This week’s second Parsha, Kedoshim, begins, “You shall be holy because I the Lord your God am Holy.  A man must fear his mother and father and guard my Shabbats, I am God”.  Rash”i tells us that this parsha was read at Hakel (the gathering of the entire Jewish people in Jerusalem every seven years), because most of the main parts of the Torah are contained within it.   But this is perplexing, because while it is true that this Parsha has many laws, it does not by any measure contain most of the Torah, or for that matter even the main parts.  None of the paragraphs of the Shema are in it, nor is the Exodus from Egypt or the receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.  So what does Rash”i mean by the phrase “most of the main parts of the Torah are contained in it”?

The Nitovot Shalom, the Slonimer Rebbe, Rabbi Shalom Brezovsky, writes that Kedoshim is the main part of the Torah because the goal of the Torah and the commandments is to connect with God, and becoming holy is a doorway to becoming like God and thus connecting with God.  But how do we do this?   How do we become like God?  He explains that this Pasrsha is read when the Jewish people gather all together because this work of becoming holy like the Divine can not be done alone.  To grasp the high level of being holy requires tuning into the power of the congregation.  Only when we are unified as a nation and a community does the holiness flow.  The commandment to be holy is followed by Shabbat says the Slonimer Rebbe, because reaching the true light of Shabbat is also dependent on being part of a unified community.

We are celebrating our Shabbats now as individuals, but perhaps that does not mean that we are totally without the communal power to bring forth the light of Shabbat or holiness.  We are still one community, perhaps not as unified in person as before, but through the miracle of technology, at least to some extent, we can still be connected.   Almost every night Kesher Israel has classes taught by congregants, by me and by guest speakers.   We have time for children to gather on Zoom and social time for adults every erev Shabbat at 5:30pm in our new virtual Kesher Kiddush Club.  Take advantage of the Kesher Zoom room.  The times for events are in the SAP and on our website, and the doorway is just www.kesher.org/zoom.

See you online!