Anticipated Holiness

Rabbi Joel Fleekop

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Just a few weeks ago, on a beautiful summer morning, I found myself standing at the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The Kotel is the most holy site in Judaism, a place of pilgrimage and longing for more than 2,000 years. It is the last piece of the ancient Temple at which our ancestors offered their sacrifices and prayers to God.

And there I stood, with a prayer book in my hands, ready to feel a special connection to God. I started to read the words our tradition has assigned as holy. I ran my fingers along the wall, feeling the weathered contours of the sacred stones. I did what all the other worshippers around me were doing, and what I had done on countless other visits to the Kotel. But the special connection to God I was anticipating never manifested.

I felt it at other points during my time in Israel, as I swam in the waterfall filled pools of Nachalat David, as I watched the sun set over the Mediterranean, and on a subsequent visit to the Kotel. But for some reason the curious and special combination of feelings I was expecting weren't there that morning.

I can try to rationalize why the anticipated feeling of holiness was absent. It was noisier than normal. People kept asking me for tzedakah. I was jet lagged.

They are all reasonable explanations as to why the formula of Jew plus prayer plus Kotel didn't create a feeling of holiness.

They are all reasonable, but this week's Haftorah, taken from the Book of I Kings, provides a better explanation.

As Arie mentioned earlier, the haftorah portion focuses on Eliyahu Ha-Navi, Elijah the prophet. Elijah describes himself as "filled with Zeal for God", and so it is fair to say that he is someone who takes his religion very seriously. One early morning as he was fleeing through the desert, Elijah has a dream or a vision in which God tells him where to go in order to have a holy encounter. And so he ascends to the appointed mountain top and there he experiences a powerful wind, Ruach G'dola v'hazakah, and an earthquake, and a fire.

Now Elijah and the other ancient Israelites had been condition to understand these phenomena as manifestations of the Divine. But Elijah, a religious man, standing in the place specifically assigned by God, does not experience God in these powerful forces.

It turn out that even for a prophet, feelings of holiness and encounters with the Holy One do not always take place when or where they are expected. It seems that as is the case with love and romance, there is no formula for holiness.

While it is true that davening at the kotel, celebrating a wedding, or sharing Shabbat with your family may be moments when you feel particularly close to God, it is also quite possible that they won't.

But if these moments don't guarantee holiness, how will we find it? The answer to this question is also found in the haftorah.

Elijah, despite not experiencing God in the ways he expected, does not abandon hope of feeing close God. He doesn't immediately give up and descend from the mountain top. He doesn't question whether the God and religion he has so vehemently, and at times violently, defended are fictitious? Instead he remains on the mountain and remains in search of God. And his persistence is rewarded.

As the story continues we are told that after the wind, and the earthquake, and the fire, Elijah experiences the Holy One in the unexpected form of Kol D'mama Da-ka, a still, small voice.

As was the case with Elijah, our quest for holy experiences will require persistence and patience. No single act of Jewish living, whether attending Kol Nidre services, writing in a Torah, or performing an act of tikkun olam, can guarantee an experience of holiness. But Jewish living is the mountain on which God told us to stand, and if we remain on that mountain, on that path, we will have moments of closeness to the Divine.

Like Elijah we must also be willing to experience the Divine in the unexpected. Elijah was conditioned to experience God in the power of nature but instead found God in a still, small voice. Most of us are open to experiencing a moment of holiness while worshipping, but what about the possibility of studying being a holy experience? We might expect to feel connected to something greater than ourselves as we watch the sun set over the Pacific, but are we willing to feel connected to one another as we perform acts of Tikkun Olam?

Arie and India, I know that today is a very special day for both of you, and for your families. It is a celebration of your hard work and marks the moment when you take your place in the community as Bar and Bat Mitzvah. I hope at some point this morning you felt a special closeness to God, or to the community, or had a special feeling about being Jewish. I hope you had a moment of holiness. But if you didn't that is alright. Being Jewish doesn't require you to have a holy experience at your Bar or Bat Mitzvah. But being Jewish does require you to keep searching for those holy experiences as you live your life as a Bar and Bat Mitzvah. It is not an easy task but I trust that both of you will be successful.

As I was reminded a few weeks back standing at the Kotel, and as we were all reminded in this week's haftorah, when and where and how we will experience holiness is impossible to predict. But as I learned at other times during my time in Israel, and as I trust many of us experienced this morning, they do exist.

May we all be blessed with moments of holiness at times and places when we expect them, and at times and places when we don't. May we cherish them all, and may they inspire us to live a life of Torah and a life of peace.

Shabbat Shalom.