"To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner.  I am not a teacher, only a fellow student."  (Soren Kierkegaard)

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A FEW PRE-SHABBAT WORDS FROM RABBI AARON

"You shall be holy, for I, Adonai your God, am holy." This powerful charge opens parashat kedoshim, and these words continually invite us to revisit the rich possibilities of meanings that live within these words.
First, I share with you a wonderful context offered by Rabbi Harold Kushner. His comments in full are found in Etz Hayim (pp. 693-694).

You shall be holy
In Hebrew, this summons is phrased in the plural, implying that the capacity for holiness is not restricted to spiritually gifted people; anyone may attain holiness. God does not demand the impossible. The plural phrasing suggests further that holiness is most easily achieved in the context of a community. It is difficult for a person to live a life of holiness without others. Noah wasn't able to do it; even Abraham lapsed into unworthy behavior when surrounded by people who were not striving for holiness as he was [cf. Genesis 12, 20].

An Ark of Another Sort
In the summer of 1964, Jean Vanier - a Canadian Royal Navy officer in World WAR II and the son of a French Canadian diplomat - invited two mentally disabled men from a local asylum to come live with him at his home in a small French village north of Paris, and he named the little community L'Arche - French for "the ark." Since then, L'Arche has blossomed into a federation of more than 130 communities in 33 countries on six continents, communities where the disabled people live with non-disabled people, who are able to pursue what Vanier sees as the opportunity of a lifetime - "to go down the social ladder, not up." For many years the conventional wisdom had been that mentally disabled people should learn how to live by themselves, hold down a job, "and go home at night to watch television, and drink beer," as Vanier put it, but he felt that this view ignored "the greatest cry of handicapped people and all human beings - the cry for community."

 "He Who Dies with the Most Toys Wins" does not describe a culture that seeks out the Sacred
Vanier: "...Individualistic material progress and the desire to gain prestige by coming out on top have taken over from the sense of fellowship, compassion and community. Now people live more or less on their own in a small house, jealously guarding their goods and planning to acquire more, with a notice on the gate that says, 'Beware of the Dog."

A short excerpt of Vanier in conversation
We become more human as we discover we are able to love people. And when I say "love people,"  I mean to see their value and their beauty, to love people who have been pushed aside, humiliated, seen as having no value. Then we see that they are gradually being changed. At the same time, sharing our lives in community with the weak and the poor, we come in touch with our own limits, pain, and brokenness. We realize that we, too, have our handicaps which are often around our need for power and the feeling that our value lies in being powerful - a power that frequently involves crushing other people. So we're confronted by two visions of society... 

pyramid 
You have to have more and more power in order to get to the top.
body
Every person has a place.

If you're interested, I'll send you a copy of the conversation [2006] between Jean Vanier and William Bole. Also, well-worth you're while: http://being.publicradio.org/programs/wisdomoftenderness/

Rabbi Aaron

Click any of the images below to view the complete pdf file (some pdf files are more than one page)