Kedoshim: The Torah of the Lowest Common Denominator : Making Things
Count
For dialectic to work, for the tension between opposites to manifest as profound oneness, each side must have integrity. For example, in the male/female dialectic, if the ‘havdallah’ of Mechitza is applied with great humility, a sweeping unity will ensue.
It’s not the differences that create acrimony, it’s how they are processed.
The main accomplishment of counting the Omer is that through it a group of slaves who have unlimited potential for acrimony (as is the case for all Jews throughout history) become unified.
It is easy for us to be powered by our grudges, to see ourselves as victims, and to be reactive in our attitudes. The Jewish people, having experienced centuries of abuse, have the greatest propensity for falling into scape-goating and grudges, and so counting the Omer represents our ability to unify and transcend.
When the Haggadah tells us, regarding the contrary child, to Hakaha et shinav, this is usually translated as “blunt his teeth”. However, it can also mean “clarify his Shechina”. Shin/tooth can also be translated as “review”, “learn” or “change/transform”, so the phrase could read “draw out his learning/reviewing/transformation”. Understood this way, we are being told that every learning situation can and must be a transformative experience.
Creating this experience is the Torah of the lowest common denominator.
To not bear a grudge, one needs to be kadosh/holy, and to recognize one’s own holiness. We do this by recognizing the lowest common denominator in ourselves.
In his commentary on Parshat Nitsavim, the Rebbe of Ishbitz in Mei HaShiloach shows how unity depends upon unity of opposites. The Ishbitzer explains that when Moshe arranged all the people before God (Devarim 29:9), he stood each group against its opposite. He arranged the wise people, who are filled with knowledge, opposite the infants, who know nothing, the elders opposite the converts, the women opposite the head of the tribes, with “all included as one”. This dialectic tension and the give-and-take it encourages generate the unity of Israel. The significance of this for the individual is to show that each person needs to face the part of themselves that they see in their opposites. In order to be truly wise, the wise man needs to see the infant within himself. In order to obtain wisdom, the elder must embrace the new ideas of Torah, represented by the convert. (This follows from the teaching of the Arizal, that whenever a new Torah teaching is revealed, the soul of a convert is uncovered).
To be inclusive with ourselves, to find the unity within ourselves, we need to find the Rasha/contrary child within.
The Talmudic sage Rabbi Akiva taught us how to do this. To come to terms with his own resentment against his parents for not teaching him to read, Rabbi Akiva wrote the Kaddish for a sinful, illiterate orphan, instituting what is now the most widespread practice of Judaism. This is how we fight Amalek, by finding the place of hopelessness, the part of ourselves on which we have given up. We find and embrace the lowest common denominator within ourselves.
According to the hierarchy of Torah Mitzvot (in which, for instance, Shabbat is higher than Tisha b’Av, because we can’t mourn on Shabbat, and Brit Milah is higher than Shabbes, because we can perform circumcisions on Shabbat), the highest Mitzva of all is when the High Priest burns incense in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur. And yet, there is still one Mitzvah that supersedes this highest of all Mitzvot. If the High Priest, while walking to the Holy of Holies, finds an abandoned corpse by the side of the road, he must stop, and bury it, thereby rendering himself Tuma, a state that prohibits him from performing the Yom Kippur Service.
What is the meaning of this paradox?
Death is stalking us all, and threatens to render us all anonymous, as if we don’t matter. When death becomes anonymous, we lose touch with the humanity within ourselves. The concept of kedusha/holiness, means that everything we do does matter. And so, the way we deal with an abandoned dead body is critical, It determines our own humanity and ensures the presence of hope in the world.
There is a great parallel between this Mitzvah of burying an anonymous dead body and counting the Omer. Counting the Omer makes death count, and it makes time count and it makes people count. Counting the Omer stands in direct opposition to counting as a way of killing time and killing people.
Numbers can achieve either end. Statistics can make people feel anonymous and ineffectual and non-existent, while counting the Omer imbues them with a sense of holiness and significance.
We can only comprehend the unity of reality by studying its specifics. In the dialectic/dialogic process of the Sephirot, synthesis can only be achieved through dialogue, when each Midah/attribute is special and has its own absolute integrity. This contradicts Hegelian dialectics, in which the synthesis negates the specificity of the opposites involved. When each side feels it has its own voice, the edge is taken off the dialogue.
Rabbi Akiva is the Talmud’s main proponent of the Torah of the Lowest Common Denominator. As the guardian of this particular Torah, Rabbi Akiva was duty bound to give us its negative, or klipa/husk, as well as its positive image, because it is only through seeing something in relation to its opposite that we can appreciate it and its significance.
The concept of Rabbi Akiva waiting for all of his students (including the lowest common denominator) on Seder night is juxtaposed to the counting of the Omer. And the life-sanctifying counting of the Omer is associated with its opposite – the death of Rabbi Akiva’s students, who died because they failed to visit each other when they were sick. Herein lies the teaching. Like the abandoned corpse, a sick person represents a low point within ourselves that we need to embrace if we are to embrace and preserve our own humanity.
Failure to embrace our own lowest common denominator is due to fear of weakness, vulnerability and death, which defines slavery. Transformation and freedom involves recognizing the lowest common denominator within ourselves, and knowing that it is included.
The Mei Hashiloach interprets the verse “you shall be holy, because I the Lord your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2) in this light. The Mei Hashiloach says that the term ‘holiness’ denotes preparedness. If, like the Piacesna Rebbe in the Warsaw Ghetto, we expect to find holiness in the darkest of places, we will find it there, and we will never feel abandoned. When we stand opposite God, when we deliberately look for opposition, there is a mirroring process, on all four levels of consciousness, and we can see God in the Tuma and in the darkness. God carries us, and we carry God; God guards us, and we guard God; God illuminates us, and we illuminate God; and God sustains us, and we sustain God. When we stand opposite God, we can see God in an abandoned corpse, and in the mini abandonments and deaths within ourselves.
In the worst calamities, we can see God’s face.
The ascent through these four levels of consciousness, or worlds, is the transition from slavery to freedom, symbolized by our constant effort to move from ayin to alef. Alef is the letter of ‘paradoxical unity’, incorporating the whole process of dialectic. One yud reaching to heaven and one yud reaching to earth, with the straight line representing the paradox and tension. This is the unity that comes from separateness. The ayin is the number 70, which is complexity. Complexity is overwhelming, and so this is the letter of reactivity.