{"id":5445,"date":"2011-03-01T01:07:01","date_gmt":"2011-02-28T23:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ph.yhb.org.il\/en\/?p=5445"},"modified":"2021-03-15T12:23:02","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T10:23:02","slug":"04-01-07","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ph.yhb.org.il\/en\/04-01-07\/","title":{"rendered":"07. One Who Demeans the Holy Days"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An important principle is articulated in <strong>Mishna Avot<\/strong> (3:11): \u201cRabbi Elazar Ha-Moda\u2019i says: \u2018One who desecrates holy foods, one who demeans the holy days\u2026and one who expounds the Torah not in accordance with <strong>halakha<\/strong>, even if he has Torah study and good deeds to his credit, has no share in the World to Come.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My teacher and rabbi, R. Tzvi Yehuda Kook, would ask how one with Torah study and good deeds to his credit could not have a share in the World to Come. Moreover, since the <strong>mishna<\/strong> does not specify how much Torah study and good deeds this person has to his credit, it is implied that even if the person is a great Torah scholar, highly scrupulous in his observance of <strong>mitzvot<\/strong>, and a doer of many good deeds, he has no share in the World to Come since he demeans the holy days and expounds the Torah not in accordance with the <strong>halakha<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Tzvi Yehuda went on to describe one who greatly respects tradition and is meticulous about fulfilling the halakhic requirements of the Seder but considers it all to be the product of human intelligence alone. He explains that the importance of the Pesa\u1e25 holiday and the Seder lies in the parents passing their traditions on to the next generations, imparting to them the moral principles of human liberty and a sense of mission to improve the world. The matza merely concretizes Israel\u2019s historical consciousness, and the four cups of wine simply add a dimension of joy. Even though all of these lovely ideas are true, the fundamental principle is missing: that God chose us from among all nations, gave us His Torah, and commanded us to celebrate Pesa\u1e25 and eat matza on the Seder night.<\/li>\n<li>Tzvi Yehuda\u2019s hypothetical Jew similarly honors Shabbat as a day when the family spends time together and grows closer, and when hardworking people can rest and engage in spiritual pursuits. He even adds that \u201cShabbat kept the Jews more than the Jews kept Shabbat.\u201d He forgets only one thing: that God commanded us to observe Shabbat, down to its finest detail.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>This is what the <strong>mishna<\/strong> meant by \u201cone who expounds the Torah not in accordance with <strong>halakha<\/strong>.\u201d Even though he studies it diligently, to him it is not God\u2019s Torah but merely human wisdom, so he occasionally permits himself to interpret it in opposition to the <strong>halakha<\/strong>. Thus, he demeans the holy days in that he thinks they are customs and traditions that human beings invented to give expression to all sorts of spiritual notions. He thereby denies that they are God-given <strong>mitzvot<\/strong> of the Torah. Therefore, even though he may have studied much Torah and performed many good deeds, and he is thought of as a good, honorable man in this world \u2013 he has no connection with holiness. He has no share in the eternal historical mission of the Jewish people, and thus has no share in the World to Come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An important principle is articulated in Mishna Avot (3:11): \u201cRabbi Elazar Ha-Moda\u2019i says: \u2018One who desecrates holy foods, one who demeans the holy days\u2026and one who expounds the Torah not in accordance with halakha, even if he has Torah study and good deeds to his credit, has no share in the World to Come.\u2019\u201d My [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-01-the-meaning-of-the-holiday"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>07. One Who Demeans the Holy Days - Peninei Halakha<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ph.yhb.org.il\/en\/04-01-07\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"07. 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