Parshas Kedoshim

To This Week's Torah Thoughts

Seeing the Whole Picture

Imagine a person watching a tiny area of a computer screen for a short time and getting up and saying - "Computers are nonsense - I've been watching these points on the screen for 5 minutes and they just keep changing colors without any rhyme or reason"! Without a minimal knowledge of what computers do, without watching the whole screen and only for a few minutes — his conclusion is correct from that perspective. When a person looks at the world from the few years he's lived in a small segment of the earth without a fundemental understanding of the point of creation, he will 'rightfully' come to the conclusion that life is pointless. When he goes further and views the Torah from that arrogant perspective he will come to sacrilege. The more one learns — the more he respects the infinite wisdom embedded in the Torah and in Creation; People who appreciate the beauty of Nature don't litter.

When a Jew cultivates proper understanding of the beautiful complexity of the myriad Spiritual Worlds, how they relate and influence each other and shower the world with goodness — when he understands the part his physical actions have in making them all flow properly, he can no longer live a haphazard lifestyle. No longer can he plant two types of grain together or wear clothes made of linen and wool combined. For each have their unique divine roots — wool is from Chesed, linen is from Gvurah. Combining them in this world is like Shimshon tying the fox tails to each other — this pulls this way and that pulls the other, and all the Heavenly Flow of Goodness gets lost from this world. When we are Kedoshim (holy), when we emulate the Heavenly pattern in our physical existence, we will merit the tremendous blessing inherent in the correlation of all the Divine Worlds. As our Parsha continually repeats "Ani Hashem Elokeichem" — when these three manifestations of Hashem's Name are combined, He showers us with His infinite benevolence to the limit of our endurance.

Based on Rabbi Vali's book on Vayikra. Questions can be mailed to: the Yeshiva