Holy-ness

"You shall be holy for I the Lord, your God, am holy."
--Leviticus 19:2

Holiness is easily commanded in this verse but just as easily misunderstood. It sounds simple in its pronouncement in Leviticus. Just be holy. It is an act in imitation of God's holiness, but since we cannot see God, it becomes all the more challenging to imitate God and strive for the elusive holiness that is demanded here.

Being holy is not only about contemplating what is sacred; it is about sanctifying ourselves for some higher purpose. In Hebrew, the word for holiness "kedusha" means to separate oneself, to create distinctions. Transcendence is created and sustained by constantly refining the boundaries or standards by which we live. This is very different to concepts of religion that aim for harmony and a lack of boundaries. Holiness aims at finding and capturing piety and uniqueness in the ordinary.

And yet, this religious language feels stilted and obscure. Sometimes the best way to understand an esoteric concept is to think of its opposite. What is a lack of purity or holiness? The French philosopher Simone Weil once wrote that, "Purity is the power to contemplate defilement." Something impure is inferior, unwanted or harmful; it is contaminated. We tend to think of impurity in medical or scientific terms rather than spiritual terms. We may not understand purity but we can contemplate defilement.

If defilement is something that gets in the way, then purity is a state in its most unadulterated form. When we experience a pure emotion, it is felt in its totality. Nothing gets in the way. We have a remarkable Jewish ritual that helps create separations and remove anything unwanted so that we can experience transcendence: the mikveh or ritual bath, what I call the quiet mitzvah.

Part of making distinctions is marking transitions as we move from one stage of life to another, as we ascend from sadness, tragedy or impurity. Rituals of all faiths jump in at ambiguous, in-between times and cushion the anxieties of change. One important Jewish ritual that consecrates change is the mikveh, a contained body of natural water. When immersing in the mikveh a person changes status. As Maimonides point out, that status is not from filth to cleanliness but something unseen - from impurity to purity.

All over Israel, we find archeological remains of mikva'ot that are thousands of years old. But this is not only an ancient ritual. It has been kept by Jewish women to mark the transition from a menstrual state to a non-menstrual state for millennia. Historically, the building of a mikveh is so central to Jewish life that it takes precedence in Jewish law over all other Jewish building construction. The community is even allowed to sell a Torah scroll to pay for a mikveh.

This private commandment has experienced a revival in multiple religious denominations today. Why is the mitzvah of mikveh enjoying renewed popularity? I believe that it has to do with enhanced states of modern confusion and heightened experiences of defilement. Sometimes we know that our behavior or the behavior of others is wrong. We abuse our bodies; we trivialize sexuality; we diminish people with our words. We feel, at these moments, defiled in some way that is almost impossible to capture in language.

Therefore, we resort to water. We shed clothing and immerse ourselves in a clear and pure substance as an act of returning to innocence. Mystics have compared the waters of the mikveh to those of the womb; the ultimate return to innocence.

As people engage in their search for meaning, they desire opportunities to mark a separation between who they were and who they want to become. The mikveh is an "immersive" experience that marks that change, that achieves that separation. The ancient sage Rabbi Akiva observed that: "Just as a mikveh purifies the contaminated, so does the Holy One, blessed is He, purify Israel." God is our mikveh. In the drive for inner wisdom, the mikveh is the physical embodiment of a spiritual state that the Divine creates when we reach out to God.

In what way do you strive for holiness?

Shabbat Shalom

By Erica Brown  |  April 23, 2010; 5:05 PM ET Save & Share:                 
Previous: Religions need to get real in dealing with sex | Next: Sorry, your patent on yoga has run out

The comments to this entry are closed.