Biography
Rabbi Ira S. Youdovin is the Executive Vice President of the Chicago Board of Rabbis. A native of New York City, Rabbi Youdovin has occupied positions of leadership in many Jewish institutions, both nationally and internationally. In New York City, he was a leading participant in "Partners of Faith"—an organization which unites clergy of many faiths—and of "Momentum," a program for feeding and counseling people living with AIDS. Now in Chicago, he serves on the Executive Committee of the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago, the Steering Committee of the Interfaith Partnership of the Chicago Public Schools and participates in the Black-Jewish Dialogue and the Catholic-Jewish Scholars Dialogue. He also serves Congregation Am Chai of Hoffman Estates, Illinois, and Congregation Solel of Highland Park, Illinois. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"Is Holiness Possible Today?" 
There's a wonderful old Jewish story about a man named Max, who opens a fish market. Not long after he opens the door, a lady comes in, examines the display laid out on a bed of ice, and asks if the halibut is fresh.

"No, it isn't so fresh," Max tells her. "The snow delayed the delivery truck for a few days. The halibut is as fresh as it can be under the circumstances. But it's not absolutely fresh."

"What about the flounder?" the lady asks.

"No," Max answers, "it came in the same shipment as the halibut."

"Well, what about the tuna?"

"Same thing."

The salmon? Whitefish? Perch? They're all the same. You just can't get fresh fish when the roads are covered with snow.

The lady, now thoroughly frustrated, takes Max by the arm, pulls him toward the store window, and points to a sign. "Doesn't that say, 'Fresh Fish Today?'" she asks.

Max shakes his head. "Lady, you're reading the sign all wrong. It doesn't say 'Fresh Fish Today.' What it says is 'Fresh fish???? Today????' "

There are times when words written on paper make promises, or demands, that simply cannot be kept or met under the circumstances of that particular moment. A familiar biblical text that Jews read in the synagogues includes a passage that many cite as an example of this conundrum. Chapter 19 of the Book of Leviticus begins with the words, "You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy." A tall order, to be sure. Indeed, it's fair to ask whether human beings can attain true holiness in the world, as it is today—a world that militates against goodness, and too often appears to reward evil.

Considering the pressures of the temptations with which all of us live, it's fair to ask whether human beings can attain true holiness. Can they in the world as it exists today? To be sure, a few people can and have attained a degree of sanctity in their lives that can be and should be called holiness: people like Mother Theresa and Albert Schweitzer who lived lives of near total self-sacrifice, devoting all of themselves to serving the poor, the sick, the victims disease and human indifference. But what about the rest of us? Is holiness attainable short of a superhuman commitment to abstaining from what are generally regarded as the normal pleasures of life?

Leviticus 19 provides an intriguing answer to this question. Scholars call this section the "Holiness Code." It's a Manual of Discipline, an inventory of "do's and don'ts" for making the grade. It is not the only list of its kind in the Hebrew Bible; the Ten Commandments is another one and there are more. But only the code found in Leviticus 19 bears the name "Holiness." And therefore, it's the "central address" for determining what the Hebrew Bible regards as the criteria for achieving this highest of human aspirations.

It is a short list comprising only a relative handful of verses. As such, one would expect only the most important things to be included. Indeed, we do find items such as honoring ones parents, observing Sabbath days and festivals, worshiping faithfully and according to the prescribed order of service. Avoiding gossip. Not committing fraud. In other words, things that one would expect to find on a list labeled "Holiness Code."

But there are other things as well, items that are certainly important in leading an ethical life, but which might not make the cut when one is identifying those acts which are most critical to achieving holiness. For example, there is the biblical practice of gleaning, which we know especially from the Book of Ruth:

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field...you shall leave a little for the poor and the stranger.

There are several small items relating to personal integrity:

You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind.
You shall use honest weights and honest measures.
You shall render fair judgment, favoring neither the rich nor the poor.

There is even something about labor relations:

The wages of a laborer shall not remain unpaid until the morning.

One looks at this list and thinks, "Gosh, these are things that I can do. I couldn't live in the jungle with Dr. Schweitzer, or in the slums of Calcutta with Mother Theresa. But paying workers on time, not cheating my customers, giving charity to the poor—these are nothing more than things any decent man or woman would do every day of his or her life.

Nothing more?! But also nothing less. For these seemingly ordinary acts run counter to some of the basic instincts that drive our society. Sharing what we have with those less fortunate than we are is, for some people, a way of life. But how many of us give only what is required to avoid embarrassment, or give generously only when the gift brings us honor and glory, like getting our names on a published list of patrons or on a plaque hung somewhere? The genius of gleaning, as it was practiced in Biblical times, is that the donor gave anonymously; and the recipient, whose identity was known to no one, not even to the donor, came to the field after everyone else had left.

Not withholding wages, using honest weights and measures, rendering honest decisions—these run counter to the American proclivity for gaining even a small advantage, whatever the price may be. It is a fact that many athletic coaches—on the highs school, college and professional levels—actually routinely teach their athletes how to break the rules in a way in which they won't get caught. Because a subtle shove here, a little holding there, perhaps a dose of performance enhancing substance mixed in for good measure, might give the individual or the team a slight advantage over the competition. These things are condoned, even celebrated.

Not putting a stumbling block before the blind addresses the near pervasive strategy in American life for exploiting the other fellow's weaknesses. You don't even have to be an adult to be victimized. Every Saturday morning of the year, youngsters who can barely read or write are inundated by a flood tide of cynically calculated television advertisements interspersed with Saturday morning cartoons which exploit their young, consumer appetites. People with something to sell, or political candidates selling themselves, pay huge fees to marketing experts who gather potential consumers or voters into "focus groups." There they identify what are "hot buttons" which play to the hopes, the fears, and the needs of human beings who are dehumanized in the process by being labeled as the "target market."

These tactics may be helpful in getting ahead in American life, but they are not conducive to a life of holiness. Quite to the contrary. Holiness is not to be found in the attainment of riches, fame, or power—all the all-too-familiar goals of American life. Holiness derives from a life-long pursuit of an objective stated with utter clarity in verse 18 of this chapter, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Being Holy, because God is Holy—and God wants us to be holy—entails defying some of the most popular conventions of our age. It means, in many instances, swimming against the tide, standing apart from the group—even being called a sucker, a goody two-shoes, or simply, naive. So be it.

But the central fact is that holiness is attainable—attainable by anyone choosing to seek it. It's not only in the jungle, or in working in the slums, or among the sick, the poor and the needy. It's not only in heroic acts. The potential for holiness is everywhere and open to everyone. That potential exists in the mean streets of the inner-city, where good people risk their lives working to turn gang-bangers into productive citizens. And it's found also among the manicured lawns of pampered suburbia, where truly dedicated people perform quiet, unheroic, but profound acts of goodness.

It is there for the taking. It is there for all of us. Just as Moses promised the Israelites long ago:

Behold the commandment is not distant from you. It is not in Heaven, so one could say send someone to Heaven so that the commandment can be brought to down here to earth...and then I will do it here on Earth. No, the commandment is here already. It is in your heart, in your mind, and within your power to do it.

Interview with Ira Youdovin
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: Rabbi Youdovin, you begin your compelling message on holiness with Leviticus 19 and state that we are holy because God is holy. Is that how we should understand the state of holiness?

Ira Youdovin: We are holy in our own right because God created us—all people—holy. Everybody is created in the image of God. And then there is a relative value that holiness is not only a state of being, it is a state of becoming and that it is up to all of us to aspire to holiness. The theme that I tried to get across is that it is not heroic. It is doing the ordinary things—the quotidian things, as the art world would call them—well.

Talbot: How was that understanding of holiness first revealed to you?

Youdovin: I'm really not sure. Certainly in studying the Jewish tradition where the objective is to take ordinary moments and elevate them to a higher level. That is why when we sit at the table for dinner we just don't eat, we say a blessing. And when we are done, we don't just walk away, we say a blessing. We say a blessing to mark all the normal moments. When we wake up in the morning, we say a blessing: How goodly are your tents. We say a blessing on seeing the sun, the moon, and the stars. That makes the simple things become very profound and very beautiful.

Talbot: Did you ever imagine when you were sitting at that family table, growing up as a boy in New York City, that you would become a rabbi and a major leader in Jewish institutions worldwide?

Youdovin: I will answer the first part because I know that I am a rabbi, for the other part of your question I thank you very much. That is very gracious. I think not, actually. I didn't decide on becoming a rabbi until college. On the way there I went through being a psychologist and being a journalist. I guess it was the opposite. I started off being a journalist and that wasn't for me. Then I became a psychologist. Then I realized that I wanted to deal with human behavior and human beings in a realm that was either higher or different from, depending how you look at it, what a psychologist would do. I wanted to deal with the soul. That really didn't live very well in the psychology lab.

Talbot: You were at Columbia University. And you were also a chaplain in the military. I want to get back to your family life as a boy. What was that experience like—the religious component of growing up as a faithful Jew around that table?

Youdovin: The unheroic and unvarnished truth is that I didn't really grow up in a very religious household. I lived in a part of the Bronx, New York, where just about everybody was Jewish. After school, all my friends who I used to play stick ball with started to go to Hebrew School to prepare for their bar mitzvah when they were approaching their thirteenth birthdays, and I went along with them. Then my mother, who had been raised by a Communist father who was so much into it that the FBI filmed his funeral to see who was attending, decided that if I were interested in religion she was going to be interested also. She took me off to a reform congregation where everybody got involved. My father got involved and my late brother got involved. Then we became a religious family.

Talbot: That religious family is reflected so much in your inter-religious relationships. Certainly in your work in Chicago with Black-Jewish dialogue and Catholic-Jewish dialogue. How was the holiness that you talk about a part of that?

Youdovin: It is really bonding—soul to soul, life to life—to see in people whose skin color is different, whose accents are different, or whose way of life to some extent is different, that despite our differences, on one deep and very important level, that we are one. We are one humankind. Therefore, we are set apart from everything else in the universe. To be set apart is to be holy.

Talbot: You are a gift, Rabbi Youdovin, to the faith and to the wider circle of our community of faith. Thank you for being with us.

Youdovin: Thank you.