Yitro

Holiness in Practice

Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan, inspired by the JPS Haftarah Commentary

This week's Torah and Haftarah readings are both famous, familiar, powerful passages that have provided inspiration and comfort to Jews for millennia. They speak of the awesome holiness (kedushah) of God, the human awe of that holiness, and the potential for the expression of that holiness through ethical behavior.

The Torah reading describes in dramatic detail the revelation at Mount Sinai. God has just brought forth the Israelites from Egypt so that they might become a holy (kadosh) nation. Mount Sinai, covered in smoke, trembles violently. As the people witness the smoke and lightning, they, too, tremble. They are warned not to gaze directly upon God's numinous splendor. And they listen to the ethical and spiritual teachings in the Ten Commandments with which they are charged.

The haftarah describes the prophet Isaiah's personal vision of the Lord enthroned in heaven. Winged, fiery figures proclaim that God is "Holy (kadosh)! Holy! Holy!" The hall of God fills with smoke and its doorposts tremble. Isaiah believes that the people have not fulfilled the ethical imperatives of the commandments, so he is dismayed to be graced with a vision of God's numinous splendor. And he hears that the now-corrupt nation will fall like a ravaged tree, but later regenerate, renewed, from its own stock: "a holy (kadosh) seed."

These passages teach that God's awesome holy splendor can be reflected on earth, through the behavior of human beings. When we, individually and collectively, act with ethical and spiritual awareness, we are continuously renewed from seeds of holiness.

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