Our parsha includes a listing of the holidays and their celebrations. The term used here for holidays is mikra’ei kodesh, mikra from the root kara, to call or proclaim, and kodesh, meaning holy. These are days that have been proclaimed holy.
And who does that proclaiming of holiness? We do. The Torah says these are God’s holidays asher tikra’u otam – which you proclaim (Leviticus 23:2). The rabbis looked at this text and saw in it great human empowerment. Asher tikra’u otam, they say, actually should be read as asher tikre’u atem – atem, meaning you, emphasizing your role here. You have that power. God has handed over the power of declaring holiness to us (Rosh Hashanah 25a).
Expanding That Power
What if we expand our understanding of that power? What if we see this notion of mikra’ei kodesh, not just as an invitation to proclaim certain days of the year holy, but also as an invitation to proclaim other things and people and times holy, to be a force that sees and declares holiness in the world?
How would it feel to become korei kodesh, callers or proclaimers of holiness in everyday life, to become like the angels of whom it is said – vekara zeh el zeh ve’amar – they call out, kara, from the same root, they call out one to the other, saying – kadosh, kadosh, kadosh. Holy, holy, holy. (Isaiah 6:3)? I imagine those angels looking around at the world God created and pointing out to each other each holy thing. One says – see that flower? Holy! And the other angel throws the ball back, saying – see that human walking down the street? Holy! And then the first calls back again – see that bus carrying children to school? Holy! Like a ping pong game of spotting holiness. As the end of that verse says, melo kol ha’aretz kevodo. The world is filled with God’s glory. Everywhere one turns: divine glory, sacredness, poking up, peaking out in all directions. That’s how the angels see it and that’s perhaps what we are being invited into here, empowered into here, to search out and declare holiness.
Naming What Is Sacred
What can you see and name as sacred right now? Like the angels calling out to one another, zeh el zeh, perhaps it is first and foremost each other that they – and we – are being asked to see as holy – “you’re holy,” “yes, and so are you” – nodding in acknowledgment of each other’s sacredness. Or perhaps it is your own holiness that you are invited to claim and proclaim – kadosh ani, “I am holy” – so difficult to claim, but maybe you can assert it now. Or perhaps it is the quiet of your room or the mess of your room that you declare kadosh or a tiny glimpse of beauty outside your window or a bird call or your own aching vulnerable heart. Calling those out now, kadosh here and there and there, nodding to each thing, acknowledging the sacredness all around and inside us. It can feel like a way of saying – “I love you.” I love you, God. I love you, Self. I love you each thing and person around me. Holy, holy, holy. Everywhere we turn is God in disguise. We are uncovering the masks and veils and naming it, bringing it into awareness. Underneath it all is holiness, is love, is something divine. Melo kol ha’artz kevodo. The world is filled with Your Glory, God, and You have empowered us, you have called us, perhaps you even need us, to notice it, to name it, to call it out for all to see.
We See What We’re Looking For
But what of the darkness, of the despair, of the fear and anger and cruelty? I recently read an essay by David Ault in which he makes this observation: “Everywhere I look, I see what I’m looking for (“Maybe Something We Remember,” Awakin Weekly Reading, 4/27/26).” He goes on to explain: if we are looking for fear, fear will be everywhere, if we are looking for cruelty, cruelty will be everywhere. But if we decide that what we are looking for is God, then God will be everywhere. It is our choice. Be kore kedushah, the Torah advises, be a caller, a seeker, a proclaimer of holiness in the world. Choose to put on those glasses.
What’s Difficult Is Also Sacred
It doesn’t mean ignoring what feels hard or painful. On the contrary, it means turning towards those, too, as sacred. Those too are sacred. Death, too, is sacred, suffering, too, grief, too, is sacred, so sacred. We dismiss and reject so many of our emotions. How does it shift your experience of them to understand them as sacred, as part of a divine process? We dishonor so many parts of ourselves as less than, as shameful, as very much not sacred. We declare – I don’t like this about myself, this tendency to be awkward or sensitive or frenetic or angry or anxious, to move too quickly or too slowly. I don’t like it; it is not sacred. But what if we turned toward that part with honor, truly honored it as manifesting, perhaps in a slightly hidden way, but still manifesting an aspect of our sacred self, an aspect of God’s own sacred self? At its core, anger is the assertion of sacred boundaries that demonstrate a divine self honoring. Awkwardness is a kind of authenticity, a divine truth that will not accede to societal norms. God lives at the core of it all.
Noticing what happens when you turn towards yourself and your parts as essentially sacred. Like a little child perking up under praise, you are drawing out their strength, their goodness. Oh, you see me as sacred, oh, now I become more sacred, that aspect of me is what flowers under your gaze. When you call out the light in me, it shines brighter. See how those parts laugh and prance in the sunshine now, letting their divine glory blossom. Vayar Elokim ki tov. God saw that it was good (Genesis 1:4 and throughout). Becoming like God, a seer of good inside and outside you.
Can you feel how this could happen with those close to you and perhaps even with random strangers that you meet, how something shifts with your naming it as holy, something awakens, something lights up? Like – oh, you’re calling me sacred. I thought I was dirty. They stand taller, rising to meet that name, to become that, to recognize that they have always been that. And maybe later, when they – or we – act, it is from this place of sacredness, with dignity and pride and love. Proclaiming holiness has an impact.
Kara As Inviting
The word kara can also have the nuance of inviting or summoning, to invite the holy from the depths of its hiding, to summon it up to come forward and take center stage. On some level, it is always already here – God is always already here – but as with the holiness of the holidays, our calling it out and naming it – our recognition – actually has an effect in the world, awakening and strengthening it. It’s like if I am looking out a window at night and all I see is darkness, and then someone points out the twinkling star in the sky or the owl’s bright eyes and now those things expand and fill up my sight and my consciousness, shifting my experience. That’s what happens when we call out holiness; we are inviting it to take up space in our consciousness.
Practice – This Moment
What if we were to proclaim this moment as sacred? Can you feel how that declaration invites a buried aspect of our experience to arise? Right now, here, you, as you read this. God is right here. And maybe in this moment you are feeling uncomfortable, maybe you ache and have fatigue and pain, maybe you are worried about something, maybe you feel irritated by this whole idea of holiness – including all of that in this sacred moment; that’s part of the fabric of the kedushah. Not getting rid of anything – your genuine experience, the honesty and presence and truth and inclusiveness of it, that, too, is sacred. Sensing how God inhabits this moment in you exactly as it is, exactly as you are. Holiness is not somewhere else. It is here in this mess. Right here, in this precious mess. No other moment will ever be exactly like this one. Sensing the weightiness of it, the presence in it, inviting the holiness of this moment to shine through and be felt, to be awakened. Maybe it’s like a sleeping tiger in the corner that sits up and bounds forward, aliveness and power tingling through you. This moment is sacred. Declaring it, proclaiming it, knowing it.
Counter Cultural Work
It’s not always so easy. Sometimes we find it incredibly hard to be proclaimers of holiness. The world does not support such work. It bangs us over the head with negativity and despair and with a sense of the randomness and unimportance of things and of people and of this moment, devaluing it all. It’s all disposable and hurried, to be thrown out so we can move on to tomorrow. To be a proclaimer of holiness is radical counter cultural work. It is the pure innocent work of faith that can seem naive or pollyanish, but is true and deep and stable – emet veyatziv venachon – and I believe what the world desperately needs. To proclaim holiness.
Defiant
To proclaim, according to the dictionary definition, is something that we do insistently, proudly, defiantly. Insistently, proudly, defiantly, we go out into the world and proclaim holiness. It is like that tiger awakening in you. It is strong and proud. There is a knowing to it that withstands the pressure to bow to negativity or what people call realism. It insists that there is holiness in the world despite it all. It holds fast to that faith, to the faith in God, in goodness, in love and sacredness at the core of the universe. It holds fast to it and proclaims it out loud for all to see, again and again, despite the setbacks and the internal collapse and the confusion and despair. Again and again, it insists – No, I am sacred. You are sacred. This world is precious and sacred and divine. I will not let go of that, come what may. Feel yourself as a warrior for sacredness. Insistent, defiant.
Strengthening Each Other
Yeshayahu says – kol kore bamidbar, a voice is kore, calls out in the desert (Isaiah 40:3). That is how it feels sometimes, that we are a voice calling out in the desert, the only one proclaiming holiness against a backdrop of wilderness and nihilism. But we stay the course. We stay the course and we strengthen one another, because we are not a lone voice in the wilderness, but in relation to one another, like the angels, vekara zeh el zeh, calling out to one another, notnim reshut zeh lazeh, giving each other permission despite the skeptics, inner and outer, despite the skeptics, giving each other permission to bring divinity into the world, calling out benahat ruach, with tranquility and certainty, in a clear and pleasant tone, gathering strength from one another to proclaim holiness (quotes from the morning prayers before the Shema).
Mikra kodesh. Calling yourself and each other sacred. Calling this moment sacred. We keep at it, as Yeshayahu says, clearing a path for God, clearing a path for redemption (Isaiah 40:3).
