By Ilana Sandberg
The concept of holiness does not prove to be a simple one. Ask me to define hole-y or whole-y and I’ve got your back... Yet holy as a stand-alone word holds many complexities. Then add in the translation, קָדוֹשׁ (kadosh) and the definitions multiply. I suppose, though, that this ambiguous definition fits its concept (hint hint: everyone experiences holiness differently).
As the jumping point for our unit on kedusha, Rabbi Cohen, after granting our group time to define the term for ourselves, pointed us in a fitting direction to discover more answers: The Holy Bible. My group was assigned to read, “You shall be holy, for I, the LORD your God, am holy. You shall each revere his mother and his father, and keep My sabbaths: I the LORD am your God” (Leviticus 19.2-3). Now, I would like to stretch these verses a bit and claim that they perfectly fit our upcoming shabbaton the following week. It included 1. A form of worship of God 2. a respect for tradition and 3. keeping shabbat. Well, during our shabbat in Tzfat we 1. made our own tefillin, a vessel one uses to worship God 2. learned about the customs around going to a mikveh and 3. had an invigorating shabbat filled with new davening experiences and some truly grand meals.
In retrospect, I was extremely grateful to learn about the concept of holiness and have the opportunity to be exposed to many potentially holy experiences. Yet while I enjoyed them immensely, I did not find them to overflow with holiness. Finding holiness, whatever definition you might be utilizing, cannot happen for everyone in a one or two week unit. Finding holiness is a much longer journey. I began this journey before we started this unit when I spent a bit too much money on a bunch of philosophical books about theology. Anyone who knows me would probably be shocked about this whole philosophy thing but I wanted to start my search. Fittingly, our unit on holiness was able to be a section of steps along the way. I am just grateful that journey can continue and this unit is only the starting line (inspired by the 5k I “ran” in the Jerusalem Marathon this week) and who knows when the finish line will come.
