In 1948, Jean-Paul Sartre premiered a play entitled Les mains sales, or The Dirty Hands, in which this famous (translated) quote was featured:
“You cling so tightly to your purity, my lad! How terrified you are of sullying your hands. Well, go ahead then, stay pure! What good will it do, and why even bother coming here among us? Purity is a concept of fakirs and friars. But you, the intellectuals, the bourgeois anarchists, you invoke purity as your rationalization for doing nothing. Do nothing, don’t move, wrap your arms tight around your body, put on your gloves. As for myself, my hands are dirty. I have plunged my arms up to the elbows in excrement and blood. And what else should one do?”
In singling out purity as a lofty concept used to justify inaction, Sartre reiterated a criticism that people have long held for the “pure,” the “holy-rollers,” those living in ivory towers, built on foundations of ideological fundamentalism. The “holier than thou” of our species are often reviled as idealists whose sense of holiness casts others as inferior. Americans especially love to mock purists who cling to higher principles and strive to set themselves apart from the vulgar aspects of human existence. To separate oneself from the unworthy and unsightly is inherently to cast aspersions on that which we wish to rise above, is it not? And there has always been an element of society eager to tear others from their high horses, to remind people that, as much as they may wish to be holy and set apart, they are no better than anyone else.
So where does this week’s Torah portion, K’doshim, fit into all of this? While the title of this parsha, “You shall be holy,” might conjure up cringe-worthy notions of moral superiority, the instructions laid out in this text paint an entirely different notion of what it means to be “holy,” or set apart. Rather than asking us to remove ourselves from the world, the Eternal asks us to live within it with a moral compass that points toward love, justice, and generosity. Take care of each other. Care for the stranger in your midst. Care for your children, your parents, the poor among you. Don’t look away from the pain of the world; instead, make it your focus. Look to the wounds and work to heal them. And don’t forget to take the time to rest.
The world that we live in may be painful and incredibly messy at times. We may look aghast at the news and wish to recoil from the hatred, the screaming of those who refuse to listen, the oversimplifications of those with the historical knowledge of a goldfish. Headlines are horrifying. Idealists and absolutists are wreaking havoc on the ivory towers of our academic institutions. Jews around the world are becoming more vulnerable. Our students feel unsafe crossing their campuses. Antisemitism is on the rise around the globe. And the Torah asks us to get our hands dirty, to engage with this violent, vulgar, and unjust world. Feed the poor, protect the vulnerable, love the stranger as we love ourselves, and don’t forget to take time to recover on Shabbat, so that you can get back to work on tikkun olam. Do this, and you shall be holy, “for I, Adonai your God, am holy.”
Holiness in this sense is not the ethereal pursuit of the high-minded and out of touch. It is not something that we engage in to prove our superiority over the riff raff and the lesser than. It is the example provided by the Eternal, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who did not reject humanity because of its inferiority, but rather sought a covenant with it, learned from it throughout the Torah, and continued to guide, support, and love, even in the face of ingratitude and betrayal. So instead of recoiling from the world when we see its hideous underbelly, we follow God’s example. And in aspiring to holiness, we may make it easier for others to do the same.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rebecca Abbate
