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Off The Pulpit: Current Newsletter "Fastened to Flesh and Bone"
by Rabbi David Wolpe
In life, the everyday mixes with the eternal. Is it holy to sit on a
committee or sacred to oversee synagogue budgets? This problem
disturbed the great English constitutionalist, Walter Bagehot. In a
memorable passage he writes: "There seems to be an unalterable
contradiction between the human mind and its employments. How
can a soul be a merchant? What relation to an immortal being have
the price of linseed, the fall of butter, the tare on tallow, the
brokerage on hemp? Can an undying creature debit 'petty expenses'
and charge for 'carriage paid?'"
Mitzvot are the Jewish answer to this problem. Mitzvot are everyday,
sacred actions. Our physical nature is not a contradiction to our spirit;
it is the expression of it. Everything can be sacred: eating, economy,
trade, talking.
In the Talmud when Hillel is on his way to the bathhouse and asked
where he is going, he answers, "to perform a mitzvah." Can a soul
shampoo its hair? The answer is that in this world we are not split, we
are one. Taking care of ourselves and others — fastened as we are to
flesh and bone — is tending an earthly image of the Divine.
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