Let My People Know

"When "holiness" becomes everything of importance, significance or a matter worthy of attention, this is actually degradation"

 

The multiple use of the word "holiness" is not only secularization.

Simply, when I take the concept "holiness" and ascribe to it things that are not holy, that is actually a process of secularization. 

But another aspect of the process, which is possibly even worse, is that it is degradation, a cheapening of the concept. 

When "holiness" becomes everything of importance, significance or a matter worthy of attention, this is actually degradation. 

It does not really matter what it is that is being termed "holy" – be it "the holiness of human life" or any other trendy item, it is always a cheapening of the term. 

This debasement does not only break the term into small pieces, it damages its very essence, so that the imagined "holy" loses its association to the holiness.

This calls for a pun, not mine, but a pun from the Hebrew language. 

The degraded kadosh ("holy") becomes kadesh (cultish, a prostitute). 

And things to which the title of holiness are unduly attached become a pile of "kadesh".

And so many of them are cheapened only because of this cheap, degrading, uncontrolled use of Holiness – that which should have been untouchable.

 –Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From the essay, "On Holiness and It's Boundaries" by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz