Holiness Is a Crack in the Wall

A Jew once demanded of the tzadik, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, “Rebbe! Where is G‑d?”

The rabbi answered him, “Wherever you let Him in.”

The secular world does not react kindly to the notion of holiness. Holiness creates distinctions. It’s much more expedient to deal with a world flattened into a homogeneous mush. In a world all about getting stuff done, holiness presents an uncomfortable set of exceptions to simple rules.

That’s a shame, because holiness is really nothing more than reality unobstructed. The boxes we choose to live within shield us from that reality. Holiness is the sunshine that enters whenever a window is opened. Shunning it is like closing all the windows because the outdoors seems threatening.

These windows do not occur naturally. Indeed, they are very rare. That’s what makes them so distinct and special. And yet there’s nothing stopping you from making as many windows of holiness in your life as you wish.

The Bigger World

How do you make a window? First, let me explain why that should be impossible. Then, I can tell you how it’s done.

Making this window is somewhat like making a bagel hole. That should be simple. You just refrain from filling the entire space with dough. The difficulty is that, in this case, you are the dough.

Now, that’s not so simple. You are a living organism. To live means to persist as a distinct entity from your environment and to fill all the space you can with you and more of you.

The objective, underlying reality outside your little space is that the world is much bigger than any one individual. Indeed, there are really no individuals. None of us can survive on our own. None of us is truly a distinct entity in any way but in our own imagination.

Every human being is a single cell in the great mass of all humankind. All of humanity is a single organism within the network of life that envelops the biosphere. And this biosphere is only one aspect of this wet, bluish rock hurtling through space at the edge of a speck of dust called a galaxy.

All these beings, indeed all that moves and all that stands still, shares a single energy that flows within and without each thing, trapped by each one momentarily to be converted from one form to another.

The sun converts the energy that bonds atomic particles into light and heat. A leaf on Planet Earth converts some of that light into the energy of chemical bonds, building complex structures out of the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere. An animal consumes that leaf and converts its stored energy into kinetic force, while converting the energy of ionized molecules into electrical impulses. The electrical impulses power the senses of a perceptive, living being. Your brain, right now, is generating conscious thoughts out of just such electrical energy.

It is all one energy, never diminishing, never increasing. Indeed, at its essence, it transcends the ever-changing universe it powers. And yet, it is the life-force of all that moves, grows, feels, and thinks. Within it is contained the potential for all these things, including everything you and I will ever feel. If you could ask this energy, it would tell you we are all one.

Yet more: This same energy bonds together every atom. Remove it, and the particles we call matter would not just fall apart—they would cease to exist.

In a way, that’s all these particles are—articulations of energy. They appear and vanish out of energy fields that stretch across the space-time of the universe, fluctuating like a rolling ocean. As the fields ripple and interact with each other, particles emerge out of them, like sparkles of sunlight upon ocean waves, perhaps for less than a nanosecond, and then vanish back into the amorphous nothingness from which they came.

So let’s rephrase this: If you could ask this energy, it would tell you that you don’t really exist. All that exists is the energy.

But to be a living organism is to have a shell, or bark, or skin, or some sort of membrane, so that you can say, “Within this is me. Beyond this is them.” And then you must suck as much energy out of your surroundings as you can, hang onto that energy, and create as much of yourself as that energy will allow.

Of necessity, we see ourselves as the focal point of all that happens, as though “everything exists because I am here.” Of necessity, we must lie to ourselves to survive.

To be alive is to be in denial of reality.

The Barrier

We can put this another way: An impervious barrier stands between the created beings and their Creator. It’s not impervious because you can’t walk through it. It’s impervious because if you do walk through it, the reality of the room you just left vanishes.

If a creature knows itself as its Creator knows it, it no longer can be said to exist. If it knows itself to exist, it cannot know how its Creator knows it.

The apparent conclusion: Windows (i.e. holiness) are impossible. The very nature of the universe should not allow for such a thing.

But it does.

What Are You Doing Here?

Let’s go back through that barrier again. This time, your Creator has a question for you. He says, “What are you doing here?”

You answer, “I couldn’t understand how I could possibly exist. I mean, it’s all a farce, right? Why should I live a lie?”

He answers, “No, it’s not a farce. I want you to exist.”

You answer, “Why would You want me to pretend I exist?”

He answers, “If I didn’t have a purpose for you to exist, how would you ever come into existence in the first place?”

A light goes on in your currently non-existent mind. Purpose. Life doesn’t just happen. Universes don’t just pop into existence. Reality is deliberate. Intentional. Nothing has to happen at all. But it does, because at the core of everything is not a passive, dumb energy just doing what energy does. At the core of everything is a Creator. A purposeful Creator.

“So,” you respond, “what’s my purpose?”

“Go back,” He answers, “and I’ll show you.”

Finding Purpose

So you traverse back to the existence side of the barrier. You tell yourself, look, if anyone asks what am I doing here calling myself “I,” as though there was any reality to that, I can just say, “My Creator told me I have to be an ‘I,’ because He has a purpose in me being here. You got a problem with that, talk to Him!”

Meanwhile, back in existence, you see someone in trouble. Fortunately, you are in the right place at the right time to help, and you are an “I.” You say, “I have to help this person, because if I don’t, who will?”

The next day is Friday. The sun is on its way down already and the load at work is not letting up. But you say, “I have to stop and go home to make Shabbat. Because if I don’t, who will let the world know it has a Creator?”

Your Shabbat meal begins with a choice, intense Golani semi-dry, continues with an exquisite sourdough challah, leading into entrees galore and a steaming bowl of grandma’s chicken soup. As you get to the juicy, tender, curried, free-range kosher chicken, you think, “Good thing I brought all these to the table to enjoy for Shabbat. Otherwise, how would the chickens know they were created with purpose?”

After the Shabbat meal, you sit down to learn some Torah. You say, “This is not making sense to me. But I have to make sense of it. It’s a message from the other side of the barrier. If I can’t make sense of it, that means there’s no room for it on this side.”

These are windows. They are mindful, purposeful acts that bridge the gap between Creator and created. Perforations in the barrier that allow light from one side into the other. In each of these acts, holiness shines.

Context for Holiness

Shabbat is holy, because it provides a window in time for all who know this universe has purpose. So too with all the special days of the year. And from those times, you can fuel up with enough window-making power to bring purpose into every moment of your life, in whatever you are doing.

That ground upon which Moses stood was holy because it served as the initial gateway for this idea of purpose to enter for all humankind. And so is the Torah scroll in the ark, the Torah books that fill the bookshelves of your home, the tefillin you wrap on your arm and head, the chunk of challah you take off the bread you bake.

And not only a mitzvah, but any human activity done mindfully for a higher purpose is a conduit for holiness.

Two people eat a juicy steak and drink fine wine. One is absorbed in the pleasure of the moment. The other is absorbed in the pleasure of a meaningful life, gaining energy, renewed focus, and mental expansiveness to invest in exploring the depths of Torah wisdom.

One is no different than any other living creature seeking more of itself. The other lifts the meat, the wine, and his own self to holiness. All just because of where their heads are at the time.

And a Jew is holy, no matter how secular he imagines himself to be. Because every Jew was chosen to bring this notion of holiness into the world. Every living being needs to know that we’re not debris floating on a meaningless ocean. At the core of existence is the freedom to choose whether to just live, retire, and die, or to live the purpose for which you were created in a meaningful universe and leave it yet more meaningful than you found it.

Purpose embraces the beauty of life by rendering it holy.

All that is needed is context: You are not here because you are here. You are here so that the presence of your Creator can be felt within His creation. That “I” of yours—it’s not really yours. It’s His “I,” the only true “I,” licensed out to you as His representative.

Use it that way, and you are as real as could be. And your world, too, is a real world. A holiness world of open windows and sunlight.