Shabbat Shalom.
First, I want to offer an apology—I wrote this D’var Torah for one person: baby Avery Gray. That said, everyone else is welcome to listen in.
Now Avery Gray, if you could talk you’d probably say, “I’m too young for a D’var Torah.” But you already had a speech just for you. At the seder, you were the child too young to ask a question.
So let’s start with the torah portion. This week we read a double portion: Acharei Mot and Kedoshim. A lot of it is scary or full of rules. It opens with God striking down Aaron’s sons when they get too close to him, then moves into laws about offerings, ritual slaughter, and a story about an evil goat sent off into the wilderness.
Then we get to Kedoshim, which reads like a long list of rules: Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t gossip. Don’t be a harlot. Honestly, it doesn’t sound like much fun.
But right in the middle of all these rules—almost tucked away—is one of the most important lines in the entire Torah: “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.”
This short line is so different than all of that other stuff. It says that we’re not just here to follow rules or avoid punishment—we’re here to be holy. Like God.
That’s a big idea for anyone, let alone someone who sleeps all day.
But what does that mean—to be holy like God? It’s a big question, even for grown-ups. And it leads to an even bigger one: What is God?
When you start learning about God, people might tell you that God is a big, powerful figure who created the world in seven days and once sent a flood to punish bad people. We tell those stories because it’s hard to explain the bigger ideas—that God is love, and strength, and justice. That God is the all of the beauty around us.
But those early stories don’t always grow with us. And sometimes, people get stuck with the idea of God they were taught as kids—that God is the strict parent in the sky who watches everything and gets mad when we mess up. They think that this is the only God they’re allowed to believe in.
I heard a D’var Torah at Habonim a few years ago where the speaker said: “I love being here—the singing, the community, the feeling—but I don’t think I believe in God.”
And I felt sad for her, because she only thought that she could only believe in that one specific version of God.
It reminded me of the Passover story we told just a few weeks ago at the seder. The one where you were the child too young to ask. There were 4 children in all. You, the child too young to ask, the wise son, the wicked son and the wise son. I want to talk about the wicked son.
He’s often called wicked because he he’s asking confrontational questions: Why are we doing this? What does it really mean? But he’s not really wicked. That’s why some Haggadahs now call him a new name—the rebellious son—because he’s questioning those childhood beliefs, trying to figure out what he truly believes.
I once met a real life version of this, a preteen who said: “Why would I have a Bar Mitzvah if I don’t believe there’s a man in the sky who made the world in seven days?”
It’s a fair question. I told him that it’s OK that he doesn’t believe that the world was created in seven days. That’s not even what the bible says. It says that took God six days to make the world. On the seventh day he rested.
The great Rabbi Harold Kushner used to say: when someone told him they didn’t believe in God, he wouldn’t argue. He’d say: “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in. I probably don’t believe in that God either.”
Because for Rabbi Kushner, God was the courage that showed up when life got hard. The kindness we didn’t know we had. God was all of the goodness in the world. The beauty that shows up unexpectedly when we walk down the street.
So I told all of this to the woman who gave the D’var Torah. If she could let go of that old image, maybe she could recognize God as that beauty she felt in this room.
And that, Avery Gray, brings us back to this week’s parsha.
When the Torah says, “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy,”
it’s not a test. It’s an invitation. It’s saying: live with kindness. Act with courage. Have fun, laugh, and sing. That’s what holiness looks like. That’s where we find God—not in thunder or fire or rulebooks, but in how we live and love, every single day.
We don’t need to wait for lightning bolts or miracles. Our God—the Jewish God—is close. Not far up in the sky, but right here in the room. In trying. In community. In all of us.
So Avery Gray, you’re just at the beginning of this journey. And how exciting is that? For now, just know: you are already part of this. And we’re so glad you’re here.
Shabbat Shalom.