What is profane, and what does it have to do with us, today? If we analyze the way the core word for “profane” challal, is used in the Torah, we discover a clear and common thread that explains what is at the heart of what we are commanded not to do.
At first glance, the meaning seems to be quite scattershot. Avraham uses it to criticize G-d’s plan to destroy Sodom:
Far be it (challal) from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike. Far be it (challal) from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”
And then the same root word is used to define the slain (the townspeople people Shimon and Levi murdered), as well as the reaction to the concept of cheating and stealing (Joseph’s brothers when promising they did not steal the goblet), and taking G-d’s name in vain (the conventional understanding of profanity). Reuven violating his father’s concubine is described as challal. And the same word is repeatedly used to describe a woman who chooses to become a harlot.
It is beginning to look “just” like an all-purpose word, right? After all, what links all of these different uses of the same word? Is there anything all of these examples have in common?
Consider them again: willingness to wipe out an entire city, cheating, stealing, murdering, cursing, and trading sex for money.
Could it be that the shared commonality behind all that is profane, the antithesis of holiness, is nothing more or less than acting with only short term expedience in mind?
Consider selling one’s body for sex. In the short term, harlotry can seem like a perfectly rational and logical way to meet one’s need for food or other resources. And that is true – but only if a person refuses to take into account the long-term consequences, which are dire, indeed. That short-term choice results in long-term damage to that woman’s relationships forever more.
Theft and murder for gain are much the same: they are both ways to achieve a goal, without appreciating that everyone involved, including civil society itself, pays a dear price. In a world where people steal what they want, kill for gain, and cheapen their own bodies (and in the case of Reuben, sleeping with his own step-mother), the very fabric of society can be ripped apart. This destruction happens at every level from the individual, to a marriage, the larger family, and the entire polis.
Thus, if holiness is about establishing and growing and investing in long term productive and constructive relationships of all kinds (between people as well as between man and G-d), then profanity is about seeking short term benefit without considering what it means for the health of all of our long-term relationships. Holiness underpins and builds. Profanity undermines, corrupts, and eats away at everything it touches.
There are two specific uses of chalal which require more detail to explain. Here is the first: we are told that a person who wants to eat a certain offering (a zevach shelamim) profanes (challal) it.
Why?
I think the answer is also about relationship. The zevach shelamim (sometimes translated as “well-being”) is first used at Sinai, preparing for and heralding coming close to the divine presence.
They offered burnt offerings and sacrificed bulls as offerings of well-being to the LORD.
This very same offering is used several other times for precisely the same thing!
“…an offering of well-being to sacrifice before the LORD; and a meal offering with oil mixed in. For today the LORD will appear to you.” They brought to the front of the Tent of Meeting the things that Moses had commanded, and the whole community came forward and stood before the LORD.
And
Aaron lifted his hands toward the people and blessed them; and he stepped down after offering the sin offering, the burnt offering, and the offering of well-being. Moses and Aaron then went inside the Tent of Meeting. When they came out, they blessed the people; and the Presence of the LORD appeared to all the people.
There are several elements here that tie together. The first is that this offering is about direct connection with G-d. The food is tangential, because the purpose of the offering is spiritual connection, not short-term physical hunger. So eating the offering too late shows we have missed the point (much like thieving is a short-term fail for a long-term need).
The second is that this offering is distinctly about gratitude. This is why the text tells us that fats needs to be separated and burnt (discussed here). We are not permitted to eat fat because fat is meant to be a gift, appreciation for the blessings we are given. Fats and milk and symbolically about using everything for the highest possible purpose: furthering holy relationships. Not satisfying our physical hunger. Making the zevach shelamim about food takes something that is supposed to create holiness – and profanes it, just like making intimacy between a man and a woman about money, is the antithesis of holiness.
And the last challenging example:
And if you make for Me an altar of stones, do not build it of hewn stones; for by wielding your tool upon them you have profaned them.
Indeed, the altar is similarly connected by the text to the specific zevach shelamim:
You shall build an altar to the LORD your God, an altar of stones. Do not wield an iron tool over them; you must build the altar of the LORD your God of unhewn stones. You shall offer on it burnt offerings to the LORD your God, and you shall sacrifice there offerings of well-being and eat them, rejoicing before the LORD your God.
I think there might be a range of reasonably convincing explanations for this. We might point to the purpose of the altar – to represent the earth (the animal is our investment and the fire represents heaven, as we seek to connect all three). Though this explanation does not really mesh with shared symbolic meaning of challal, of the profane.
Alternatively, we might suggest that relationships are always meant to work with people as they are, not as we would shape them to be. So the rocks are symbolic of both man and G-d – we must work with the individual quirks and qualities of each person as they are, not turning a unique stone into a standardized brick.
If we want to link to the above understanding of challal as the opposite of holiness, the lesson might be, for example, that reaching for holiness is meant to take time and patience and investment – which is what it takes to build a structure with nothing more than irregular rocks and stones. When we seek short-term outcomes without consideration for long-term consequences, we prioritize the result instead of the process. There is beauty in the process of achieving holiness. Shortcuts undermine and corrupt what would otherwise be holy.
Challal in the Torah seems to always refer to short-sighted actions that undermine what should be deeper and richer goals for ourselves and our world.
Perhaps you have a better explanation?! If so, please email me at iwe@religiousliberalism.org.
P.S.
One other possibility for that last question:
The altar stones are accretive. They assemble to symbolize the earth. The goal of the altar is to connect heaven and earth, and the altar is a component – representing earth.
But if we use a sword (the Hebrew word translated as “tool”) on the stones, we show we don’t understand the purpose of the altar, because we use a tool that does not unify, but instead separates. In the Torah, swords are used to separate life from death, body and soul. water and drought and dry land versus water.
Kind of like selling one’s body instead of investing it in relationship.