Thoughts on Torah Portions Acharei Mot – Kedoshim – “Be Holy”

Thoughts on Torah Portion Acharei Mot – Kedoshim – “Be Holy”

“Be holy,” begins one the combined Torah Portions for today. “All right,” I might say. “But what exactly do I do next?”  I’ll take the long way around in advising what to do next.

I don’t always restrain myself when I am counseling someone who gives advice to a troublesome teenager. “My kid is lazy, so I told him to quit smoking pot and go out and get a job!”

With a person who does not mind being ribbed with a little bit of sarcasm, I respond, “And I am sure that did the trick. Your kid then said, “Whoa, dad, I never thought about that!  You mean, just stop smoking pot and go get a job?  Why didn’t I think of that? What a concept?  Ok!  Good to go!”

I ask the dad how often he has told his miscreant son to “stop smoking pot and go get a job”. “Well, two-three times a day for the past couple year – so a maybe a thousand times.” I say, “And how is that going for you?”

Doing something over and over again and expecting a different result may not be a sign of insanity, but it is a pretty close definition of unwise perseverance. Wise perseverance is tenacity. Starting a business, getting in shape, creating a work of art: sometimes we just have to stay at things a long time to get results. This hard work is not insanity – it is resolve and decisiveness. Once we have evaluated a course of action, we constantly evaluate what we are doing and why some small things might not be working. But we stick with in.

People who just perseverate typically are not wise in thinking about why things do not work and don’t spend the time figuring out how to make them work. The dad in this case was not giving up on parenting; he just did not know what to do next. So he kept doing the thing that did not work.

Irrational advice givers don’t know what else to do other than tell people what to do. Irrational advice givers feel helpless, and their giving advice is more a treatment of their own frustration than a well thought out plan to help another person. It is as if they are unconsciously thinking, “If I tell you what to do, at least I did something.”

Like in any addiction, the satisfactory feeling of “at least I, the advice giver, did something” departs quickly. We need another fix soon. Hence, more advice, lecturing, remonstrating and – you got it – criticism, complaining, condemning and needless conflict.

Here is something that does not work in counseling or advising others in general:  giving advice without a lot of preparatory work. Work on yourself, and work on understanding the other person.

Here is one piece of that necessary preparatory work: find out the significance of a behavior in the other person and truly listen without judgment. I counseled an irrational advice-giving parent with a pot-smoking child who came to me desperate for help, to start here: stop giving advice. Instead, I counseled him to ask the boy why he smoked pot – without interrupting, refuting, or advising. Dad found out what I predicted from long experience of working with families: the kid was in a lot of pain. Depressed, listless, a bit of despair. Nothing makes any difference. “I’ll never get a satisfying job, find true love, or feel good in general.” Pot takes the edge off of the pain of a life without meaning, a life of too much existential suffering.

The pot smoking is a bit like irrational advice giving:  you don’t know what else to do, so you medicate your own feelings. One addictive behavior follows another. The advice giver medicates his pain by giving advice; the pot smoker medicates his pain by smoking pot. A dance from hell.

Giving advice of any deep significance should only happen once a person has allowed you in, however symbolically and briefly, to the contours of their soul. By soul, I mean a deep interior region where, among other things, meaning and purpose in life get worked out in some mute and metaphoric way.

Once a person has let you into their world, sometimes all that is needed from the person doing the counseling, whether it be a parent, a friend, or a soul teacher, is a brief word, pointing out the north star, a sense of spiritual companionship.

Good counsel occurs when a space has been opened in the suffering heart for a word of truth. Opening that space is a delicate process, involving vulnerability and trust on one hand, and wisdom and empathy on the part of the person into whose hands the suffering heart has been placed.

When I read words of admonition in the Bible “Be Holy”, I try to imagine a profound and complex conversation that preceded these words. I imagine a lengthy period of suffering and spiritual seeking, of opening the heart to a wise counselor, who finally counsels, after much reflection, “Be holy.” It was not a commandment. It was not advice. Saying, “Be holy” was a way of being present, of reflecting back to a person the next stage in their soul journey.

“Be holy”, said without the deep preparation, is just advice, maybe an inapplicable and high sounding platitude, unless these are the truest words that can be spoken into your soul or the soul of another. Sometimes in a life evacuated of meaning, bleak in outlook, suffused with painful silence within the din of chatter, these words can awaken a dormant force. If these are the words for which your soul yearns, you don’t ask, “What do you mean by ‘holy’? That’s been covered.

Holiness stands for a way of experiencing the world, a world fraught with significance, full of enchantment and pain at the same time, awaiting your awakening.

Sometimes in the depth our journeys, we arrive at a moment, that might, from the outside, look like any other moment, but it is the moment. Something you must do, something you stop doing, some old way of thinking or feeling – the jig is up.

What happens next can open the new road. You consider deeply what it will take, what part of the ego-self will have to be sacrificed, what part of the soul will be born or reborn into the world. Those moments are unbearably deep and heavy, and yet as light as the presence of the Divine flowing through us. Holy moments.

If not now, when?

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Mordecai Finley