Sanctifying the Name (Rabbi Sacks on Emor, Covenant & Conversation)

The Rabbi Sacks Legacy

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 627 Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2022

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to Rabbi Sacks' commentary on the weekly Torah portion. This series of Covenant & Conversation essays examines the ethics we can derive from the Torah, week-by-week, parsha by parsha. You can find the full written article on Emor available to read, print, and share, by visiting: rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/emor/sanctifying-the-name/ For more articles, videos, and other material from Rabbi Sacks, please visit www.RabbiSacks.org and follow @RabbiSacks. The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Trust continues to share weekly inspiration from Rabbi Sacks. This piece was originally written and recorded by Rabbi Sacks in 2015. Covenant & Conversation on Ethics is kindly supported by the Maurice Wohl Charitable Foundation in memory of Maurice and Vivienne Wohl z”l.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Sanctifying the name. A president guilty of sexual abuse. A prime minister indicted on charges of
0:08.0	corruption and bribery, rabbis in several countries accused of financial impropriety,
0:14.7	sexual harassment and child abuse. That such things happen testifies to a profound malaise in contemporary Jewish life.
0:23.6	More is at stake than simply morality. Morality is universal bribery, corruption, and the misuse of power are wrong and wrong equally,
0:32.6	whoever is guilty of them. When though the guilty of the leaders, something more is involved.
0:38.7	The principles introduced in our parasha of Kiddush Hashem and Kiddush Hashem. Do not profane my
0:45.9	holy name, that I may be sanctified in the midst of the Israelites, I, the Lord, who sanctify you.
0:53.4	The concepts of Kiddush and Khillul Hashem have a history.
0:57.5	Though they're timeless and eternal, their unfolding occurred through the course of time.
1:03.2	In our pasha, according to Ibn Erzurah, the verse has a narrow sense.
1:07.5	The chapter in which it occurs has been speaking about the special duties of
1:11.8	the priesthood and the extreme care they have to take in serving God within the sanctuary.
1:17.5	All Israel is holy, but the priests are a holy elite within the nation, and it was there tasked
1:23.3	to preserve the purity and glory of the sanctuary as God's symbolic home in the midst of the nation.
1:29.5	So the commands are a special charge to the priests to take exemplary care as guardians of the holy.
1:37.5	A second dimension was disclosed by the prophets who used the phrase Gila Hashem to describe immoral conduct that brings dishonor to
1:47.3	God's law as a code of justice and compassion. Amos speaks of people who trample on the heads of the
1:54.9	poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed and so profane my holy name. Jeremiah invokes
2:03.9	Khul al-Shem to describe those who circumvent the law by emancipating their slaves, only to
2:09.9	recapture and enslave them. Malachi, the last of the prophet, says, of the corrupt priests of his
2:16.7	day, from where the sun rises to where it sets,
2:19.9	my name is honored among the nations, but you profane it.
	...

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