Sacred and Profane

It's been a while since I've posted, although you readers know that that is not at all uncommon. I had hoped to start posting on a weekly basis, but my computer is broken, family matters have come up and the book is taking up all my writing energies for now. I have started outlining and constructing and should be posting excerpts when I feel more comfortable with it, which may very well be never.

For the past few week I have been listening to lectures from a course by Christine Hayes (a personal hero of mine) on the Hebrew Bible on Yale Open Courseware. I was listening to her lecture on Leviticus and the rituals of the Tabernacle and found myself considering the concepts of sacred and profane in a modern context.

The idea of holiness or sacredness is originally a purely legal and ritual concept. Something which is holy has been designated for use in the service of God, while something profane is something that does not carry that designation. As Hayes points out, profanity in the Bible carries none of the negative connotations of the word that we are used to, it just means common. In other words, a cow which has been designated for sacrifice is now holy and can only be used in a manner befitting holy things; while the same cow, if not designated, can be milked or slaughtered for meat. This designation can exist within many spheres - time, places, objects or people.

We see the idea of spatial holiness most graphically in the tabernacle itself. The outer area is holy, but can be accessed by anyone who is pure (a different ritual designation that we won’t get into now). The next area is separated by a screen and can only be accessed by priests, those designated for performing the ritual rites, and is called the “Kadosh” or The Holy. Further in is the “Kodesh Kodashim” or The Holy of Holies which is where the very presence of God is said to reside. It can only be accessed by the High Priest and only on the holiest of days, Yom Kippur, after a number of purification rituals have been performed. The layout of the tabernacle thereby serves as a clear illustration of the main principle of holiness - greater proximity to God, the ultimate Holy One, renders something more holy and vice versa.

Holiness has come to take on a philosophical significance perhaps not intended by the original authors, but probably more relevant to the average religious practitioner.It came to be more than a legal category, but rather a description of life choices. Especially after the Enlightenment, as the world of the common became larger and more accessible to the Jew, holiness and its role in one’s life became a hotly debated topic.

It is in this milieu that Rav Kook wrote about the roles of the sacred and profane. Instead of viewing them as distinct categories, he posited that they are actually two interdependent elements of kedusha. Without one the other could not exist. He suggests that the people of his time are in such a confusing state because the proponents of each wish to exert dominance over the other. The secular people who lead a “chol” existence wish to make the world wholly secular, while the religious who lead a “kadosh” life would like to convert everyone to their way of life. Only when both realize that they each have an equally vital role in society can either flourish. (Zionism isn’t really my topic here, but clearly Rav Kook was trying to make a point about how a modern State should function, if only today’s leaders had such a “live and let live” philosophy.)

As someone who leads a completely profane life, I wondered how Kook’s philosophy - clearly meant to be prescriptive on a societal level - could translate into personal practice. Is it possible that the sacred and profane elements of me are warring within me trying to find some kind of synthesis?

I believe that for as long as man has been able to perceive and consider his world he has searched for the special and distinct. After all, Judaism did not invent the sacrificial rites and concepts of holiness that we learn about in Leviticus, they borrowed it from the Canaanites who got it from someone before them. This concept of holiness was an effort to cleave to something greater and more transcendent than one’s self, and to find this Other in special times, objects, and people. Perhaps leading a “profane life” may be sad because it means that all is mundane, but then the flip side is that it enables one to decide what is sacred to him. Sacrilegious as it may be, disavowing God means that there is no Other to cleave to and the responsibility lies squarely with me to find meaning in this world (or not to, for that matter.)