Holy Ground

Heard at a Shabbat table:

There was once a community that was in deep trouble. They were shrinking, they were impoverished, they couldn't get along. No one would step up to leadership and if they did they would be destroyed by those who criticized them. Clearly it was a community heading downhill.

This little town had some self awareness about their predicament so they invited a famous rabbi to come and speak with them. However after meeting with them, the rabbi did not have a solution, not to their shrinking population, not to their poverty, not to their dysfunctional communal structure. When he left the people were even more discouraged than before, except that just as he was about to go, someone heard him say, that one of the 36 righteous, one of the lamedvavniks upon which the world depends, lived in this little town. Now maybe he said efsher, perhaps one of the lamedvavniks lived in this town, no matter, word began to spread and slowly, slowly things began to change. Instead of treating each other roughly, people became a little bit more courteous - after all you wouldn't want to be rude to a lamedvavnik. They began to listen to each other, they were more willing to give each other the benefit of the doubt- after all the motivations of a lamedvavnik would certainly be kindly. Slowly the town got cleaned up, people began supporting each other, the economy improved, and other people passing through found it a pleasant community and decided to settle there. Looking back the people wondered. The rabbi had done nothing and yet accomplished a great deal. All these changes because of an efshar, a perhaps, a hint to remember-that every spot on earth is holy ground.

Holiness

Holiness does not wink at us from “beyond” like some mysterious star that sparkles in the distant heavens, but appears in our actual, very real lives. “And one called to the other and said: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; and the whole earth is full of His glory.” - Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, "Halakhic Man"

Much to learn

There is much that philosophy could learn from the Bible. To the philosopher the idea of the good is the most exulted idea. But to the Bible the idea of the good is penultimate; it cannot exist without the holy. The good is the base, the holy is the summit. Things created in six days He considered good, the seventh day He made holy.

To Jewish piety the ultimate human dichotomy is not that of mind and matter but that of sacred and profane. We have known profanity too long and have become accustomed to think that the soul is an automation. The law of the Sabbath tries to direct the body and the mind to the dimension of the holy. It tries to teach us that man stands not only in a relation to nature but in a relation also to the creator of nature.

What is the Sabbath? Spirit in the form of time. With our bodies we belong to space; our spirit, our souls, soar to eternity, aspire to the holy. The Sabbath is an ascent to the summit. It gives us the opportunity to sanctify time, to raise the good to the level of the holy, to behold the holy by abstaining from profanity.

Abraham J. Heschel, The Sabbath, p.97

holy seperate

In Judaism kadosh, holy, means separation. To sanctify is to separate. Why? Because when we separate, we create order. We defeat chaos. We give everything and everyone their space. I am I and not you. You are you and not I. Once we respect our difference and distance, then we can join without doing damage to one another...The most beautiful symbol of the problem and its resolution is the ceremony of havdalah at the end of Shabbat and especially the havdalah candle. The wicks are separate but the flame they make is joined. So it is between husband and wife. So it is between parent and child. And so it is, or should be, between brothers.

Rabbi J. Sacks