I remember you saying on a webinar several years ago that you defined a holy person as someone who does the right thing just because it is right and does not look for any reward by doing it.
I'll stand by that, Debbie, though it does beg the question of whether there is any distinction between being holy and being moral or ethical. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that being ethical is a minimum criterion. Psalm 24: "Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in God's holy place? One who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to deceit And has not sworn deceitfully."
Thanks, Sue. What you are pointing to is a thoroughly Jewish approach to sanctification: not neglecting or demeaning the mundane, but lifting it up. If you look at the rituals of the Shabbat table, you can see how many of them are focused on lifting up the mundane. Bread is bread, and if you lift it up, you get challah!
I have had an interest in Ethics for a long time but am new to Mussar ("Everyday Holiness" was a good introduction.) My question is how does Holiness (Kidushah) differ from Righteousness (Tzedakah)?
I am grateful to find your blog, Alan. This is exactly what I have been wanting to discern as I watch people respond and react to our times. How to be holy as only I can be in this time, and only you can be, and only you can be etc? How to see the holiness in what others do? How to be with what seems so absent of holiness. I look forward to this conversation with all who are along for the ride.
Thank you, Beulah. I will be sharing my own questions, searches and whatever shows up along the path. Part of me would like to sidestep the whole issue of holiness and focus instead on goodness, but the Torah does not say, “You shall be good” but “You shall be holy,” and so we find ourselves being led to step out of the familiar world of morality into the unfamiliar world that shimmers with the presence of the divine.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and for starting this blog, which I look forward to reading during and after Elul.
When I think about holiness, my connection to my grandson, who is only a few months old, came to mind. He is in what feels like a pure state of existence, and I want to protect him as much as possible. I wonder if that relationship shows what holiness can look or feel like, where the essence of our connection is pure love and appreciation, with mine being both conscious and subconscious, physical and spiritual. This baby and the relationship I am creating with him is a conduit for me to focus on giving purely from my own heart for someone else. That feels holy.
I began the blog by working into the topic of the “spiritual orphan” because it is my experience that most of us need first to recognize and acknowledge how cut off we have been from authentic Jewish spiritual sources. That may or may not be true for you, but I know it is the case for the majority everywhere in the post-Holocaust Jewish world (me included). Before we can start to try to gain some grasp of the holy, we need to clear our eyes because, again for most of us, we have not been prepared for that excursion.
I absolutely agree with you. I believe that my longing for an authentic Jewish spiritual experience is one of the reasons I made aliyah right after college. Now, many years later and no longer living in Israel, I am still looking for the way to be authentically, spitiually Jewish.
If you are still looking for the way to be authentically and spiritually Jewish, then you have found the path. Rabbi Yisrael Salanter made a wonderful statement, saying that “As long as one lives a life of calmness and tranquility in the service of God, it is clear that he is remote from true service.” Growth comes more in the searching than the finding. That’s not so comforting, but it is true.
As someone who is taking courses in the Mussar Institute as well as at other places, I can say that even once the search is over--what do I want to focus on--there is still so much searching. Just because the search has been narrowed, which feels like a relief, in no way means that the journey itself is over or that there is a satisfaction of a job well done (like baking a cake) but that narrowing down has been helpful in not feeling overwhelmed and then the usual giving up.
I have many of your books and so looking forward to the new one as well as this blog. My saying has always been, What I am is my gift from God, What I become is my gift to God. You put it beautifully, "I am a living soul and I am charged to be holy and absolutely everything else flows from that." Every day I ask the question, What can I give God today through my life? Thank you!
I have many of your books and looking forward to the new one and this blog. My saying has always been, "What I am is God's gift to me, What I become is my gift to God." You put it beautifully, "I am a living soul, charged to be holy and absolutely everything else flows from that." Everyday I ask the question, "God, what can I do for you today, through my life that you have given me? Thank you!
Dear Lydia. By definition, we can’t “give” anything to God, because what could God possibly lack? And the answer is, the only thing that is exclusively ours, which is our hearts. The Talmud makes that explicit “God wants the heart” [ Sanhedrin 106b]. The notion of service that defines our relationship to the divine (from one perspective) has to be understood as refining and elevating ourselves, which is how I understand “giving the heart.”
This is just lovely, and so needed in our fractured time and place.
I'm wondering if our common modern concept of holiness (goodiest?!) can be both help and hindrance when discussing kodesh.
If we think of it as separateness, singularity, being set asidedness, we reopen the question the word holiness already has an answer to: what is it we are set apart for?
In the Torah the One Above is loving, just, compassionate, but also injust, vengeful, and petty; so trying to be "like" leaves us picking and choosing among qualities, those we feel we should emulate, and those we decide we should not.
Am I just getting sidetracked with semantics here, thereby failing to deal with the real issue Elul puts before us?
I am chagrined that it has taken me two weeks to reply to your comment, Ilse. It has been a busy time, during which Bev and I shifted ourselves from Vancouver to Toronto where we will be staying for two months. Lots to do to get settled, especially with the Holy Days looming! And now that I am responding, it won’t be with a response! Not at this time. I’m working my way toward holiness in this blog but we aren’t near there yet. It is such an ephemeral, confounding topic that I feel the need to build a solid foundation before venturing into that territory. Please bear with me!
Hi Ilse. Good to connect with you again. Holiness is such a complex subject. When the Torah instructs us to be holy, the verse concludes with, "because I the Lord your God am holy." That's not such an obvious rationale for being holy, but it does tell us one important thing, which is that kedusha is a sublime quality of the divine. As such, we have to accept that it is beyond our ability to characterize. And yet we are stuck with the injunction: "You shall be holy." I've done a considerable amount of study in the sources and will have more to say later on. As will become even clearer in my next post, what I am doing right now is laying down the foundations on which my thought about holiness will stand.
Mussar stresses objectivity about oneself, so second opinions often become essential. Do you have a rabbi you can rely on as a personal guide? What qualities should such a person have?
I had a very special rabbi I relied on who died just over a year ago. And yet, at the same time, I have close friends who I rely on as well, so while I am bereft of my rebbe, I have plenty of second opinions (including my wife!).
In the month of Elul I have found that when I deeply draw on the strengths the rise up through gratitude I am develop a much broader view of where I am missing the mark. The little missteps in this area seem to illuminate the more significant ones. This always brings me back to the core of the aspect of my soul work that seems to keep me most grounded in holiness…
Thank you for the blog and an invite to chat a bit.
Hi Alan. I focus on gratitude during Elul. I use this middah as a way to reflect on where I have missed the mark in areas of my life. Where did I not appreciate all that I have been given? How did that lack of gratitude lead me to speak, or behave in a way that did not reflect my true self. I find that the missteps in life for me, often come when I let my guard down; when I forget that all that I have are gifts from Hashem and that I should strive to express my gratitude through my drive to lead a life of holiness…missteps occur. I hope I am making more sense.
Any side step to the negative is often seems to boil down to a loss of focus on wonders of what I have been given
Yes, I get it now. That "recognition of the good" [hakarat ha'tov] that you are describing is so crucial. My wife injured her leg and it was a choice whether to wallow in self-pity or recognize the extraordinary generosity of the volunteer first responders on this island where we are, who gave her excellent care, and the doctor, who came into the clinic on a Sunday evening to stitch her up, etc. One attitude opens the door to connecting to the divine source of kindness, and another slams it shut. Wishing you a productive Elul.
The short answer: because I don't have anything better to do
I remember you saying on a webinar several years ago that you defined a holy person as someone who does the right thing just because it is right and does not look for any reward by doing it.
I'll stand by that, Debbie, though it does beg the question of whether there is any distinction between being holy and being moral or ethical. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that being ethical is a minimum criterion. Psalm 24: "Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in God's holy place? One who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to deceit And has not sworn deceitfully."
Love the part about lifting up the mundane and making it holy. I look forward to your coming blogs.
Thanks, Sue. What you are pointing to is a thoroughly Jewish approach to sanctification: not neglecting or demeaning the mundane, but lifting it up. If you look at the rituals of the Shabbat table, you can see how many of them are focused on lifting up the mundane. Bread is bread, and if you lift it up, you get challah!
How does Holiness (Kedushah) differ from Righteousness (Tzedakah)?
I have had an interest in Ethics for a long time but am new to Mussar ("Everyday Holiness" was a good introduction.) My question is how does Holiness (Kidushah) differ from Righteousness (Tzedakah)?
I am grateful to find your blog, Alan. This is exactly what I have been wanting to discern as I watch people respond and react to our times. How to be holy as only I can be in this time, and only you can be, and only you can be etc? How to see the holiness in what others do? How to be with what seems so absent of holiness. I look forward to this conversation with all who are along for the ride.
Thank you, Beulah. I will be sharing my own questions, searches and whatever shows up along the path. Part of me would like to sidestep the whole issue of holiness and focus instead on goodness, but the Torah does not say, “You shall be good” but “You shall be holy,” and so we find ourselves being led to step out of the familiar world of morality into the unfamiliar world that shimmers with the presence of the divine.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and for starting this blog, which I look forward to reading during and after Elul.
When I think about holiness, my connection to my grandson, who is only a few months old, came to mind. He is in what feels like a pure state of existence, and I want to protect him as much as possible. I wonder if that relationship shows what holiness can look or feel like, where the essence of our connection is pure love and appreciation, with mine being both conscious and subconscious, physical and spiritual. This baby and the relationship I am creating with him is a conduit for me to focus on giving purely from my own heart for someone else. That feels holy.
I began the blog by working into the topic of the “spiritual orphan” because it is my experience that most of us need first to recognize and acknowledge how cut off we have been from authentic Jewish spiritual sources. That may or may not be true for you, but I know it is the case for the majority everywhere in the post-Holocaust Jewish world (me included). Before we can start to try to gain some grasp of the holy, we need to clear our eyes because, again for most of us, we have not been prepared for that excursion.
I absolutely agree with you. I believe that my longing for an authentic Jewish spiritual experience is one of the reasons I made aliyah right after college. Now, many years later and no longer living in Israel, I am still looking for the way to be authentically, spitiually Jewish.
If you are still looking for the way to be authentically and spiritually Jewish, then you have found the path. Rabbi Yisrael Salanter made a wonderful statement, saying that “As long as one lives a life of calmness and tranquility in the service of God, it is clear that he is remote from true service.” Growth comes more in the searching than the finding. That’s not so comforting, but it is true.
As someone who is taking courses in the Mussar Institute as well as at other places, I can say that even once the search is over--what do I want to focus on--there is still so much searching. Just because the search has been narrowed, which feels like a relief, in no way means that the journey itself is over or that there is a satisfaction of a job well done (like baking a cake) but that narrowing down has been helpful in not feeling overwhelmed and then the usual giving up.
I have many of your books and so looking forward to the new one as well as this blog. My saying has always been, What I am is my gift from God, What I become is my gift to God. You put it beautifully, "I am a living soul and I am charged to be holy and absolutely everything else flows from that." Every day I ask the question, What can I give God today through my life? Thank you!
I have many of your books and looking forward to the new one and this blog. My saying has always been, "What I am is God's gift to me, What I become is my gift to God." You put it beautifully, "I am a living soul, charged to be holy and absolutely everything else flows from that." Everyday I ask the question, "God, what can I do for you today, through my life that you have given me? Thank you!
Dear Lydia. By definition, we can’t “give” anything to God, because what could God possibly lack? And the answer is, the only thing that is exclusively ours, which is our hearts. The Talmud makes that explicit “God wants the heart” [ Sanhedrin 106b]. The notion of service that defines our relationship to the divine (from one perspective) has to be understood as refining and elevating ourselves, which is how I understand “giving the heart.”
Hello, Alan
This is just lovely, and so needed in our fractured time and place.
I'm wondering if our common modern concept of holiness (goodiest?!) can be both help and hindrance when discussing kodesh.
If we think of it as separateness, singularity, being set asidedness, we reopen the question the word holiness already has an answer to: what is it we are set apart for?
In the Torah the One Above is loving, just, compassionate, but also injust, vengeful, and petty; so trying to be "like" leaves us picking and choosing among qualities, those we feel we should emulate, and those we decide we should not.
Am I just getting sidetracked with semantics here, thereby failing to deal with the real issue Elul puts before us?
ilse
I am chagrined that it has taken me two weeks to reply to your comment, Ilse. It has been a busy time, during which Bev and I shifted ourselves from Vancouver to Toronto where we will be staying for two months. Lots to do to get settled, especially with the Holy Days looming! And now that I am responding, it won’t be with a response! Not at this time. I’m working my way toward holiness in this blog but we aren’t near there yet. It is such an ephemeral, confounding topic that I feel the need to build a solid foundation before venturing into that territory. Please bear with me!
Hi Ilse. Good to connect with you again. Holiness is such a complex subject. When the Torah instructs us to be holy, the verse concludes with, "because I the Lord your God am holy." That's not such an obvious rationale for being holy, but it does tell us one important thing, which is that kedusha is a sublime quality of the divine. As such, we have to accept that it is beyond our ability to characterize. And yet we are stuck with the injunction: "You shall be holy." I've done a considerable amount of study in the sources and will have more to say later on. As will become even clearer in my next post, what I am doing right now is laying down the foundations on which my thought about holiness will stand.
Thank you. Looking forward... Gut shabbos
Mussar stresses objectivity about oneself, so second opinions often become essential. Do you have a rabbi you can rely on as a personal guide? What qualities should such a person have?
I had a very special rabbi I relied on who died just over a year ago. And yet, at the same time, I have close friends who I rely on as well, so while I am bereft of my rebbe, I have plenty of second opinions (including my wife!).
In the month of Elul I have found that when I deeply draw on the strengths the rise up through gratitude I am develop a much broader view of where I am missing the mark. The little missteps in this area seem to illuminate the more significant ones. This always brings me back to the core of the aspect of my soul work that seems to keep me most grounded in holiness…
Thank you for the blog and an invite to chat a bit.
Hi Cyndee. I'd like to understand and learn from what you are saying. Can you clarify the first sentence? Thanks. And good to chat!
Hi Alan. I focus on gratitude during Elul. I use this middah as a way to reflect on where I have missed the mark in areas of my life. Where did I not appreciate all that I have been given? How did that lack of gratitude lead me to speak, or behave in a way that did not reflect my true self. I find that the missteps in life for me, often come when I let my guard down; when I forget that all that I have are gifts from Hashem and that I should strive to express my gratitude through my drive to lead a life of holiness…missteps occur. I hope I am making more sense.
Any side step to the negative is often seems to boil down to a loss of focus on wonders of what I have been given
Yes, I get it now. That "recognition of the good" [hakarat ha'tov] that you are describing is so crucial. My wife injured her leg and it was a choice whether to wallow in self-pity or recognize the extraordinary generosity of the volunteer first responders on this island where we are, who gave her excellent care, and the doctor, who came into the clinic on a Sunday evening to stitch her up, etc. One attitude opens the door to connecting to the divine source of kindness, and another slams it shut. Wishing you a productive Elul.
Thank you Alan for asking for clarity, it helps me to hone my thoughts, which are sometimes jumbled. Wishing you a meaningful
Elul. I am always a faithful student of your teaching, you give things over in a way that resonates for me. B’shalom…
Thanks for this post and I am looking forward to many more!!
Coming soon!
I’m hungry for more! Welcome to Substack.
Thanks. I hope to "feed" the blog again in a few days.
כול הכבוד -
Looking forward to this dialogue.
Thanks, Jamie. Good to meet you here.
Now I have a whole new approach to bedmaking. Thank you.
And you thought it was just making the bed!