Brief thought about holiness - set-apartness

Thought of the day from morning prayers:

The word kadosh (Hebrew usually translated as "holy") means set apart. G!d is holy because G!d is set apart - and by extension, so are we.

Yet, in the words of the seraphim in Isaiah's vision in Isaiah 6, it says that the whole world is full of G!d's glory.

This line appears three times in the Jewish morning liturgy and the first time, it's in the middle of the blessing before the Shema praising G!d for creation.

So here is my thought - what if G!d's set-apartness, G!d's holiness, is G!d's immanence - G!d's presence in the world - NOT G!d's transcendence? Perhaps the angels see G!d as set apart from them precisely because of G!d's presence in the material creation.

Which means that our holiness lies not in transcending or running away from material creation, but in embracing and deeply engaging in that material creation - that we are set apart to be holy material creations?

On the Death of Pat Robertson - BDE

Baruch Dayan HaEmet - Blessed is the True Judge.

The world is a nicer and safer place today.

When my abusive father died, the world felt safer. When my high school bully died, the world felt safer. And now Pat Robertson has died, and the world feels safer.

Pat Robertson was a very wicked man who claimed to serve G!d but whose toxic evangelical Christian theology consisted of spreading hate against lgbt folk and anyone he disagreed with politically - even blaming bad weather and 9/11 on us, blaming poor people and sick people for their poverty and illness because of a "lack of faith," spreading racism by accusing the Haitian slaves who revolted against their slaveowners and won independence of having made a pact with the devil, spreading conspiracy theories, calling for violence against people, and using his ministry to personally enrich himself.

This feels personal to me because it always enraged me, when visiting my parents, to see that my father - who was not wealthy (because the prosperity theology that my father shared with Pat Robertson is a lie) - sent him money every month. When he called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez (who, admittedly, was also evil - but clergy calling for assassinations is an abomination), I complained to my mother and she talked my father into ending the donations - but for some silly reason probably related to my father's narcissism, not for an ethical reason.

A far better theologian than Pat Robertson, the Talmudic sage Beruriah, when her husband, Rabbi Meir, was robbed and he was praying for his robbers' downfall, quoted the final verse of Psalm 104, "May sinners disappear from the earth, and the wicked be no more," but said that the Hebrew word for "sinners" should be read as "sins" instead so that the wicked are no more because they have done teshuvah (repented) and are no longer sinners. (Berachot 10a)

Even as I have a lot of anger at the profound spiritual and political damage that this wicked Christian minister wrought, following the holy Beruriah, I express the hope that he repented before his death or that at least he repents now when seeing the enormity of the evil that he wrought in his wasted lifetime.