| The Box Was Never Just a Box: Rethinking Holiness Karl Duncker, one of the pioneers of Gestalt psychology, conceived a challenge to demonstrate the need for unconventional thinking. In a room with a table pushed against the wall is a box of thumbtacks, matches, and a candle. Subjects were asked to attach the candle to the wall and have it lit. Many tried tacking the candle directly to the wall, but the tacks were intentionally too short for the purpose. Others tried to melt the candle and attach it to the wall but paraffin, which would not adhere to the wall, was intentionally used. Relatively few people were able to find the solution; remove the thumbtacks from the box, tack the box to the wall, and then put the candle in the box and light the candle. Subjects didn’t see the box as a tool, they saw its function merely as holding the matches because of their preconceived notion of what the box was supposed to do. Many Jews have a preconceived notion of the word holy. They mentally disengage when it is mentioned and regard it as irrelevant. After all, “I live in this world, not some fantasy world with angels and mountaintop monks who contemplate the meaning of life.” The experiment mentioned above sheds light on how people limit their possibilities. The same way a person gets stuck thinking that a box’s purpose is only to hold tacks, and therefore they will miss seeing it as a platform for the candle, so too people get stuck thinking holiness is just something for angels or super-religious people. Other religions say holiness is achieved by detaching oneself from the physical world but for Jews, holiness doesn’t come by it, it happens when we elevate it. There’s only one (Torah mandated) fast day a year—Yom Kippur—because the Jewish notion is to eat and enjoy food and express gratitude before consuming it. In short, enjoy the physical but do it in a mindful and grateful way. Anyone who has ever attended a Shabbat dinner or kiddush after services knows that we make Shabbat holy specifically by engaging in the various physical pleasures we enjoy that day. The Land of Israel is referred to as the Holy Land yet much physicality is involved with maintaining its holiness. We plant, harvest, irrigate, and work it but we make it holy when we leave over a corner of each field for the poor as well as giving them part of our harvest.We also donate a percentage of the crop to people responsible for the Temple’s service and upkeep in Jerusalem. Another example of holiness—elevating the physical—is marriage. When two people get married, the process is called kiddushin, holiness. Marriage is the most sublime relationship two people can have but thoughts alone don’t make a successful marriage, actions do. The more the commitment, the better and holier the marriage. Intimacy is not just another opportunity for stimulation of nerve endings; it’s learning to be a giver rather than taker. We find holiness having ramifications in time (Shabbat), place (Israel), and relationships (marriage). One does not become holy by abstaining, rather by embracing and distinguishing. We learn that partaking in the physical world isn’t a license to do what I want, when I want, to whomever I want; that’s what animals do. They defecate where they want, eat whatever and whenever they want (even if it doesn’t belong to them), and mate with whatever is in front of them at the moment. Each time we elevate our life’s seemingly mundane activities we remind ourselves that we have the capacity to elevate ourselves and our world. When we are engaged in holy endeavors, we announce to ourselves and to others that we are humans, not animals. It takes a special mind to realize that a box filled with tacks has a purpose other than being a container for tacks and it takes a special soul to realize that when it comes to holiness, humans weren’t meant to be angels. At Sinai, the Torah was given to humans, who are sometimes possessed with anger, lust, resentment, fear, and have other character defects. But we also have the ability to elevate ourselves and break out of the selfish mindset into which we were born. Don’t be scared of holiness, give it a try and elevate your physical life by being more mindful and grateful in every encounter. Just as the matchbox is more than a container, so too food becomes more than food, an intimate relationship becomes more than instinct, and life becomes more than survival. Without this paradigm shift our lives become instinct-driven but with this shift we become people who elevate the physical world we inhabit. When holiness is seen as something abstract and otherworldly, it doesn’t just miss the mark—it limits us and confines holiness to a place we can never reach, instead of revealing it in the life we are already living. The Torah teaches something far more empowering; holiness is not about escaping the world, it’s about transforming it. It’s the ability to look at the people and objects in our lives and ask not only what they are, but what they can become—and, even more importantly, what we can become through them. The box was never just a box and our lives were never meant to be just ordinary. The moment we learn to see differently is the moment we begin to live differently—and that is where holiness begins. Good Shabbos |
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