Parashat Kedoshim is filled with short one line laws about how to act towards each other, and especially towards the needy and the defenseless. Leave food for the poor and stranger, pay your day worker promptly, don’t hate your brother or take revenge, be fair in judgment, don’t stand idly by the blood of your fellow, don’t gossip, honor the elderly.
It’s a lot. And I think sometimes we feel it as a lot, the weight of the many needs and demands around us and inside us like the clamor of a thousand hungry children pulling at our apron strings. And the weight also of our need to do it right, as the Torah enjoins us, not to hurt anyone and to provide the care that everyone needs.
Our Many Needy Ones
Who are the needy ones that are lying on your heart right now, that you feel responsible for – family members. friends, colleagues, community, clients, pets, people and events in the larger world that you worry over and feel you need to act on in the right way, all pulling at you in a million directions. And internally, there are great needs and demands, too, parts of yourself that are desperate and hurt, in pain and in need, anxious, triggered, fearful and despairing, pushing and pulling at you, asking for something, parts of your body that ache, too. The combined weight of all of that on you — it’s so much. The parsha has a long series of demanding others, and you have the same thing inside you, a line of beggars going around the block outside the door of your heart. No wonder we feel overwhelmed sometimes and unable to cope.
The Divine Container
Here is the thing – the parsha offers us a container for all of that. Woven through all these lines of needs and injunctions is a chorus that is repeated again and again at the end of each line: Ani Hashem. Ani Hashem. I am God. I am God.
We cannot hold it all alone. There is a holding container much vaster than ourselves and it can hold all of it. Maybe you can imagine all those clamoring hungry children and parts and people and place them all into a giant sea of divine love and compassion. It’s never too much in this space; they can all be held here. You can experiment with feeling this in your body, letting all the parts of your body relax into a warm bath, floating and held there, in this Ani Hashem divine container.
Becoming Such a Container Yourself
There is more. I believe that we are each called in this life to embody and become ourselves such a vessel of divine holding. Not on our own, never on our own, and not from our usual place of overwhelm or fixing or striving. No, there is a divine place inside us – where the divine seed or spark was planted – the place where the universal God flows through each one of us in particular, and it is from this place that we are given the capacity to hold what is difficult, not by ourselves, but together with God and each other and the universe. Our work is to learn to inhabit this place of larger holding.
Ani Hashem: Both I and God
I believe there is a secret meaning to the two words Ani Hashem. Ani and Hashem. I and God. Who provides the holding? Both I and God. It is the place where those two words meet, the place where my particular I, my highest Self, meets Hashem, meets the broader divine energy. This is the place from which I become a holding container in the world, the place from which I can indeed welcome and hold the whole line of clamoring needy children at my doorstep, the place from which I can offer a tub of warm water for the parts of me and others to come and relax in. There is no overwhelm from this place because it accesses the larger endless sea of divine waters. I become a channel for that vast energy of the universe. Maybe you can get an inkling of that place inside you, that capacity for connection to something larger, like a cord to a nourishing neverending source, the divine Hashem energy surging through your Ani body, your particular Ani manifestation of God in the world.
From this Ani Hashem place we offer holding to all of the needy parts and people and issues we are dealing with. How does this work? I want to break down this holding capacity into two aspects that I think this parsha helps us see more clearly.
Step #1: Separation
The first is separation. Kedoshim tehiyu ki kadoesh ani Hashem Elokeikhem. Be kadosh, God says, just as I am kadosh. Inhabit my kadosh energy in the world, be my reflection on earth in your capacity to be kadosh. What does kadosh mean? Among other things, it means separate, like shabbat is separate from the week. So here is the first lesson in becoming a holding container like God: You have to first unblend from the parts themselves. You can’t be the bowl holding the apple if you are the apple itself. If you feel that you are your problems, you are your anxiety, your fear, your trauma, your brokenness, or if your child comes to you crying with a problem and you fall completely into the problem as if it is your own, you cannot be of any assistance. You cannot provide holding if you are blended with the thing itself. You need to somehow get a little distance, a little space, just enough to be able to see it and be the container rather than the thing itself.
This is not easy and takes practice. We feel the pain, the hurt, the anxiety, the fear, the overwhelm, the world’s problems and are completely one with them. They take us over. You can notice what in particular you are blended with right now, what issue has got you in its grips and feels like all of you, you can notice that blendedness and say – kedoshim tehiyu ki kadosh ani – I turn to God and ask for God’s kedushah capacity to enter me, the capacity to separate, to see it all from a slight distance, not to be in it, but to hold it, to take a step back and unblend, unstick, and disentangle from whatever it is, even just a little bit, so that you can see it more clearly and offer it some holding.
Step #2: Love
Because we don’t separate from these difficulties in order to escape or turn away or exile them. On the contrary, we separate from them in order to provide them with care. This brings us to the second aspect of divine holding: love. The central mitzvah of this parsha, and according to Rabbi Akiva, the central tenet of the whole Torah, is love – ve’ahavta lere’akha kamokha – love, outgoing and ingoing love, love your neighbor as yourself. Love yourself, love others. Inhabit love, be a channel for that divine flow in the world.
And so, in addition to separation, we also provide love. In a way, the separation is what allows for the love. We take a step back so that we are not enmeshed in the difficulty, but can instead provide connection from something larger. Space plus warmth. Maybe you can sense that movement inside you – bringing to mind a particular situation or person or emotion that is really upsetting and overwhelming you, first taking a step back and getting some space, kedoshim, so that you can re- inhabit your larger Ani Hashem capacity, and then turning towards it with ahavah, offering some love from that greater source inside and outside you. Not letting the difficulty take you over, but each time, stepping back into your seat in Ani Hashem, and from that place, offering the never ending love and connection that is now available to you.
As you sense that flow of love in you, you can send it out far and wide, a flow of love and holding and warmth and connection to those inside and outside you, to those that are on your heart right now and to those you have never met. The ger, too, the stranger, the other, ve’ahavta lo kamokha, the Torah says, love them, too; this love is never ending and expansive; we can inhabit that expansiveness and let the love flow out to the ends of the earth.
Loving “With” God
This love is not easy to hold on to. The world swirls around us with its anger, hatred and violence, and we are tempted to fall into despair, anxiety and overwhelm. But we have a continuous source for this love that we can tap into. Ve’ahavta et Hashem Elokekha – love God. Notice the et here – this connecting word can also mean “with” – Ve’ahavta et Hashem – love with God. When you love, love et, together with God, when you send your love out, let it be with that full force, not alone, but from that Ani Hashem place that taps into God’s own endless love.
Fiercely
And hold on to it fiercely. Bekhol levavekha uvekhol nafshekha uvekhol me’odekha. With your whole heart and soul and might – with every ounce of your being – hold on to this divine love, inhabit it with strength, let it flow through you and out of you with fierceness, boldness and steadfastness. The winds will blow hard against you, but still you stay solid in your Ani Hashem place, standing strong in your fierce connection to divine love. There is no greater power in the universe.
Image by Franz Bachinger from Pixabay
