Holiness Is in the Living: Or, Doing & Praying Can Be Transcendent

Shocking to acknowledge: I cannot change the world. As much as I would like to stop Jew hatred with love and a few Tikkun Olam projects; stop the insanity of antisemitic herd mentality from festering; stop the calls for the destruction of Israel; stop the irrational requirements on Israel; stop the attempts to delegitimize the sovereign nation of Israel; stop the publishing of blood libels against Jews; stop the harassing of people eating at a Jewish or Israeli or Jewish-owned or formerly Jewish-owned restaurant or learning at a Jewish school or attending a lecture at a synagogue or Jewish center; stop the perverse twisting of words and terms so that Jews will no longer be perceived as supreme oppressors while they are oppressed, harassed, abused, taunted, vilified, marginalized, attacked, sexually assaulted, murdered; stop the bullies and the meanies from having an audience for their hate fests of belligerently charging down neighborhood streets and main streets; stop the minions from chanting vile slogans calling for the murder of Israelis and Jews; stop the waving of flags and wearing of symbols that are silkscreened calls to murder—I cannot. So, I do what I can do—flap my butterfly wings, make my drops in the ocean—in the hope that together we can get this to stop.

These essays are my flappings and droppings.

To be Jewish is not just to respond to the horrors of hate, but to rejoice in the beauty that we have been given in the Torah and in our continuous study of it, and how through it and its stories and the millennia of teachings passed down we learn how to live. In fact, last night I was at synagogue until almost midnight studying as part of the Shavuout holiday celebration where we learn together as a thank you and sign of gratitude to HaShem for the gift of the Torah.

I share here a Torah learning and insight that I had from a recent reading on the idea of holiness / קדושה .

Judaism has developed two branches: “the soaring power of prophecy and the careful performing of the mitzvot with precise attention to detail.

The essence of spirituality cannot be localized in either the wisdom of the intellect or the simplicity of the heart, being beyond these; it can, however, be reached by the constancy of a struggle to overcome the contradiction…. As one transfers attention from the inwardness of prayer and yearning for the Divine to the outwardness of reason, study, and correct action, one becomes aware of the divine order of things, that everything has its proper place, measure, time.

There is no above or below in approaching Him, no preference between mind or feeling. On the contrary, in moving up and back from one such realm of experience to the other, its apparent opposite in life, one reaches a rhythm of being which is the life of holiness.

Reading this passage from The Thirteen Petalled Rose: A Discourse on the Essence of Jewish Existence & Belief by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz (z”l) one, two, three times kept bringing a lightbulb moment to me, the brightness increasing each time. It took 58 pages of dense reading (and some skipping)—and perhaps the mental and emotional state to overcome a lifetime of yearning for something esoteric that was beyond my groundedness—to get to this synthesis/apogee of understanding, making the commitment worthwhile.

To sense holiness—to feel elevated above/beyond the details of the moment—is not an aspiration for only the most observant or deepest meditators who can sit for hours crisscross applesauce. It can be found in praying and baking; in reading lofty, religious texts and in watching Love Is Blind (ok, maybe that’s a stretch, but it can be in watching people and sensing their Divine spark, especially when having a breakdown because their beloved beloves someone else or the bubbly feeling has evaporated); and in walking silently with the sense of a text hovering in the mind and while listening to a friend grapple with the bombardments of her life without offering advice, but to be the listener, a witness supporting with an uh-huh, nod, and complete attention.

Living life—and living within the knowledge that its source is not me—is where/when holiness can be experienced. What a relief. How is it that I led myself (was led?) to believe that only through deep study specifically about G!d and spirituality and holiness would transcendence occur. Alas, that is not where my soul soars. The elevation is in the constancy of me and the connection that my soul may experience in the present, for a flicker. A balloon floating, its string tied to a chair.

For me, holiness is an experience of elevated connection with a moment, a person, a place that brings it into the realm of the Divine Presence. Unveiling a layer, sensing a hovering beyond the now, the here, the self.

Hummingbirds dine at the hot lips salvia in my garden. When I hear (they really do hum) or see one, I stop, even for a moment to appreciate it, to thank it. Perhaps holiness—the sanctifying of a moment—is as fleeting and beautiful and common and wondrous as a heartbeat aligning with a bird’s wings.

As these thoughts developed, I read the following in an article about grief, which opened even more the idea of holiness being within mind (intellect) and feeling (spirit):

The Kabbalists knew that the combination of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual balance is a technology vast enough to meet and hold our collective experience, including that of acute grief.

Physical. Emotional. Mental. Spiritual. We are meant to live our lives. Relax enough to let moments hover beyond our grasp. Don’t discount moments. They, too, are drops within the vast ocean that humanity creates.