To Be Holy
“You shall be holy, for I the L-rd, your G-d, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). What is this holiness? What is it and how does one achieve it?
Holiness – the purpose of man – is aimed at taking the ego and self-centeredness that is at the root of all ugliness and evil, and then harnessing it and submitting it to the discipline of G-d. All that is evil in the world occurs because of the selfishness of man and his refusal to sublimate his own desires and interests to goodness and morality. One steals because he places his own desire for money over the moral imperative; one murders for the same reason. The “I” that is within man, grown wild and unharnessed, can destroy a world.
We live in a world that revels in “freedom,” in the right to do what we wish. Rights and freedom have become the watchwords of our times, and they grow like some cancerous disease into license and moral anarchy. For the Jew there can be no such thing. For the Jew there can only be the yoke of the heavenly kingdom.
The yoke of the heavenly kingdom! The heavy and beautiful yoke, the difficult but magnificent burden that makes the Jew strong through obedience and free through submission. “There is no freedom except through the engraved tablets of the Law,” say the Rabbis (Pirkei Avot 6:2). The Jew who thinks he has freedom because he can do whatever he wishes, with license and no bounds to his desires, is not free but rather a slave to his passions and desires. He cannot stop, he cannot overcome his ego and wants, he cannot bring his will to bear. He is a slave of materialism and desire.
Such a person, though he begins by declaring his right to do all things only if he harms no one else, must in the end reach the point where he has become an addict to his own needs and desires, weak and incapable of struggling against them. Then, when it comes to a choice between his own needs and the moral rights of others, he will turn on the others with savagery and determination, all the while rationalizing away his actions.
Judaism demands limitation, discipline, and subordination of the ego, self-centeredness, and freedom of man because it declares clearly that “unto the L-rd is the earth and all that it contains” (Psalms 24:1). There is no such thing as man’s ownership of anything on this earth. He is a tenant, allowed to use the property of the Almighty on definite conditions, all of which underline the concept of admitting that G-d is the creator and owner of all that exists. The Jew may eat bread – but the precondition is the blessing. He may earn money – but he must give a tithe, ten percent, to the poor. His property is limited and hobbled because it is not his property. And the concept extends to his wealth and his body. A person cannot do with his wealth as he sees fit, nor use or abuse his body as he chooses. An abortion is murder; the body does not belong to the woman. Suicide is a sin because man has a role to play that he cannot escape, and his life is not his own to do with as he sees fit.
The purpose of the obligation to feel the pain of the oppressed and the hunger of the needy and to give of one’s property and one’s time to soothe and ease their wants is not so much to have the needy take. More important, it is for the Jew to learn to give. The Jew who gives admits that his wealth is not his; he cries out his faith that the L-rd will fill and replenish his own wants, and he smashes his selfish nature that cries out: It is mine!
Nothing less than making man good will make the world good; nothing less than a holy human race will make a world holy. It is an illusion to believe that one can make a people better by changing the form of government. No change in the system of society will make that society better, for there is no such thing as “government” or “society.” There are only the individuals who comprise the government or the society, and the whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts. If the parts are rotten and corrupt, the whole must emerge the same. If the people are selfish and egotistical, society will emerge the same, regardless of the form of government that it uses.
An ugly world will never be made beautiful by attacking the symptoms. It is man himself who must be changed and made better. Then and only then can the world which he makes up become better, too. The holiness of the human being guarantees the holiness and beauty of his world. Even if this is a long and difficult process, it is the only way.
The Jewish Press, 1978