The Havdalah Between Holy And Ordinary

by Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman

Candlelighting, Readings:
Candles: 7:35 p.m.
Torah reading: Leviticus 19:1-20:27
Haftarah: Amos 9:7-15 (Ashkenaz);
Ezekiel 20:2-20 (Sephard)
Shabbat ends: 8:39 p.m.

Readers of Torah may feel this week that they have made it to an oasis. Up to now we have dealt almost solely with sacrificial detail and ritual impurity. Finally we get to what is obviously and immediately relevant: the need for holiness.
But what is holiness? The Jewish answer is both complex and surprising. It runs counter to what most people believe.
Common wisdom assumes that the opposite of “holy” — or sacred, they are the

same — is the very negative-sounding “profane.” In Hebrew, however, the opposite of holy (kodesh) is chol, “everyday,” or ordinary, with no negativity at all. The holy is just “extraordinary,” in the sense of transcending the ordinarily human and being like God. “Be holy,” we are told, “because I, your God, am holy.”
If the opposite of holy were profane, we might reasonably be expected to strive for holiness all the time. Not so, if the opposite is “everyday.” Judaism values the everyday — going for a walk, watching a baseball game, or relaxing with a book. We have been given a world where it is actually sinful to refuse such pleasures.
As the only species made in God’s image, however, it is equally sinful not to pursue the sacred, as well. Human life is both ordinary (chol) and extraordinary (kodesh). We revel in both.
What we may not be is less than ordinary, which is to say, not just less than God, but also less than properly human. The Mishna admonishes, “Where there is no humanity, strive to be human,” advice that would be pointless, were it not the case that people regularly do fall below the standards of even ordinary human dignity, which really is profane.
We should map existence with three degrees of being: the humanly extraordinary, or “sacred” (kodesh); the humanly ordinary, or everyday (chol); and the less-than-humanly ordinary, the profane. Torah commands us to be sacred; warns us against the profane; but permits us the in-between space of the everyday. We may pursue our business (everyday), but not cheat our customers (profane). We may watch television (everyday), but not revel in pornographic violence (profane). Sometimes (on Yom Kippur, say, the most holy day of the year), we cancel work and forego television (everyday) in order to atone and attend services (the extraordinary, the sacred).
We spend most of our lives being quite ordinary, then, but we are hard-wired to seek the Godlike extraordinary, too. The most obvious example is moral behavior, but we should think also of great works of art, scientific achievement, and human inventiveness in general. God inspired Bezalel to build the Sanctuary, and most of Exodus delineates the artistry that went into it. Surely, then, art is holy. And as to science, we Jews have no one like the Greek hero Prometheus who had to steal fire because the gods wanted to keep humankind in the dark.
This Jewish perspective has much to say to our time. On one hand, a puritanical strain in Western thought treats holiness as some ethereal quality for angels and ascetics; we lesser beings should at least not overly enjoy such “profane” pleasures as food, sex, and leisure. On the other hand, crass materialism grudgingly admits the profane but urges us to enjoy only the ordinary, since that is all there is. By contrast, Judaism prohibits the profane, but welcomes both the holy and the ordinary. We want to be like God, but are sometimes just human; we enjoy being human, but have a part of us that is like God.
The Malbim says that this parashah was delivered to everyone at Sinai, but each individual heard what was appropriate to his or her own degree of holiness. Holiness, then, is not the solitary province of saints. It comes in many fits, some more attune to one personality than another. Goodness is the only form that is common to us all, since the opposite of goodness is evil, the supreme example of the profane. But we may pick and choose among the others, some of us becoming artists; others, inventors; others still, magnificent parents, or masters at connecting with people in meaningful ways.
We are all ordinary — and extraordinary. Just as we enjoy different ordinary pleasures, so too we specialize in different extraordinary gifts. We can all fulfill the characteristic refrain of our sedra: “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” But we temper that by adding, “You shall each be holy in your own distinctive way.” And we should imagine a parallel instruction: “You may be ordinarily human as well — just not less than ordinarily human also.” n
Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, professor of liturgy at Hebrew Union College in New York, is an expert in the field of Jewish ritual and spirituality. He is the editor of “My People’s Prayerbook: Traditional Prayers, Modern Commentaries,” and “The Way Into Jewish Prayer” (Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock, Vt.).