Dear Chaverim,
Last Shabbat I shared with you a remarkable passage from the Zohar which suggests a surprising equivalency between Nadav and Avihu entering the Holy of Holies while intoxicated and Noah’s intoxication in his tent after the flood. Although both Noah and Aaron’s sons had good intentions and were genuinely cleaving to God, none of them emerged from their intoxicated spiritual encounter whole.
After the flood, Noah wanted to go back to the Edenic reality. So, instead of hiding from God like Adam and Eve had done, he presented himself before H’, as if to say that he’s ready to start over from the very beginning. The Torah states, “Noah began [again] as the Man of the Earth”, meaning that he had attained the same level of spiritual awareness that Adam had before his sin. So, what went wrong? The Zohar sees the problem was that Noah was spiritually ‘intoxicated’. Noah’s spirituality was a one-way street. He was only interested in getting close to God, having a mystical, spiritual or meditative experience of elevated consciousness. His shortcoming was in not returning from his spiritual experience to the mundanity of life having gained a broader perspective, a deepened care for the world around him and with concrete lessons on how to integrate his closeness to God into his life. Most of all, he didn’t go into the tent with God as a husband, father and grandfather. His failure to impart his spirituality to his children led to his demise and shame.
Nadav and Avihu were similarly spiritually intoxicated, entering the Holy of Holies just to commune with God. They are described as having “brought close a foreign fire” and their souls went up in the flame. The Mei Hashiloach explains that each of us has a “foreign fire” which keeps us alive as a unique individual. Although in truth our souls in their source are One with God, we function in the world as individuals in a consciousness of feeling ‘foreign’. In “bringing close their foreign fire” they so deeply penetrated into a mystical consciousness of their oneness with God that they could not return to their bodies since their souls were no longer “foreign”. Like Noah, they were practicing a ‘feel good spirituality’ which was essentially self-serving, not focused on caring for others and drawing lessons from their experience of unity into the world of community and action. Contrast this with the instructions for Yom Kippur in which Aaron is commanded to enter the Holy of Holies as an emissary of the entire Jewish People, and you see the Zohar’s insistence on keeping spirituality tethered.
There are naturally spiritual people in the world for whom this is a critical message. Especially for those who have some experience with other spiritual traditions, the message of this Zohar is a deeply needed sobriety. For example, I grew up in a very unique Jewish community in which spirituality and personal practice were not so connected. It’s not obvious that experiencing the Universal Soul of Humanity by chanting “Kol Haneshama Tehalel Yah” will translate into keeping Shabbos, not getting a tattoo or not planting intermingled seeds in your garden. For me personally, the need to integrate my spiritual experiences into consistent practice is one of the things which initially drew me to Orthodoxy.
Mainstream Judaism in general, and Orthodoxy most of all, places enormous emphasis on practical application of spiritual truths. Our sages didn’t debate the nature of consciousness. They debated whether the nature of consciousness dictates that you should light the Chanukah candles left to right or right to left. It’s never just about raising consciousness without doing something to embody that awareness.
Nowadays raising our spiritual awareness is not really something we talk about much. What we do talk about, A LOT is what to DO. What to eat, how to dress, how to interact with others, our finances, sexuality, agriculture… We don’t often get access to the ‘nature of consciousness’ part of the debate, only the practical right to left. As such, most of us today are in the opposite predicament of Noah. Our lives are focused on doing and our inner fire feels all too foreign. Yes, there are mitzvot commanding us to feel particular feelings, but how much time do we dedicate to learning how to experience love and fear of Hashem? Meditation is not exactly part of our Jewish studies curricula in Yeshiva high schools, much less in Hebrew schools, youth groups and summer camps. Simultaneously the modern world leaves us starved of any integrative spiritual experience. You can’t buy epiphanies on Amazon. Consequently, when we take time from our busy lives to focus on our Judaism we are mostly confronted with myriad details of how to behave, not big-picture wisdom or feeling the Divine embrace. Even when we study and follow all the rules, it doesn’t necessarily lead us to encounter God.
There’s a chasm between spirituality and responsibility from whichever direction you approach. The missing bridge is Holiness.
Parshat Kedoshim opens with the injunction “You shall be Holy because I Hashem am Holy”. What follows seems to be a long list of mitzvot which aren’t thematically connected. Shabbos, respecting your parents and no idolatry. Ok, Ten Commandments stuff. But then, expiration of sacrifices, leaving corners of your field for the poor, not lying, paying your employees on time, no gossip, no fortune-telling, no cross-breeding animals… The Ramban explains this disjointed list by saying that you can do all these things and still miss the point. You can keep every law and still be dark-hearted and selfish on the inside. It’s not enough just to do. You need to feel it in your heart. Like the wicked child at the Seder, it needs to matter to YOU. You need to actually care. Aaahh, but when you do really care, you’ll naturally come to do all these mitzvot. You will honor your parents, feed the poor, and respect animals. Spirituality and action become one and the same when your heart is open to Holiness.
The opposite of Holy isn’t ‘unholy’ or ‘demonic’. The opposite of Holiness is indifference. Indifference about how you treat yourself, your family and your neighbors. How you treat the Earth, animals, poor people, and the disabled. Being Holy means integrity of body, heart, mind and soul. Caring for self, family, our people and the world. Like Adam, you are in the Garden to serve and protect.
God gave us the commandment to be Holy. That means it’s a choice we each can make. We may not be well trained in the skill of turning on our hearts, but God knows we can choose to care. May Hashem show us each the keys to our hearts so that we may truly be His Holy People.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Shlomo Schachter
Please enjoy this additional video Devar Torah from Ahava Zarembski-Schachter on this week’s Parsha and Yom HaAtzmaut.
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