May 3, 2024 / 25 Nisan 5784
You shall heed my laws and my rules,
which if a person practices them shall live by them;
I am the Lord. [Leviticus 18:5]
What does ‘shall live by them’ (va’chai ba-hem) really mean? “The fulfillment of these laws gives life,” writes Jacob Milgrom. “In other words, life is built into these laws.”
According to 19th century scholar R Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin, “Sometimes chai means ‘not dead’ and sometimes it means living in fullness.” And 20th century Hasidic leader R Shalom Noach Berzhovsky tantalizingly adds a layer: “we should fulfill the mitzvot with vitality (bechayyut). Any mitzvah that we fulfill we should perform enthusiastically, with the full involvement of all our body, in the sense of ‘all my limbs declare: ‘Who is like You, YHVH?’’” (Ps. 35:10).
Living in fullness – body, mind, and soul – seems to be what the Torah is after. In Aviva Zornberg’s stirring words: “Kedushah can be understood as the aspiration toward such vitality. A kind of discomfort is its baseline: a restlessness about all given situations. Here, one is not yet who one wishes to be. One seeks out a deeper and larger way to be.”
I’m in love with Zornberg’s phrase ‘restlessness about all given situations.’ It well describes my life and sense of being; perhaps yours as well. Indeed, I am not yet who I wish to be! So, sign me up for the ongoing activity of seeking ‘out a deeper and larger way to be.’ That’s the work to which the Torah invites us.
va’chai ba-hem – live by them!
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi David
