Q&A: What Is Holiness?
What Is Holiness?
Question
Hello Rabbi,
What is holiness? Is it subjective or objective? Is holiness the opposite of impurity? What makes a certain thing holy? There are holy objects and holy places, angels are holy, and there are human beings like that too(?). This issue has been bothering me for a long time, and I haven’t found an answer through the usual channels.
I’d be happy to get an answer here, but if the topic is too long I’d be glad to be referred elsewhere.
Thank you very much.
Answer
First, holiness is the opposite of impurity. The ordinary/profane is also the opposite both of holiness and of impurity. The relationship among these three is like 1 (holiness), -1 (impurity), and 0 (= ordinary/profane).
To the extent that the spiritual-divine appears more clearly through something, it is more holy. So on its face this seems like a continuum and not something binary. However, from the standpoint of Jewish law there is a sharp line between holiness-impurity and prohibition-permission (which belong to the realm of the ordinary/profane). See Megillah 26, the distinction between holy objects and commandment-objects. The Mishnah and Tosefta in Kelim also define ten levels of holiness.
The question whether this is something in the world itself or only in our relation to it is a different question. In the common conception, holiness and impurity are kinds of reality, and the laws are derived from the actual state of affairs. Therefore the Talmud’s distinction at the beginning of tractate Nedarim between prohibitions on the object and prohibitions on the person relates to vows, and holiness is treated there as object-based.
However, the Avnei Nezer and Rabbi Shimon Shkop in his novellae on Nedarim write that there is no difference and everything is person-based. They explain that the difference between an object-based prohibition and a person-based prohibition lies in the purpose of the prohibition. The prohibition against using holy objects is for the sake of the objects (so that they not be desecrated), and therefore these are object-based prohibitions. In contrast, other Torah prohibitions such as eating pork are not for the sake of the pig but for the sake of the person who eats it, and therefore these are person-based prohibitions.
There are articles by Henshke on this, arguing that according to Maimonides impurity and holiness are person-based. I don’t remember his proofs, and it also fits Maimonides’ general outlook, but I remember that I was not convinced.
Sometimes the concept of holiness is used in a borrowed sense, or not in the halakhic sense, and then people speak of holy individuals, and of every commandment as holy, and so on. In halakhic terminology that is not correct. See also Maimonides in the fourth root, and Nachmanides’ glosses there, and his well-known commentary on “You shall be holy” (it seems they disagreed on precisely this point). See here on the site my article on the fourth root.
Discussion on Answer
Impurity is the opposite of purity, not of holiness.
Holiness is the opposite of the ordinary/profane.
Something can be holy and impure at the same time (terumah that became impure), or pure and ordinary/profane at the same time (non-sacred food that did not become impure).
You’re right, but it seems to me only partially. Purity is not the opposite of impurity but its absence (0 מול -1), and the ordinary/profane is the absence of holiness.
The question is whether there is also an opposite to holiness and impurity (1 versus -1), and it seems to me that this is impurity versus holiness. And they already wrote that there is no impurity except in a place of holiness (and certainly the prohibition of impurity).
See my above article on Tosafot in Bava Kamma and more.
In the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), purity is treated as cleanliness from impurity, which is perceived as dirt. In the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), something is called impure even if it is not impure according to Jewish law. When God commands Ezekiel to eat excrement, he says that no impure thing has ever entered his mouth, even though excrement is not impure and also is not forbidden to eat by the ordinary dietary prohibitions (it is forbidden because of “do not make yourselves detestable.” On the other hand, maybe actually it is, because that prohibition originally speaks about creeping creatures. But I don’t think that’s what Ezekiel meant).
But he is indeed right that if these are simple opposites, then something cannot be impure and holy at once. What does happen, though, is that usually when something becomes impure, the holiness departs. Like the Divine Presence, which left the Temple because of the impurities of the people of Israel. On the other hand, it is possible that the impurity is what departs, as when the holy land vomits out the impure people from upon it along with their impurity. On a third hand, even in that case there is a disappearance of holiness (the first sanctification for tithes sanctified for its time but not for the future, and it was nullified with the exile).
Leibowitz argues that the state is only a framework, and there is no holiness in it whatsoever, and into that framework one must pour value-based content!
If one attributes any value to the state, then that is fascism pure and simple, and this applies to any state that defines itself as the highest value!
A state and government are only a mechanism, and one can attribute value to the people in the state and fight for shared content…
Likewise, matter cannot be holy in itself, and man too is included in the category of matter. Herod’s stones have no holiness, and certainly all the “holy places” do not. Only He is holy, holy, holy, as we say in prayer…
At the same time, we are commanded to be holy, by fulfilling the commandments: “And you shall be holy, for I am the Lord your God.” Meaning, holiness is not automatic, but demands that a person take a yoke upon himself, rise like a lion in the morning for the service of God…
You are constantly trying to prove the existence of God, and Leibowitz says that a person can know his Creator and still not take the yoke upon himself. A person decides whether or not to accept it according to his will; that is, he decides something because that is what he wanted, and that is all, and there is no justification for it!
As for whether there is a God or not, Leibowitz argues: “Knowledge of God is that I arrive at the conclusion that I cannot know Him,” for God is metaphysical and a transcendent being….
All those who believe “with God’s help” and pour out their souls in prayers and requests are in fact worshipping themselves…
God has no role with regard to man…
Man is required to worship God…
And therefore throughout all of history, God did not help the Jewish people—not in the Greek period, nor the Roman one, not with the Ten Martyrs, not in the Inquisition, not with the Crusaders, and not with a million and a half children who perished in the Holocaust without having sinned…
God has finished creating the world, and therefore He is outside the world of matter…
Man, who possesses consciousness and intellectual power, must struggle in this material world against evil and for the values in which he believes…
Rabbi Abraham Michael, I would be glad if you would respond.
Have a good and blessed week,
Meir
If there’s a concrete question, I’ll try to respond.
See also my article here: