimus Kalman’s grave

This week’s Torah portion, kedoshim (Leviticus Ch. 19-20), opens up with a bang. The text says:

וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה אֶל מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר: דַּבֵּר אֶל כָּל עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם:

Y-H-V-H spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the whole Israelite community, and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, Y-H-V-H your God, am Holy. (Leviticus 19:1-2)

The Hebrew word kadosh (קדוש), meaning holy, means different, other, set apart. As such, it is an attribute of God, as the one who is completely set apart from creation, the transcendental reality.

And yet here, the Torah demands of the Israelites—and I prefer not to understand this term as those who share a particular DNA, but rather as the word denotes, “those who grapple with God”—to be holy too. God seems to be saying: I am holy, and if you engage with me and grapple with me, if you do it right, you should be holy too.

But if holy means set apart and different, should “becoming holy” mean withdrawing from the world? The Hassidic text Maor Vashemesh, discusses just that. Rabbi Klonimus Kalman Halevi, the author, starts by referring to Maimonides, who seems to be advocating withdrawal in some circumstances (apologies to women readers: this text was written in the 18^th Century):

“If an Israelite lives in a place where evil views and bad leaders prevail, he should leave that place and move from place to place, and from country to country, until one reaches a place of straight Torah and opinions, where he would find rest. And if he cannot find any suitable place, he should seek solitude in deserts and forests in order to run away from evil views and bad people.”

Rabbi Klominus concurs, but only to a point.

“The truth is, that one should indeed escape to the forests and retire from the public in order to save oneself from evil views and evil deeds, but the only thing this can be helpful for is ensuring that one can perform one’s worship of Him, blessed by He. However, one does not gain supreme holiness until one attaches oneself to people of God who worship God in truth, and participate with them with much worship, through prayers as well as through the study of the Torah. The essence of all the mitzvoth (the commandments) is to be in community with other God seekers; then and only then the supreme holiness can be achieved.”

In this, Rabbi Klonimus echoes the ideas of Gautama the Buddha. Buddhism is known for its solitary practices of inward meditation, and there is no more solitary practice than that. However, when asked about the value of sangha, the spiritual community, the Buddha said: “Sangha is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the spiritual life.”

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Another key phrase that appears in this Torah portion is

וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ

Love your fellow as yourself. (Leviticus 19:18)

This phrase is known as the Golden Rule. It is the fundamental rule of every culture and tradition that is based on the sacred. Here are a few examples:

Christianity: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Matthew 7:12)

Islam: “Not one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.” (Forty Hadith of an-Nawawi 13)

Hinduism: “One should not behave towards others in a way which is disagreeable to oneself. This is the essence of morality. All other activities are due to selfish desire.” (Mahabharata, Anusasana Parva 113.8)

Jainism: “A man should wander about treating all creatures as he himself would be treated.” (Sutrakritanga 1.11.33)

Buddhism: “Comparing oneself to others in such terms as “Just as I am so are they, just as they are so am I,” he should neither kill nor cause others to kill.” (Sutta Nipata 705)

How can one love one’s fellow as oneself, when he or she is “so obviously” other? The message of this important, universal principle is that there is no other: ultimately, there is only One, and that One is who we all are. Leyt atar panuy mineh, there is no place where He is not, says the Zohar. This realization, of the Oneness of all, is the highest realization of truth, the supreme holiness.

Sages of all spiritual and religious traditions have been recommending solitary meditation as a means of realizing that oneness. The solitary practice of meditation becomes a key to loving the other, the key to community.

An interesting symmetry emerges: holiness, the supreme “otherness”, is said to be realized ultimately through community; and community, the ultimate of togetherness, is ultimately possible through the deep non-dual, ultimately solitary realization of Self. Community and solitude are two aspects of the same thing.

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For the quotes, I relied on the anthology “The World Scripture” http://www.unification.net/ws/

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)

In last week’s Torah portion, Joseph’s brothers, who had previously sold him to slavery and were not yet aware of his rise to power, came to Egypt to collect grain to save themselves from the great famine that took over the region. They were sent to Egypt by their father, Jacob, who kept the youngest of his sons, Benjamin, with him at Canaan. Still traumatized by the loss of Joseph, whom he thought for dead, Jacob did not want to risk the life of Benjamin.

But Benjamin was precisely whom Joseph was most eager to see. He and Benjamin were the only sons born of Jacob’s favorite wife, Rachel. Benjamin was still a child when Joseph’s other brothers betrayed him, thus he was not part of the conspiracy. Without revealing his identity, Joseph manipulated the situation so that the brothers had to bring Benjamin down from Canaan to Egypt. He then proceeded to frame Benjamin for a fictitious theft, insisting, to the great distress of the brothers, that Benjamin must become his slave to atone for the crime.

This parashah starts at the dramatic moment when Judah approaches Joseph. Not knowing that he is talking to his own brother, he addresses him as the king’s viceroy, and in a desperate attempt to reason with him, tries to get Benjamin freed in order to bring him back to Jacob, even at the price of his (Judah’s) own freedom.

The parashah opens with the words:

וַיִּגַּשׁ אֵלָיו יְהוּדָה, וַיֹּאמֶר בִּי אֲדֹנִי, יְדַבֶּר-נָא עַבְדְּךָ דָבָר בְּאָזְנֵי אֲדֹנִי, וְאַל-יִחַר אַפְּךָ בְּעַבְדֶּךָ: כִּי כָמוֹךָ, כְּפַרְעֹה.

Then Judah approached him and said, “Please, my lord, let your servant speak a word in my lord’s ears, and do not be angry with your servant; for you are like Pharaoh himself. (Genesis 44:18)

The obvious meaning of the first few words, “Then Judah approached him,” is that Judah approached Joseph. However, a number of Hassidic rabbis, including Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk, take the “him” to refer to God. Which means that the words “Then Judah approached him” actually refer to prayer.

In this context, Judah’s first two words are highly significant. He says: bi adoni (בִּי אֲדֹנִי). The idiom is translated as “please, my lord”, but it literally means “my lord is within me.” Significantly, the Hebrew word adoni, “my lord”, is spelled in exactly the same way as the Hebrew word adonay, the most commonly used name of God.

So how does Judah “approach God” (i.e., prays)? He first recognizes that adonay, i.e., God, is bi (בִּי), i.e., within himself. And given that Judah is the progenitor of the tribe of Judah, i.e. the forefather of all the Jews, we are being told something fundamental about Jewish prayer.*

This point is further highlighted in this week’s haftarah** reading. The haftarah ends with the words,

…בִּהְיוֹת מִקְדָּשִׁי בְּתוֹכָם, לְעוֹלָם.

…when my sanctuary is among them forevermore. (Ezekiel 37:28)

The words “among them” are a translation of the Hebrew word betokham (בתוכם), which also means “inside them” or “within them.” It indicates that the house of worship, the temple, is not a structure of bricks and mortar but rather a structure within the self, within one’s awareness, at the deepest level of one’s consciousness.

These two passages together give us a profound message, one that is found in the mystic traditions of all great religions: that the one who prays, the act of praying, the hall of prayer (the sanctuary) and the object of prayer are ultimately all one. The self does the praying, the self is the prayer, the self is the place where the prayer takes place and the self is also the object of the prayer.

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As the saying goes, “the Torah has seventy faces.” That is to say, each passage in the Torah can be interpreted in myriad of ways. We have derived an important lesson from Rabbi Elimelech’s commentary that the word “him” in the expression “Then Judah approached him” refers to God. Another profound lesson can be derived from the text if one assumes that indeed the “him” refers to Joseph, as the literal context would suggest.

Judah approaches Joseph and says, bi adoni, “my lord, you are within me.” Here the Torah teaches us the fundamental lesson of human relationship, i.e., that the highest form of communication is the recognition that one is not separate from the other, that the consciousness of both is one and therefore, fundamentally, the two are one.

Judah alludes to this truth of relationship a few verses down, as he continues his plea for the release of Benjamin, offering himself as a slave in his stead. The reason? Their old father, says Judah, loves his youngest son very deeply and the separation from him would be unbearable. The expression that Judah uses is “his soul is bound with his soul”, venafsho kshurah benafsho (וְנַפְשׁוֹ קְשׁוּרָה בְנַפְשׁוֹ:) (Genesis 44:30). Another way of translating it is “their souls are intertwined.” That is the most profound form of relationship: the connection is so deep that the two see their souls as one soul.

This is a fundamental lesson in Judaism, one what will be encountered later in the Torah in the famous dictum “Love your neighbor as yourself”, veahavta lere’akha kamocha (וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ) (Leviticus 19:18). One must love one’s neighbor as oneself because the neighbor is oneself. In the 20^th century, the Jewish German philosopher and noted Hassidic scholar Martin Buber applied this principle in his teaching about the highest form of communication and dialogue, which he referred to as the principle of “I-Thou.”

Buber observed that normally our communication with each other is what he called an “I-it” communication: I am the subject, while the other is an object, an “it”, whose “role” is to fulfill a need of mine. By its very nature, this mode of communication is based on separation and is confrontational, however civilized. But in “I-Thou” communication, there is no such separation because both parties are grounded in the realization that nafsho ksuhrah benafsho, their souls are intertwined and it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other starts. This higher form of communication is inherently free from conflict: when there is unity, there is no conflict. Communication then becomes a sacred act.

This may be the highest contribution of the Torah to life in the 21^st century: inspiring a different mode human interaction where the act of communication itself is the highest form of worship, of “approaching God” in the other. This theme will surely be visited in future posts on this blog.

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* As in the commentary on vayetze, here too one could show that this point can be found in all major traditions: from “The Kingdom of God is within you” in the New Testament (Luke 17:21) to the declaration of immediate closeness of God in the Qur’an “We are nearer to him [man] than his jugular vein” (Surah 50:16), through the Confucian quote”what the undeveloped man seeks is outside, what the advanced man seeks is within himself.”

** The recitation of scripture at the synagogue on Shabbat morning includes not only a parashah, a weekly Torah portion, but also a haftarah, a portion from the prophets section of the Hebrew Bible, generally one which has some thematic resemblance to that of the parashah.

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)