Embracing Judaism ✡: LOVE

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Thursday, March 21, 2013

Pursuing Holiness & Love Your Neighbor

Chumash Themes #16: Pursuing Holiness & Love Your Neighbor
by Rabbi Zave Rudman

The entire nation gathers to hear about holiness.

Leviticus chapter 19

Introduction

In Leviticus 19:2, Moses is commanded: "Speak to entire congregation of Israel, and command them to be Holy – since I, God, am also holy." This gathering was an unusual event, and prompts us to consider a number of questions:

Why does the commandment to be holy require that the entire nation gather to hear it?
The commandments that follow are mostly regarding interpersonal relations. Why are these commandments holy? Doesn't holiness relate more to things like the Temple service?
What exactly is this command to "be holy"? Are we expected to be holy like God, a seeming impossibility?

Gathered Together

The commentators offer three beautiful explanations why this "holy mitzvah" needed to be taught while the entire Jewish people were gathered together.

Rashi explains: Since the main body of the Torah is included in this section and it applies to everyone without exception, this section was said to the entire nation. We need to understand that holiness applies not only to select individuals on a high level, but even to the simplest Jew. We all have to aspire to holiness, and we all can attain it. This follows the general principle that God only commands something that we are capable of fulfilling.¹ Failure comes in because we underestimate our abilities.
This section is taught when everyone is together, to teach us that a Jew can attain true holiness only if he connects himself to the Jewish people.
You do not have to separate yourself from society and go meditate in a forest to become holy. These mitzvot are not for angels. They are mainly interpersonal commandments, such as honoring parents, feeding the poor, not slandering, and not hating in our heart. Being a contributing part of society is a personal obligation. Everyone should aspire to elevate himself, and at the same time aspires to elevate the community. That's why the command to be holy, kedoshim t'hiyu – is written in the plural.
Lets step back and ask a more fundamental question: How is a human being to acquire holiness? Isn't that reserved for the realm of angels?

The Ramchal, in his classic work of Jewish ethics, Mesilat Yesharim,² explains: Holiness is a very high level that we could not attain on our own. We begin to make an effort – and then God gives it to us as a gift. You can only go so far, and God does the rest.
Therefore, these mitzvot need to be taught to the entire community. As individuals, we don't deserve God's most elevated gifts. Rather, it is only through the power of Jewish unity that God will bring us to a point of true fulfillment. This is indicated in the prelude to the Ten Commandments, "And you shall be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:6).

Definition of ‘Holy’

The two classical Torah commentators, Rashi and Ramban (Nachmanides), offer a difference of opinion on what it means to be holy.
Rashi says that in order to be holy you have to stay away from forbidden actions. That is achieved not just by refraining from those actions, but also by constructing fences to not stray too close to spiritual dangers. A person who respects these "fences" is on the path to holiness. And, if the boundaries are broken, that is the opposite of holiness.
One example is the idea of Yichud, the Jewish prohibition against being secluded in a private area with certain members of the opposite gender. How many times have we heard of one spouse, for example, who was working late on a project with a colleague (of the opposite sex) and gotten into a problematic situation that threatened to destroy their marriage? That's why the Sages instituted the laws of Yichud, as a fence against such episodes.³
Ramban disagrees and says that the key to holiness is to separate even from activities that are technically permitted! For example, while there is no Torah law against drinking wine, a person can go so overboard that he becomes what Ramban describes as a "scoundrel within the confines of Torah." Similarly, a person who eats only kosher food could still be disgusting in the eyes of the Torah if he eats like a glutton. The definition of holiness, says Ramban, is to maintain moderation even in things permitted.
Both of these approaches are obviously correct. On one hand, a person needs a healthy respect for what is forbidden: Just as you would erect a fence to keep away from a physical danger (e.g. an open pit), so too we respect the severity of Torah prohibitions by constructing fences. And in addition, we increase our sensitivity to God-like behavior by moderating our physical consumptions. In this way, all our actions carry a refined sense of holiness.

How Much Holiness?

How much holiness should a person strive to attain?
Actually, the command to be holy is unquantifiable, and in a certain way this is more difficult than a clear-cut command. For after all, how is one to measure whether he is living up to the right “standard of holiness"?
The answer is as we said before: This commandment is given to the entire community. If your being holy enhances your connection to the community, then you are behaving correctly. But if it causes a separation between you and those around you, that is incorrect. Our actions, provided they are within the confines of Jewish law, should always be gauged by what will bring the biggest Kiddush Hashem, sanctification of God’s Holy Name.
This idea is illustrated by the Holy Ark which contained the Tablets of the Ten Commandments. This Ark was a square box made of wood, covered with pure gold from the inside and from the outside.⁴ But if the Ark is covered with gold both on the inside and the outside, then what need is there at all for the shell to be made out of wood?! Why not simply make the ark one solid piece of gold? The commentaries explain that case, the Ark will be too heavy for others to carry. And this teaches us that a person should not adhere to a standard of holiness that could have a negative effect on the community.
An extension of this is the idea that in performing any action – either mundane or a mitzvah – we should have the intention of doing it in a holy way. The purpose of this world is that it should cause us to cling to God, not for our own pleasure. Even when I am performing a mitzvah that includes physical pleasure, such as Shabbat or even marital relations, we are supposed to enjoy ourselves, but never lose sight of the fact that God is inextricably bound to this pleasure.
If a person designates his existence for a higher purpose, rather than focusing on himself, than even what he does do for himself is holy. In that way he can maximize the power of those physical pleasures.

Future Tense

There is another question that can be raised: Why is this command stated in the future tense, you command to be holy – kedoshim t'hiyu – rather than in the present tense like most other commands?
This teaches that this mitzvah has no limits. Every level you reach in holiness is just a stepping stone to the next higher level. We should never be complacent in thinking that we have reached perfection in the present. There is no limit to God's holiness, and as we are created in the image of God, we are meant to emulate that holiness.⁵
A person may, for example, keep kosher inside the home but eat in non-kosher restaurants. While keeping a kosher home is a big commitment, whose importance cannot be minimized, the question is: Does the person recognize that this is one stage that must lead to a greater commitment? Or does the person view this as a plateau, a stopping-point where, “I am comfortable just where I am and feel no need to grow further”?
This differing philosophy represents a key difference between Torah Judaism and other streams of Jewish thought. Are we constantly striving to fulfill all of the 613 mitzvot in their ideal way, or have we established a limit, a comfort level, beyond which we feel no need to reach beyond.

Central Idea

Notice that Leviticus chapter 19 contains many commands in the realm of interpersonal relationships – e.g. love your neighbor, don’t take revenge, etc. Holiness is not just between myself and God.
This is illustrated by the well-known Gemara⁶ about someone who wanted to convert and asked to learn the entire Torah while standing on one foot. In other words, he wanted to know the one central idea that represents the whole torah. The great sage Hillel answered him, "That which you dislike, don't do to your friend.”

Another way of understanding why “be holy” is written in the future tense is that it is not just a command, but a promise and encouragement that despite the difficulties and ups and downs, we will be holy. There is an internal, eternal holiness of the Jewish people that remains, even if we don't always express it on the outside.
This explains the phenomena of people who seem to be completely disconnected from the Jewish nation, and suddenly finding their way home again. Soviet Jewry is a classic example. They were seemingly completely assimilated and unconnected, having been trapped behind an iron curtain for two generations – with no Jewish education or leadership. The wake of the Six Day War brought a spontaneous outbreak of Jewish identity and joy. This began the movement of the refuseniks, typified by Natan Sharansky, and ultimately the great immigration of Russian Jews to Israel and their reattachment to the Jewish people.
This is also the individual spark of Judaism, known as the “Pintele Yid,” which explains the popularity of the Baal Teshuva movement. Literally tens of thousands of assimilated Jews have made their way back to full Torah observance. There is no rational way to explain it.
As a resident of Jerusalem, I frequently visit the Western Wall, where I am constantly approached by people, asking deep and searching questions. They explain: “Somewhere deep inside, I feel connected here.”
At that gathering thousands of years ago, every Jewish soul was told: “You will be holy.” There is a spark of holiness in every Jews, and even if we do not see it, it is there, dormant, waiting to be kindled.

Pieces of the Same Soul

Midrash Tanchuma (Vezot HaBracha 4)
Chapter 26
Talmud – Kiddushin 80b. There are many details of these laws; see Even Ha’ezer Ch. 22
Exodus 25:11
Deut. 28:9
Shabbat 31

This article can also be read at: http://www.aish.com/jl/b/chumash/Chumash-Themes-16-Pursuing-Holiness--Love-Your-Neighbor.html

Friday, January 11, 2013

Breslov Repair Kit: True Love: "All you need is love."

Breslov Repair Kit: True Love

by Chaya Rivka Zwolinski

…the Rebbe said, “Even when I am not worthy of serving G-d, I am satisfied to let another serve Him. This is a very important thing to grasp.

I heard this from the Rebbe’s own lips and it seems obvious to me. Even though I may not be worthy, I still long for everyone to be truly righteous. I would like nothing better than for all my friends to be great Tzadikim. This would be my greatest expression of love and friendship.

This is how you must love your fellow man. You should want him to attain his true goal in life as ordained by G-d’s goodness. This is true Jewish love.—Rabbi Nachman’s Wisdom, BRI

All you need is love.—John Lennon, The Beatles

Is Love A Feeling?

The Shma, an essential Jewish prayer which affirms our personal (and our people’s) connection to Hashem, affirms the fact that He is all, everything, one. It also commands us to love G-d with all our soul, heart, and might.

Those who grew up ingrained with non-Jewish beliefs might find this odd or counterintuitive. Isn’t love a feeling? How can you command someone to feel something?

But in Judaism love is far more than a feeling. Love means that you must wrestle with, subdue, transform, or rise above the part of you which pulls you away from G-dliness. This part is called the “yetzer hara” or evil inclination.

Whether your negative impulses take the form of actions, speech, thoughts, or feelings, Judaism tells us that we actually are able to de-emphasize the less positive, darker part of ourselves, and infuse ourselves with light and joy and love.

In Judaism, love must lead to action. In Judaism love does mean having to say you’re sorry (at least sometimes). With practice, positivity snowballs and we’re able to banish painful feelings and impulses.

Most psychologists would disagree.

The Age of Feelings

In the secular world, especially since the 1960s, all feelings, including anger, hatred, jealousy, and so on, are considered normal and healthy. We should experience all these feelings, so they say, because they are authentic. Authenticity is very important in the age of feelings.

Not only are hatred, anger, and so on considered authentic and normal, but some psychologists encourage people to explore these painful feelings. In some cases, therapists encourage people to re-experience these feelings over and again, via talk-therapy (and talk-shows.)

Now, of course suppression (burying or ignoring) all painful feelings is not healthy. There are times when each of us must talk about what is bothering us. In some cases, emotional injury is so great that processing (by talking about) the pain is very healing.

But, there seems to be a dangerous phenomenon in modern psychotherapy which is supported by the media. This phenomenon encourages people to repeatedly focus intently on what’s paining them, so much so that they actually increase their negative feelings instead of relieving them.

By surrendering to negative feelings, by venting over and over again, you may be allowing these feelings to spiral out of control. Then, the feelings control you.

This, of course, is not healthy for body, mind or soul.

True Love

It’s interesting that the negative feelings we have about others (and sometimes ourselves), such as anger, hatred, and jealousy are all the opposite of one feeling: love.

(Not the popular version of love, which is really romantic love. That kind of love is really desire, not love.)

We’re talking about true love.

True Jewish love, according to Rebbe Nachman, isn’t about satisfying your own desires by having someone else fulfill them. True Jewish love is about having the desire to see someone else fulfilled.

For Rebbe Nachman, praying for someone else to grow spiritually, even if our own spiritual achievements pale in comparison, is the essence of love.

The Rebbe teaches us that Jews don’t fall in love, we rise in love.

Love is something to be lived up to, and there is simply no secular counterpart.

To the Rebbe, the highest, truest, love is love that cannot coexist with overt or hidden hatred, resentment, anger, or especially envy and jealousy.

Envy is the desire to possess something someone else has. Jealousy is the fear that someone else might take something away from you. Both display a lack of emunah, faith.

Hashem gives each person exactly what he or she needs in order to complete their mission here on earth and if you wish you had what someone else has, or wish that they didn’t have it at all, that means emunah is lacking.

Do I Want Everyone To Be A Tzaddik?

But, we’re human. We have twinges of envy and jealousy and sometimes mixtures of the two. She’s more popular, he’s richer. They’ve got straight-A children; that couple seems happier than us. His products sell more (maybe there won’t be enough customers for mine!); my students look up to her more than me (this makes me inferior), and so on.

The Rebbe tells us that we are not only capable of conquering these feelings, we are capable of much, much more.

But what about spiritual envy or jealousy? Can we have enough strength of character to not be jealous, to even rejoice when someone else achieves a level of spiritual success beyond our own?

In order for us to truly have the kind of love the Rebbe talks about, we have to the love which desires that other people, even everyone we know, will become spiritually great. Even if we’re not! That is a deep, true love indeed. And that’s the love the Rebbe calls true Jewish love.

It’s also the ultimate love, the love that feels no pangs at all even if we’re the only one left on earth who isn’t a tzaddik!

source: http://breslov.org/breslov-repair-kit-true-love/

Saturday, August 4, 2012

God is everything and everything is God. Pt 1.

Many people think about Kabbalah as a very difficult, complicated wisdom whose subject matter is mysterious and indefinable. Open up the main Kabbalist textbook, the Talmud Eser HaSefirot, and you will be confronted with lengthy descriptions of mysterious spiritual essences such as Sefirot, Partzufim, and worlds. Or take a look at Kabbalah's fundamental text—The Book of Zohar, and you will find beautiful, albeit incomprehensible verses, such as "The rose among the thorns," or "That hall has many hidden treasures one upon the other. In that hall there are 50 closed gates that are meant to block access to the Light."

But what is the meaning of all this? If Kabbalah is a wisdom that has been scrutinized for millennia, then there must be a simple, sensible explanation to its content. And in fact—there is.

Until recently, Kabbalists were not eager to give this explanation to just anyone, and had carefully guarded the essence of Kabbalah. Today, however, a new era in Kabbalah has arrived and Kabbalists are openly offering us the simple, straightforward explanation of what Kabbalah is about: learning to implement the spiritual principle of "loving others as you love yourself."

The more one studies the works of Kabbalists, the more one realizes that they only speak about this one thing: how to attain true love for one's neighbor. This thought of "loving thy neighbor" is interwoven throughout every Kabbalistic composition ever written. All the complex terminology, all the diagrams and formulas that fill the books, are explanations of this one principle. The terms and diagrams represent vectors and forces, which in turn express feelings, sensations, desires, and the relationships between all of us.

But in Kabbalah, one does not seek to realize the principle of "love thy neighbor" for its own sake. Rather, this is done for a higher purpose—to feel the Creator, who is defined as Nature’s all-inclusive force of unconditional love. Hence, other people and the love you develop for them are all but a means to attain unity with the Creator—the quality of love.

This is also the reason that in Kabbalah, "loving others" is not just empty words, which we usually say carelessly, and immediately go back to our selfish concerns. Many people and methods also speak about "loving others," but experience shows that relating to other purely by this principle is impossible no matter how hard we try.

This is where the method of Kabbalah differs from all other methods: It gives the average person in our world the ability to develop the quality of absolute love—known as the Creator. Kabbalah teaches a person how to perceive the whole of humanity not as bodies, but as souls, and thus reveal that we are all interconnected. Only the revelation of this interconnection among us really enables people to start loving others.

However, without the exalted purpose of feeling the Creator—the sensation of absolute love, eternal existence, and perfection, one would never feel that he needs to feel the connection to others. But once a person sees that by loving them and bestowing upon them, he will attain a higher spiritual sensation, the Creator, then he begins seeing others in an entirely different way. He sees that the people around him are there for a purpose, that they are a means one has to work with in order to attain the level of the Creator—the level of love and bestowal.

On later stages of spiritual development with the method of Kabbalah, you discover even greater truths: that other people are not just a means to attain the Creator. They are all actually parts of you—precisely the parts of you that allow you to feel spiritual sensations of perfection and eternity.

source: http://www.inner.org