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Orchard of Delights
ourselves and the land to rest. While God wants us to play the role
of being His partners in creation, we must realize that we are junior
partners. On the one hand, each individual, and humanity as a
whole, must strive both on the physical and spiritual planes towards
fulfilling the human destiny of being created “in the image of God,”
but, on the other hand, we must avoid our natural tendency to think
that “my power and the might of my hand has gotten me all this
wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17). By resting on the Shabbat and the
Shemittah year, we concretize the message that God is directing and
perpetuating the world and only by His good graces do we have the
ability to accomplish anything.
On a socioeconomic level the implications of Shemittah do not end
with the land owners allowing their fields to lie fallow for the entire
Sabbatical year. In addition, biblical law mandated that all loans
were remitted and whatever grew in the fields was deemed ownerless,
so that anyone could benefit from these crops. The natural moral
impulse of helping the poorer classes in society was further stressed
by the command to declare every fiftieth year a Jubilee year following
the end of every seventh Sabbatical cycle (forty-nine years). Jewish
indentured servants were set free, and properties, fields, and houses
reverted back to their original owners.
Torah society grants individuals the freedom to develop to their
fullest capabilities, while simultaneously guarding against excesses
that lead those most successful from forgetting God’s role in their
success and from gathering all the power, wealth, and property into
their own hands to the detriment of the many. Within the context
of enumerating the tithes for the cohen and the levi; the gleanings
and corners of the fields left for the poor, the widow, and the orphan;
and the general commandment to be concerned with the fate of
one’s neighbor – “And if your brother grows poor, and his means
fail with you, then you shall relieve him, though he be a stranger or
sojourner with you” (Leviticus 25:35) – the Torah also commands
the land owner to remember that “the Shabbat produce of the land
shall be food for you, and your servant, and your maid and your
hired servant and for the stranger that sojourns with you” (Leviticus
25:6). Furthermore, the Shemittah and Yovel years become the
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Kedoshim
£Defining and Achieving HolinessDefining and Achieving Holiness
££Defining and Achieving Holiness
Having established the centrality of holiness in Judaism, it behooves
us to try to define this abstract concept. Perhaps, the easiest way
to define it is by exploring how holiness is attained. Within a legal
context, kedushah (holiness or sanctity) is usually attained through
separation, self-discipline, and refinement. By distancing ourselves
from evil, impurity, and various worldly energies that block our
spiritual channels and sensitivities, we become proper vessels, capable
of receiving and radiating holiness. Indeed, one of the fundamental
premises underlying the mitzvot is the constant requirement to
separate and distinguish between good and evil, pure and impure,
permitted and forbidden, holy time and mundane time, and holy
space and mundane space. The final verses in Kedoshim spell out this
relationship between holiness and separation quite explicitly:
I am God, your God, Who has separated you from the
peoples. You shall distinguish between the pure animal
and the impure, and between the pure bird and the
impure; and you shall not render your souls abominable
through such animals and birds, and through anything
that creeps on the grounds, which I have set apart for
you to render impure. You shall be holy for Me, for I God
am holy; and I have separated you from the peoples to be
Mine. (Leviticus 20:24-26)
The nation of Israel is holy because God separated it from the other
peoples and it must maintain this holiness by, in this case, distancing
itself from impure animals and crawling things.
However, along with the notion of separation, holiness is also
associated with designating, assigning, and choosing. In the Temple
period, an animal or object that was chosen and then designated to
be sacrificed or donated to the Temple was called hekdesh (a word
which stems from the same root as “holiness” and which literally
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