KEDOSHIM: Thinking Straight

This dvar Torah is written leIlui Nishmat Micki Neumann z"l, a person whose uprightness, kindness, and dedication to Torah and mitzvot will continue to inspire us long after his sudden and tragic passing.
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Business Contracts 101


By way of introduction, I would like to start with a lesson in business that I learned from my father, which is really a cornerstone lesson in all of life:

...Almost everything critical that you will need to know about a potential partner in any future venture can be discerned through the process of establishing a contract with him.  An individual who strikes up a thick packet of a contract with pages upon pages of intricate, jargon-laden stipulations and conditions should smell to you like trouble... 

(paraphrased)

Why?  Maybe he's just being cautious -- trying to dot his i's and cross his t's...


Even for those of you for whom the above is intuitively true, bear with us as we work through it step by step.


People naturally do not like rules.  To be more specific, children do not like rules -- so too the child in us.  Rules are seen as restrictive and oppressive, and in a very true sense, they are.  They limit the actions that can be taken.  I still remember, with now-buried disdain, the lifeguards that would whistle aggressively at me as my excited poolside walk turned into a brisk semi-jog.  For a child on a summer day, that lifeguard looked tyrannical from down below in his white wooden throne behind his large mirrored sunglasses.  


Of course, the rule prohibiting running was utterly meaningless to me until on one overly zealous sprint to the diving board I scraped my toe pretty badly.  At which point, I had to go to the nurse, and get bandaged up, and my swimming for the day was over.  As we grow up, we realize that there is such a thing as a "good rule," i.e. one which although restrictive in the short term, in the long term, allows us the most freedom.  


This is all well and good until two people have to agree on mutually binding rules, and what one defines as a "good rule" the other defines as a "bad rule."  And herein we can see the beginnings of what makes writing contracts complicated.


Let's compound this complication.  As our childhood aversion to rules intermingles with our developing adult brains, what is produced is an extraordinary genius for getting around rules.  In a twist of irony, the enactment of a new law can actually generate an explosion of ingenuity in crime.  Perhaps the most vibrant example of this is the aftermath of the 1919 passing of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution prohibiting "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors."  It took only a matter of months before the institution of organized crime in America grew to the mythical proportions it reached in the 1920's, breeding criminal minds of the likes of Al Capone, Bonnie & Clyde and John Dillinger.    


Hear this because it is imperceptibly deep: The world is a big place and the human mind and desire are tremendously powerful things.  In this light, every rule is just a finite road block waiting to be climbed or vaulted over, circumvented, and dug beneath.


So now, as your potential business partner approaches you with his initial draft of the contract in hand, so thick that no single man-made stapler can bind it together, you may want to ask yourself: why did this guy feel the need to include so many rules?  How many possible contract-breaching scenarios did he have to think up in order to write this?  If regardless, a signature is only as good as the one who signed it, wouldn't you rather look for a partner who in principle, is upright, honest and trustworthy?  


It's obvious, but let's just say it: an virtuous partner with fewer rules would be infinitely preferable to a rotten partner with all the statutes, limitations, stipulations, corollaries and sub-corollaries under the sun.          


"Be Kadosh."


We are now primed to open up the opening of this week's parsha:

 וַיְדַבֵּר ה` אֶל מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר: דַּבֵּר אֶל כָּל עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי ה` אֱלֹקיכֶם  

"Hashem spoke to Moshe [to say]: Speak to the entire people of the Children of Israel and say to them, 'Be Kedoshim [Holy] because I, Hashem your G!d am Kadosh.' "

Just as a first reaction: this is a bit vague, no?  

I mean, what exactly is Hashem trying to communicate here?  Be holy?  We have already received 613 mitzvot delineating what a "holy life" looks like.  It seems pretty straightforward -- just follow the instruction manual...  

     ...and what is "holy" anyway?  Should we run off to monasteries and mountaintops, become celibate, and learn to subsist on minimal calories?

Enter the Ramban with a foundation for our basic Jewish education -- our ears now perked to hear his message:

"...the Torah cautioned [us] against illicit sexual relationships and forbidden foods, and permitted a man to have relations with his wife, as well as the eating of meat [drinking of] wine.  As such, a passion-driven individual will find room to be steeped in sex...a wine drunkard and gluttonous meat-eater, who says whatever disgusting thing he feels like [saying], all of which is not [explicitly] prohibited in the Torah, and there we have it: a Scoundrel with the Torah's Permission.  Therefore, the verse comes, after listing the absolute [black and white] prohibitions, and commands a general principle..."

On any other day, we would have been aghast, "What?  The Torah, in theory, could permit such a thing?  A person can be 'religious' and still do terrible things?"

We should, however, at least at this stage, discern the nuance in the Ramban's words.  The "Torah's Permission" is delicately tongue-in-cheek.  This guy we're speaking about would actually be capable of permitting even worse things if he put his Talmudic legal skills to work (im)properly -- finding loopholes and loop-di-loops to do whatever he darned pleased.

Comes the Torah and says: קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ Be Kadoshim.  The Torah is not a checklist!  Nor is the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law).  Nor the Mishna Brura (modern commentary on the Shulchan Aruch).  Nor any expanded and annotated meta-commentary you may find on the Mishna Brura.  If we see mitzvot only as a isolated rules and obligations, our selfish desires powered by our imaginations will discover all sorts of creative ways around them, no matter how detailed they get, and we will end up so close but so so far.  

Torah is life, and mitzvot are paths towards resembling Hashem and thereby coming close to Him -- כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי ה' אֱלֹהֵיכֶם  Because I, Hashem your G!d am Kadosh.

Thinking Straight

Without going into the precise definition of "Kedusha," we should finish with a word on what the road towards Kedusha entails.  

We may have thought that the path of holiness is reserved for those select few mountain-top-sitting types.  To this the Alm!ghty says to Moshe, דַּבֵּר אֶל כָּל עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל "Speak to the entire people of the children of Israel, and say to them,"  קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ "Be Kadoshim."    

Why should this be true?

Let me ask you a question:

If G!d gave you a pen and the following on a piece of paper

What would you think you were supposed to do?

If you woke up one day with amnesia, Heaven forbid, and find yourself in a dark cave illuminated by a lamp attached to a helmet on your head, with a pick-axe in hand, and sparkling diamonds encrusted in the rock in front of you, what do you think your job is?

If after a large meal, your wife is washing dishes as you read the newspaper, and she coughs more emphatically than normal, what do you think she is subtly asking you to do?

Rav Moshe Chayim Luzzato in the Mesilat Yesharim illuminates us to the engine trait in a person that powers his way to Kedusha.  A person who possesses it is called a ישר "Yashar." He sees what he has יש: an almost-completed circle, the tools and skills to mine diamonds, a wife who needs help, and he fills the gap (the letter ר always connotes a movement and expression, as in רץ).  Literally, "Yashar" means "straight," without unnecessary deviations and distortions.  

It is the Yashar who will look at the many mitvot in the Torah and draw out their logical implications as they obligate him in his unique set of circumstances, skills, and interests.

What is explicit in the Torah and Halacha is what every person must do equally, however, going beyond the letter of the law -- finding one's balance within the palate of colors in Torah, is unique to every individual (see Mesilat Yesharim, ch. 18).  Fasting on any given Monday, for one person, may bring him to spiritual heights, but for another, it may ruin his day.  Learning Torah is a great thing, but if you try to force the wrong person to stay glued to his chair 15 hours a day learning Gemara, it will break him, not build him.  

The Yashar will see how he can do his best in such a way that he can say, "this is what Hashem really wants from me."  In contrast, the non-Yashar will just try to "get by," distorting the mitzvot to mean whatever they have to mean in order to fit his personal agenda.

It is this straight-thinking that is at the heart of every Jew who stood gathered to hear these words from Moshe (see the Alshich haKadosh).  

What we call "conscience" "innate ethics" "uprightness" -- these are not meaningless in light of the Torah's rules.  Quite the contrary -- it is the straight thinking we have inside ourselves -- our deep-rooted sense of obligation and mission to try and "do good" in this world that must be applied through the Torah's guidance for us to each find our unique but united path to Hashem, living up to our name ישראל.*      

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*The centrality of Yashrut to Torah living is fleshed out further in last year's piece on Lech Lecha.