You shall be holy, because I, Hashem your G-d, am holy.[2]
A wonderful challenge! But what, exactly, is holiness, and where do we find it?
Rashi offers one of the approaches. “Separate yourselves from arayos. For wherever you find a fencing in of sexual immorality, you find holiness.” He means that the wherever the Torah commands about various sexual restriction, it makes mention of kedushah as well.
We are still left wondering. Does Rashi mean that the Torah’s commandment to become holy means to follow all the sexual prohibitions – nothing more, and nothing less? This seems quite unsatisfying. Not to mention that it is puzzling that the Torah would create a commandment to follow some other commandments.
Here is a way past these problems.
A medrash[3] notes a discrepancy between Yaakov Avinu’s wish-list when he davened the morning after his dream of the ladder leading to Heaven. In the dream, Hashem promised Yaakov a number of things, apparently in anticipation of the requests that Yaakov would make in the morning. “If G-d will be with me, will guard me …will give me bread to eat and clothes to wear, and I return in peace to my father’s house…”[4]
Hashem offers assurances to Yaakov in the dream. At least to most of them. He says, “I am with you. I will guard you…and I will return you to this soil, for I will not abandon you.”[5] All his requests are addressed, but one. Yaakov’s request for food and clothing seems to be ignored.
The medrash offers two opinions. One is that the request for parnassah was in fact ignored. Another opinion is that “I will not forsake you” constitutes a promise of material support, channeling the verse, “I have not witnessed a tzadik abandoned, his children seeking bread.”[6]
We could explain the dispute as follows. The first opinion holds that parnassah does not lend itself to assurance, because it is inherently open-ended. People’s needs – as well as their conceptions of what they really need – vary widely. There is therefore no blank check that is issued for this loose term.
The second opinion counters: True. There is no way to put a lid on a request for parnassah. But there is a lower limit. The smallest amount of parnassah that is meaningful is the minimum necessary for survival. When it is provided, it means that the recipient has not been abandoned. When Hashem promised Yaakov that He would not abandon him, it meant that he would be assured of the basic necessities of material life.
The same is true of kedushah. There is no upper limit; it is always possible to add additional layers. There is, however, a lower limit of what can be considered the acquisition of kedushah. This lower limit is the kedushah that Rashi speaks of in our pasuk. When we distance ourselves from the sexual offenses of the Torah, we guarantee that we preserve a modicum of holiness. We are kept from becoming mired in the most severe elements of an unholy lifestyle.
There is something left to build upon. Something that can be enlarged by all the other holiness mitzvos of the Torah.
- Adapted from Divrei Shaul, by Rav Yosef Shaul Nathanson zt”l, the Sho’el U-Meishiv ↑
- Vayikra 19:2 ↑
- Bereishis Rabbah 69:6 ↑
- Bereishis 28:20-21 ↑
- Bereishis 28:15 ↑
- Tehillim 37:25 ↑