Living Holiness | Rabbi Yeshaya Levy

There’s a part of prayer that everyone is familiar with. Maybe many of us even were brought to shul and taught about Kedushah before we could actually pray. Now we all know that everyone stands up, no one talks, and everyone says, Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh Hashem Tzvakos... and we lift ourselves up. What’s not so well known is the same Siman in Shulchan Aruch 125. The Rama tells us that we’re all supposed to lift up our eyes and look toward Heaven. The Mishnah Brurah brings down from the Sefer Heichalos that when we do this, it brings a tremendous spiritual pleasure to the Ribono shel Olam. And it says that we should be told how much this means to Ribono shel Olam, and, so to speak, He looks down into our eyes, what I guess maybe today we would call Eye Contact. And then it says that He grabs hold of the Throne of Glory, where the image of Yaakov Avinu is, and He hugs it and He kisses it, and He says how much He wants to bring us the redemption. Maybe it’s not something that many of us think about, but you see how much it means to Ribono shel Olam, so maybe we should think about that when we say the prayer of Kedushah. I was thinking maybe, in terms of serving Hashem, maybe you would call it a Vayimaen kind of thought. If just by recognizing Hashem’s holiness, by saying: Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, so this brings such spiritual pleasure, could you imagine that if we actually try to emulate the Ribono shel Olam’s ways of holiness. It’s a famous Pasuk in the Torah, beginning of Parshas Kedoshim, and we’re told that ‘You shall be holy.’ Medrash tells us: As holy as Me? It says: I am Hashem, your God. We can try to do our part to be holy, to sanctify our lives. We can’t do it like the Ribono shel Olam. Maybe that means the Ribono shel Olam is a constant, and we struggle with matters of holiness. But the Rambam brings this down as a law, You shall walk in His ways, just like Hakadosh Baruch Hu is holy, so we’re also supposed to be holy. And we should do our best to strive to try to make ourselves and live as holy a life as possible. May we stumble? Yeah, because only the Ribono shel Olam has constant holiness. But I was thinking that if just by saying the words of Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, Hakadosh Baruch Hu is stirred, He has spiritual pleasure, He has a love for Klal Yisroel, and He wants to bring the redemption, so all the more so, if we bring it into our lives and we practice a life of Kedushah, a life of holiness, and we do our part, how much affection that’ll bring us, how much closeness, how much contact that will bring between us and Klal Yisroel, and how much more so the Ribono shel Olam will want to bring the redemption.