MUSSAR PROGRAM ClASS #2 - JewishPathways.com
MUSSAR PROGRAM ClASS #2 - JewishPathways.com
MUSSAR PROGRAM ClASS #2 - JewishPathways.com
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Holiness as a Command<br />
I have called the verse "You shall be holy" an "injunction," and in<br />
doing so, I chose my words carefully. It is noteworthy that when the<br />
rabbis <strong>com</strong>bed through the Torah to seek out the <strong>com</strong>mandments that<br />
are the backbone of Jewish life, none of the major codifiers identified<br />
"You shall be holy" as an actual <strong>com</strong>mandment. This omission is<br />
classically explained by saying that holiness is the overarching and allen<strong>com</strong>passing<br />
goal of our lives, and so this injunction can't be brought<br />
down to the level of an ordinance on a par with, say, not eating meat<br />
with milk, or wearing fringes on the corners of clothing, or any other of<br />
the 613 mitzvot in the Torah.<br />
Mussar teachers have offered other explanations for why the Torah's<br />
directive to be holy is not considered a formal <strong>com</strong>mandment. In the<br />
famous story of Adam and Eve, we read what sounds like an explicit<br />
<strong>com</strong>mandment, as God tells them, "Of the Tree of Knowledge of Good<br />
and Evil, do not eat" (Genesis 2:17). Rabbi Yosef Yozel Hurwitz, who<br />
founded and led the Novardok school of Mussar, writes in his book,<br />
Madregos Ha'Adam ("The Levels of Man"), that this directive was not a<br />
<strong>com</strong>mandment to Adam and Eve. Rather, it was an aitzah – God's<br />
good advice.<br />
The same could be said about the Torah's bidding, "You shall be holy."<br />
Not an injunction, this may also be advice. We need this advice to help<br />
us understand an impulse that we all already feel within ourselves –<br />
the drive to improve and to make something better of our lives. Don't<br />
we all feel that drive? Don't we all spend many hours each day fixing,<br />
cleaning, upgrading, improving, reconfiguring, and maintaining various<br />
aspects of our lives? We all <strong>com</strong>mit so much time, thought and effort<br />
into making things better – because we are all born with an impulse to<br />
improve.<br />
Since we live in such materialistic times, we <strong>com</strong>monly express that<br />
impulse to make things better in a purely material way. We can be<br />
constantly busy – changing the color of our hair, straightening our<br />
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