What does Holy Mean?

(17) 17. The Rabbi: Preparing for a pleasure, experiencing it and looking forward to it, double the feeling of enjoyment. This is the advantage of the blessings for him who is used to say them with attention and devotion. They produce in his soul a kind of pleasure and gratitude towards the Giver. He was prepared to give them up; now his pleasure is all the greater, and he says: 'He has kept us alive and preserved us.' He was prepared for death, now he feels gratitude for life, and regards it as gain. Should sickness and death overtake thee, they will be light, because thou hast communed with thyself and seen that thou gainest with thy Lord. According to thy nature thou art well fitted to abjure enjoyment, since thou art dust. Now He has presented thee with life and desire; thou art grateful to Him. If He takes them away, thou sayest: 'The Lord has given, the Lord has taken.' (Job 1:21). Thus thy whole life is one enjoyment. Whoever is unable to pursue such a course, consider not his pleasure a human pleasure, but a brutish one, which he does not perceive, any more than the drunkard alluded to above. The godly person fully grasps the meaning of each blessing, and knows its purpose in every connexion. The blessing, 'He who created the lights,' places before his eye the order of the upper world, the greatness of the heavenly bodies and their usefulness, that in the eyes of their Creator they are no greater than worms, though they appear to us immense on account of the profit we derive from them. The proof that He is their Creator may be found in the circumstance already mentioned, that His wisdom and power observable in the creation of the ant and bee is not less than in that of the sun and its sphere. The traces of this providence and wisdom are finer and more wonderful in the ant and bee, because, in spite of their minuteness, He put faculties and organs into them. This he bears in mind lest the light appear to him too great, and an evil genius lead him to adopt some views of worshippers of spirits, and make him believe that the sun and moon are able to help or injure independently, whilst they can only assist to do so indirectly, like the wind and fire. It is written: 'If I behold the sun when it shines . . . and my heart has been secretly enticed' (Job xxxi. 26, 27). At the blessing beginning: 'with eternal love,' he, in a similar manner, bears in mind the attachment of the Divine Influence to the community which was prepared to receive it, as a smooth mirror receives the light, and that the Law is the outcome of His will in order to establish His sway on earth; as it is in heaven. His wisdom did not demand of Him to create angels on earth, but mortals of flesh and blood, in whom natural gifts and certain characteristics prevail according to favourable or unfavourable influences, as this is explained in the 'Book of Creation.' Whenever some few, or a whole community, are sufficiently pure, the divine light rests on them and guides in an incomprehensible and miraculous manner which is quite outside the ordinary course of the natural world. This is called 'Love and joy." The Divine Influence, however, found next to the stars and spheres none who accepted his commands and who adhered to the course He had dictated, with the exception of a few between Adam and Jacob. When they had become a people, the Divine Influence rested upon them out of love, 'in order to be a God unto them.' In the desert he arranged them in the manner of the sphere in four standards, corresponding to the four quarters of the sphere, and in twelve tribes, corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac, the camp of the Levites being in the centre, just as it is stated in the 'Book of Creation.' 'The holy Temple is exactly in the centre, but God carries them all.' All this points to 'love' for the sake of which the blessing is recited. In the reading of the Shema, which then follows, he accepts the obligations of the Law, as in the piece beginning 'True and certain,' which expresses the firm resolution to observe the Tōrāh. This is as if, after having clearly and unmistakably imbibed all that preceded, he binds his soul and testifies that the children should submit to the Law for ever, just as the forefathers had done, according to the words: 'Upon our fathers, and upon us, and our children and our (coming) generations . . . a good word, firmly established, that never passes away.' To this he attaches these articles of creed which complete the Jewish belief, viz. the recognition of God's sovereignty, His eternity, and the providential care which He bestowed on our forefathers; that the Tōrāh emanated from Him, and that the proof for all this is to be found in the delivery from Egypt. This is alluded to in the words: 'It is true that Thou art the Lord our God; truly from everlasting is Thy name . . . the help of our fathers . . . from Egypt didst Thou redeem us.' He who unites all this in pure thought is a true Israelite and worthy of aspiring to the Divine Influence which among all nations was exclusively connected with the children of Israel. He finds no difficulty in standing before the Divine Presence, and he receives an answer as often as he asks. The prayer of the 'Eighteen Benedictions' must follow the blessing 'He has redeemed Israel' immediately and promptly, standing upright for this prayer in the condition described previously, when we discussed the blessings which relate to the whole Israelitish nation. Prayers of more individual character are voluntary and not incumbent, and they have their place in the paragraph ending, 'He who hears the prayer.' In the first paragraph, entitled, 'Fathers,' the worshipper remembers the piety of the Patriarchs, the establishment of the covenant with them on the part of God for all times, which never ceases, as is expressed in the words: 'He brings the Redeemer to their children's children.' The second blessing, known as 'Mighty Deeds,' teaches that God's is the eternal rule of the world, not however, as natural philosophers assert, that this is done by natural and empirical means. The worshipper is further reminded that He revives the dead' whenever He desires, however far this may be removed from the speculation of natural philosophers. Similar ideas prevail in the words: 'He causes the wind to blow, and the rain to descend.' According to His desire He 'delivers those in bondage,' as may be established by instances from the history of Israel. Having read these paragraphs which enlighten him in the belief that God keeps up a connexion with this material world, the worshipper extols and sanctifies Him by the declaration that no corporeal attitude appertains to Him. This is done in the paragraph beginning: 'Thou art holy,' a blessing which inculcates belief in the attributes of sublimity and holiness commented upon by philosophers. This paragraph follows the others in which the absoluteness of God's sovereignty is laid down. They convince us that we have a King and Lawgiver, and without them we had lived in doubt, the theories of philosophers and materialists. The paragraphs of 'Fathers' and 'Mighty Deeds,' must therefore precede that of the 'sanctification of God.' After this the worshipper begins to pray for the wants of the whole of Israel, and it is not permissible to insert other prayers except in the place of voluntary supplications. A prayer, in order to be heard, must be recited for a multitude, or in a multitude or, for an individual who could take the place of a multitude. None such, however, is to be found in our age.

(8) One ought to consider the laws of the Torah and to penetrate into their ultimate significance as much as he can. If, however, he cannot discover the reason and is ignorant of the basic cause of a law, he should not regard it with contempt. Let him not break through to ascend to the Lord, lest he break out against him (Exodus 19:24). His thinking about it must not be like his thinking concerning secular matters.
Consider, for example, how strict the Torah is with regard to sacrilege. If wood and stones, earth and ashes, became consecrated as soon as the name of the eternal Lord was called upon them, and anyone who put them to secular use committed sacrilege and required atonement even if he acted unwittingly, how much more should man take care not to regard with contempt the laws which God wrote down for us, simply because he happens to be ignorant of their basic reason. One must not impute to God things that are not right, nor regard the precepts as he would secular things. It is indeed written in the Torah: "You shall faithfully observe all my statutes and all my laws and do them" (Leviticus 19:37). The sages interpreted this verse to mean that we must observe and do the statutes just as well as the laws. What performance denotes is known, namely: one must do the statutes; observance, on the other hand, means that one should be careful about them and not imagine that they are less important than the laws. The laws are duties the reason of which is obvious, and the benefit derived in this world from doing them is known; for example, the prohibition against robbery and bloodshed, or the precept of honoring father and mother. The statutes are precepts the reason of which is not known, — — such as the prohibition against pork and that against meat-milk mixture, the laws concerning the heifer with the broken neck, the red cow, or the goat that is sent away to the wilderness. — — The Torah places the commandment concerning the statutes first, as it is written: "You shall observe my statutes and my laws, by the performance of which man shall live" (Leviticus 18:5).

(1) Let no man say: "Behold, I perform the precepts of the Torah, and engage myself in its wisdom so that I will receive all the blessings described therein, or so that I will merit the life in the World to Come; and I will separate myself from the transgressions against which the Torah gave warning so that I will escape the curses described therein, or so that I will suffer excision from the life in the World to Come". It is improper to serve the Lord in such way, for whosoever serves the Lord in such way, he is a worshiper because of fear, which is neither the degree of the prophets nor the degree of the sages. And the Lord should not be worshiped that way, save only by ignorant men, women and infants who are trained to worship because of fear, until their knowledge increases when they will worship because of love.

(2) The worshiper because of love, engages himself in the study of the Torah and the observance of precepts and follows the paths of wisdom on no account in the world, neither for fear of evil nor in order to inherit the good; but he does the true thing because it is true, and in the end the good comes because thereof,. That degree is a great degree, indeed and not every scholar attains it; for such was the degree of Abraham our father, whom the Holy One, blessed is He! called His beloved, because he worshiped not, save because of love, and it is, furthermore, the degree concerning which the Holy One, blessed is He! commanded through Moses, saying: "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God" (Deut. 6.5); for, when man will love the Lord with a proper love, he will momentarily perform all of the commandments because of love.

(3) And what is the proper love? He shall love the Lord with an exceeding great and very strong love so that his soul be tied to the love of the Lord, finding himself in a constant tremor, as if he were suffering of lovesickness, when his mind is free because of love for that woman, being continuously agitated about her, whether he sitting down, or whether he is standing up, even when he is eating and drinking. More than this should the love for the Lord be in the heart of those who love him, meditating therein constantly, even as He commanded us: "With all thy heart and with all thy soul" (Ibid.). This is what Solomon allegorically said: "For I am love-sick" (Songs 2.5). And, the whole book, Song of Songs, is an allegory on this subject.

(4) Said the ancient sages: "Peradventure you will say, behold, I study the Torah so that I will become rich, so that I will be called Rabbi, or so that I will receive reward in the World to Come, learn from what it is said: "That thou mayest love the Lord" (Deut. 30.20), all that you do, you shall not do save because of love. The sages, moreover, said: "For his commandments crave exceedingly, but not for the reward of His commandments". And the great sages likewise commanded particularly their intelligent and progressive disciples: "Be not like servants who minister to their master on condition of receiving a reward; but be like servants who minister to their master without condition of receiving a reward"; for, because he is the master it is proper to minister to him, as if saying, minister because of love.

(3) The father, operator or any one else present says, "Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, Who, from the womb didst sanctify the well-beloved (Isaac), and didst set Thy statute in his flesh, and seal his offspring with the sign of the holy covenant. On this account, O living God, our Portion and our Rock, give command to deliver from destruction the dearly beloved of our flesh for the sake of the covenant which Thou hast set in our flesh. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Who makest the covenant." The father of the child recites the blessing "Who hast preserved us in life."

(31) Rebbi Meir used to say, “There is not [even a] single person among the Jewish people who does not perform one hundred Mitzvot (commandments) every day. He reads the Shema, says Berachot (blessings) before it and after it, eats his bread and says the Berachot before it and after it, prays Shemoneh Esreh three times, and does all other commandments and says Berachot over them.” And also Rebbi Meir used to say, “There is not [even a] single person among the Jewish people whom the Mitzvot do not surround. Tefillin (Phylacteries) is on his head, and Tefillin is on his arm, and Mezuzah (scroll on the doorpost) is on his door, and the four Tzitzit (fringes) surround him. And regarding them (i.e. these seven commandments) David said, ‘Seven times per day I praise You for the laws of Your righteousness.’ (Psalms 119:164). And when he (i.e. David) entered the bathhouse and saw the circumcision on his flesh [he praised God further for the eighth commandment that is physically on him] as it is said, ‘For the conductor, for the eighth, a song of David.’ (Psalms 12:1) And it says, ‘Hashem’s angel camps around those who fear Him and delivers them.’ (Psalms 34:8).”

(1) It is mandatory upon the whole house of Israel to sanctify this Great Name, for it is said: "And I shall be sanctified among the children of Israel" (Lev. 22.32). They are also charged not to blaspheme Him, for it is said: "And ye shall not profane My holy Name" (Ibid.). How are these commandments to be observed? If an idolater will force an Israelite to transgress one of the commandments of the Torah and threaten him with death for disobedience, it is mandatory that he transgress the commandment and be not put to death, for it is said concerning the commandments: "That which a man may do and live by it" (Ibid. 18.5)—"live by it, but not die for it". Thus, if he chose death and did not transgress, his blood be upon his own head.

(2) Whereat are these words directed? Concerning all other commandments, save idolatry, adultery and blood-shed. For respecting these three commandments, if one will say to him: "Transgress one of the three, or die," he shall die, and not transgress. Whereat are these words directed? When the idolater intends to have a personal enjoyment, as when he forces an Israelite to build his house, or cook his meals on a Sabbath, or when he forces a Jewish woman, and in like matters; but if he merely intended to make him violate commandments, then, if it happen between themselves, and there be no ten Israelites present, it is mandatory to transgress and not die; but if he forces him to go astray from one of the commandments in the presence of ten Israelites, he must suffer death and not transgress, even though the idolater did not intend to lead him astray save from one of the rest of the commandments.

(8) The foreskin is regarded as an abomination, for which the gentiles are contemned in Scripture, as it is said "For all the nations are uncircumcised (Jer. 9-25). An important institution is Circumcision. For the Patriarch Abraham was not called perfect till he had circumcised himself, as it is said, "Walk thou before me; and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between Me and thee" (Gen. 17:1-2). Whoever neglects the covenant of our ancestor Abraham, and retains the foreskin or artificially obliterates the marks of circumcision, even if he has acquired much knowledge of the Torah and practises good deeds, will have no portion in the world to come.

(9) Mark how strictly the observance of Circumcision is to be regarded. Moses, although he was on a journey did not receive indulgence a single hour for neglecting this duty. In connection with all the precepts of the Torah, three covenants were made with Israel; as it is said "These are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded … beside the covenant which He made with them in Horeb" (Deut. 28:69). And in the next section it is said "Ye are standing this day all of you before the Lord your God … that thou shouldst enter into the covenant of the Lord thy God" (Deut. 29:9-11). Three covenants are here mentioned. But in connection with Circumcision, thirteen covenants were made with our ancestor Abraham: "And I will make My covenant between Me and thee" (Gen. 17:2); "As for me. behold, My covenant is with thee" (ib. 17:4); "And I will establish My covenant between Me and thee" (ib. 17:7); "for an everlasting covenant" (ib. 17:7); "And as for thee, thou shalt keep My covenant" (ib. 17:9); "This is My covenant which you shall keep" (ib. 17:10) "And it shall be a token of a covenant" (ib. 17:11); "And My covenant shall be in your flesh" (ib. 17:13); "for an everlasting covenant" (ib. 17:13); "he hath broken my covenant" (ib. 17:14); "And I will establish My covenant with him" (ib. 17:19); "for an everlasting covenant" (ib. 17:19); "But My covenant I will establish with Isaac" (ib. 17:21).

(16) 10. Al Khazari: Indeed, I see myself compelled to ask the Jews, because they are the relic of the Children of Israel. For I see that they constitute in themselves the evidence for the divine law on earth. He then invited a Jewish Rabbi, and asked him about his belief.