Acharei Moth- Kedoshim: Balance and Bloo

Acharei Moth- Kedoshim: Balance and Blood

The idea of kodesh, sanctity, permeates these parshioth.   What is this dangerous, burdensome stuff , this white robe that stains so easily, is so ugly and dangerous if stained and is so hard to clean? 

There are 2 verses that stand out for me in Kedoshim:
19:3

Ye shall fear every man his mother, and his father, and ye shall keep My sabbaths: I am the L-RD your G-d

and
19:32
Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and thou shalt fear thy G-d: I am the L-RD

When I was a boy, struggling with the meaning of my life and the role of Judaism in that life (an ongoing struggle), 19:3 was quoted to me.  My parents, whose Judaism did not meet the Rabbi's standards, deserved reverence as special people, but the LRD is the LRD.  The word of Gd, as interpreted by the Rabbis, was the last and definitive word. 

At the time I did not understand how much the Rabbis were obligated to revere my superhero, holocaust survivor, authentic carriers of the tradition, parents.  These rabbis knew stories about the shtetl Europe my parents grew up in.  These rabbis discussed, in theory, the dietary, sabbatical, and other "laws" that my parents were religiously obligated to transgress, in fact.

I understand 19:3 to mean that the previous generations carry forward an image of the institution ( Judaism, shtetlism, Americanism, etc) that is distorted by the way they view their experiences.  They carry forward the compromises, and the idea that compromise is acceptable.  The rabbis try to purify the practice, minimize the compromise, bring practice in line with theory. (I will avoid the issue of how theory changes) 

Verse 19:32, the closing parenthesis to chapter 19, repeats the idea: Respect the old, but (try to) keep the law. [ Onkelos  specifies that the "hoary head" is a Torah sage.] Aging involves accumulating errors. The burden of biological "errors"  is part of the physiology of aging.  Conceptual errors( confusing coincidence with causality, failing to see causal coincidence) are part of the legacy that one generation brings to another.  These conceptual errors are the  superstition that is so loathsome in the parsha..  

We get our beliefs from the past, a mixture of truth and error. We try to make it pure and clean and holy.  New robes are not available.  The blood stains fade, but they don't come out.