Where Can We Find Holiness

Special Note:

This will probably be my last blog for awhile although who knows what may occur to  inspire a message.

Enjoy the summer.

Bruce


 Dear Friends,


This week we experience the Jewish Festival of Shavuot which celebrates the revelation at Mt. Sinai when the Jewish People received the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai.

I  want to talk about the revelations we have in our daily lives.  How many of us are aware of the  miracles that surround us.   There is a beautiful  Jewish teaching that G-d appears whenever and wherever we let G-d into our lives.

In Jewish worship, we have a prayer  which is based upon the words  of the Prophet Isaiah.  "Holy holy holy, the whole earth is full of G-d's glory.

I  hope that during the summer when we all (hopefully) have an opportunity to relax and reflect, we  will recognize that there may be holiness in our everyday experiences.  I was surfing the internet and found the  following poem and comments about Martin Buber that I hope will inspire you to live a more sacred life. (I searched for Jewish poems on holiness and found a site, "Parasha Poems")

Holiness, it transpires,
is not living hermit-like
in the rarefied air
of a mountain peak,
filling up days
in meditation and prayer,
spending nights seeking God
in the star-sprinkled sky.
It’s transcending the messiness,
the turmoil of our lives;
quelling impatience
with the people we love;
opening hearts
to the needy, the other;
sowing sparks of light
in every mundane hour.

The Etz Hayim commentary of the Jewish Publication Society translation  and commentary on this Parashah ponders the nature of holiness, and cites Martin Buber (among others) who says that holiness is found not in rising above the level of one’s neighbours but in relationships, in human beings recognising the latent divinity of other people, even as God recognises the latent divinity in each of us. He adds that Judaism does not divide life into the holy and the profane but into the holy and the not-yet-holy.

I  hope that you enjoy opportunities to renew relationships that are important to you and that we will appreciate that there may be holiness in the least expected places.  Enjoy searching...

Be well and safe over the summer.

Rabbi Bruce Aft


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Makes The Ninth of Av Different This Year

  Dear Friends and Family, We are back from most of our travels and I wanted to share a blog about the Jewish Commemoration of Tisha B'Av which we are observing today. Tisha B'Av is the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av and we remember the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem and other tragedies that have occurred to the Jewish people. As we remember these events this year, we think about the horrible Hamas attacks on Israel  which took place on Oct. 7 of 2023 and the subsequent tragic loss of life which continues.  We are all hoping and praying for the release of the hostages and for peace in the region.. I recently gave a talk about what makes this year's observance of Tisha B'Av different from other years.  I spoke in response to the significant division in our Jewish community and beyond, about what an appropriate response should or could have been to the attacks on Oct. 7. This blog is not an attempt to respond to that question.  My desire is to enc...
Read more

What Holds Us Together

 Dear Friends, I will be writing two blogs about our recent trip to Poland with college students from George Mason University. This week in our scriptural reading, we read from the conclusion of the book of Exodus.  We read about many of the details about the construction of the holy Tabernacle that our ancestors built in the wilderness.. One of the items that we read about during the last parts of Exodus, is the construction of the clasps that held things together.  I am intrigued by what helps anything holy stay together. While we were in Poland and were visiting the sites of the Warsaw Ghetto, the villa and zoo in Warsaw which is described in the book and movie, "The Zookeeper's Wife,", Treblinka,  the Lublin Yeshiva (place of study), the Grodzka gate, Majdanek, Auschwitz/Birkenau, the Labyrinth, Plaszow, Schindler's factory, Kashmierz, and the Krakow ghetto.  As you can see we saw many things. What does this have to do with clasps that our ancestors bui...
Read more

MLK's Message 2.0

Dear Friends and Family, As we celebrate Shabbat in the week that we commemorated MLK Day, I wanted to share some meaningful quotes from Dr. King Jr which I believe provide us some guidance for challenges with which we are dealing in our world today. First of all, Mahalia Jackson encouraged Dr. King to talk about his dream when he gave the iconic "I Have A Dream Speech."  He departed from his prepared text at one point and the rest is history.  I personally think that perhaps Mahalia's advice is important for all of us to consider.  We have our prepared speeches and thoughts about contemporary  issues ranging from the Middle East to Presidential politics.  Perhaps it is time for us to think about what our dreams are.  I believe that each of us share a dream for a more peaceful world and a world where people can talk to each other.  If I was adapting sections of the "I Have A Dream Speech" for today's world I would make the foll...
Read more