Finding the Holy in Our Work

October 19, 2022 ARJE Torah Lishma session
Created by Iris Koller and Michael Greenfield

Questions to consider about this text:

1. What distinguishes kodesh from chol?
   
2. What is it that we are hoping to gain by creating a separation between the two?
   
3. What is required of us in order to do that?
   
4. How do you understand the inclusion of “Israel and the nations” in this context?
   

Halakhah comes from the root HLKh, to walk or to go. Halakhah is the act of going forward, of making one’s way. A halakhah, a path-making, translates the stories and the values of Judaism into ongoing action. That makes it an integral component not merely of Orthodoxy, but of any kind of Judaism….The difficulty of proposing a halakhah to progressive Jews is their presumption that the term, its definition, and its practice, belong to Orthodoxy. We urgently need to reclaim this term because it is the authentic Jewish language for articulating the system of obligations that constitute the content of the covenant….Halakhah belongs to liberal Jews no less than to Orthodox Jews, because the stories of Judaism belong to us all. A halakhah is a communal praxis grounded in Jewish stories….If we had a praxis rather than a grab bag of practices, we would experience making love, making kiddush, recycling paper used at our workplace, making a pot of soup for a person with AIDS, dancing at a wedding, and making medical treatment decisions for a dying loved one as integrated parts of the same project: the holy transformation of our everyday reality.
from Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism (Beacon Press, 1998)

As you consider both of the texts above, choose one or two (or all three) of these questions to consider:

1. Do we/do you need a halacha to see something as sacred?
   
2. Is there a difference between the “chol” and the “kodesh” or is it all in how we view it?
   
3. What are the things or actions or ideas that cannot be included in “kodesh”?
   

You can hear this Mishnah as a prayer/song sung at congregation Beit Tefilah Israeli, Tel Aviv:
Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/track/5pO6MXYnVV7lIbpXt6zrQK

Questions to consider about this text:

1. Does this Mishnah bind you to a certain understanding of the holiness of Torah or guide you to create your own understanding of the holiness of Torah?
   
2. When you share Torah with learners, what lesson do you teach about its inherent holiness?
   
3. For those who listened to the music: What does the soundscape of this recording appear to be saying about this text?
   

You can hear this poem as a prayer/song sung at congregation Beit Tefilah Israeli, Tel Aviv:
https://open.spotify.com/track/1PqARAiXOXd1TtJQNjmAGi?si=27c31e26cbf84b4f

Questions to consider about this text:

1. Are some places inherently more holy than others? What would make them so?
   
2. In your work, are you teaching your learners to search for holiness, to create holiness, or to encounter holiness? What tools do you give them for their task?
   
3. For those who listened to the music: What does the soundscape of this recording appear to be saying about this text?
   
4. For those who listened to both recordings: These are from a congregation in Israel which uses them for tefilah. For you personally, do they feel like tefilah? In what ways are they in conversation with each other about the boundaries of holiness?
   

Excerpt from Yehudah Amichai’s Gods Come and Go, Prayers Remain Forever
3.
I say with perfect faith
that prayers precede God.
Prayers created God.
God created man,
And man creates prayers
that create God who creates man.
4.
God is the stairs that ascend
to a place that no longer exists, or that doesn't exist yet.
The stairs are my faith, the stairs are my despair.
Our father Jacob knew this in his dream.
The angels only decorated the rungs of the ladder
like a fir tree decorated at Christmas,
and the song of ascension is a song of praise
to the God of stairs.

יהוה spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying:
This is the ritual law that יהוה has commanded: Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid..The cow shall be burned in his sight—its hide, flesh, and blood shall be burned, its dung included..and the priest shall take cedar wood, hyssop, and crimson stuff, and throw them into the fire consuming the cow.
The priest shall wash his garments and bathe his body in water; after that the priest may reenter the camp, but he shall be impure until evening. The one who performed the burning shall also wash those garments in water, bathe in water, and be impure until evening.
Another party who is pure shall gather up the ashes of the cow and deposit them outside the camp in a pure place, to be kept for water of lustration (water for impurities) for the Israelite community. It is for purgation. The one who gathers up the ashes of the cow shall also wash those clothes and be impure until evening. This shall be a permanent law for the Israelites and for the strangers who reside among them.
Those who touch the corpse of any human being shall be impure for seven days…
They shall purify themselves with [the ashes] on the third day and on the seventh day, and then be pure; This is the ritual: When a person dies in a tent, whoever enters the tent and whoever is in the tent shall be impure seven days; and every open vessel, with no lid fastened down, shall be impure. And in the open, anyone who touches a person who was killed or who died naturally, or human bone, or a grave, shall be impure seven days.
Some of the ashes from the fire of purgation shall be taken for the impure person, and fresh water shall be added to them in a vessel. Another party who is pure shall take hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle on the tent and on all the vessels and people who were there, or on the one who touched the bones or the person who was killed or died naturally or the grave.
The pure person shall sprinkle it upon the impure person on the third day and on the seventh day, thus purifying that person by the seventh day… Further, the one who sprinkled the water of lustration shall wash those clothes; and whoever touches the water of lustration shall be impure until evening.
(sections from Parshat Chukat 19: 1-22)

Questions to consider about this text:

1. From what source does ritual gain its power?
   
2. What is the closest thing in modern Judaism to this ritual?
   
3. What is the closest thing in your own life to this ritual? Share what you do, what makes it powerful, and how it moves you through some liminal space.
   
4. When are we “impure” and in need of ritual? What advice would you give to your learners who want to move out of a space of “impurity?"