By Sarah Kusnitz
Most words in Hebrew come from a three letter root called a shoresh. One shoresh that we have recently been particularly interested in is this one, ק.ד.ש.-Kuf. Daled. Shin. I would like to translate this but there’s no straight, easy translation that will do and anything I say is itself and interpretation of what it means personally. Two words that stood out to me and that were spoken about were holy and separate. Holy evokes a religious connotation while separate could be used in a multitude of contexts both secular and religious.
If the greatest capacity for holiness comes from the need for separation from the mundane then what is the separation that makes something holy? How do I know that something is a kiddush cup and not just a glass or chanukah candles rather than birthday candles? How do we differentiate regular objects from ritual objects? The only consistent answer we could come up with was intention. It’s because I have the intent to make kiddush (coming from the same root) with this glass over another. We are exploring this idea with Rabbi Cohen as we are getting ready to head into tzfat, one of the four holy cities and a place of great spirituality.
Our discussion centered around Vayikra, Rashi, and Rambam. Vayikra says, “You shall be holy, for I, your G-d, am Holy” and Rashi expands on that by saying that means to be separated from sin. I thought that as far as these sources go as a pair, that there is a distinct and opposing way of looking at the issue, kedusha and not kedusha. Rambam, coming about 90 years after Rashi, has an approach that allows for more degrees of kedusha. I think, like Rambam, that too much of a good thing can turn bad very quickly. He uses the examples of meat and wine because we are permitted to eat those but we have to be distinctive in the way that we eat them. Sometimes groups of people agree that something is special and so the kedusha comes with it, like the Judaica we buy, but sometimes we have to make the effort to create kedusha in an object, like using candles to bring in Shabbat.
We are excited to make an extremely complicated ritual object that is going to be infused with kedusha, holiness, that we create through intention. Rabbi Noah Greenberg, an artist and Rabbi based in Tzfat, is going to be making tefillin with us and each step is going to have us consciously and loudly proclaim that kedushah. It’s going to be our intention that turns the plain pieces of leather into a kosher and holy pair of tefillin.
