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Short Summary
Main recommendation: Real kedusha (holiness) is built by holding the line on your values in the small, daily moments when no one is watching, rather than only avoiding dramatic sins. Rabbi Krohn ties this to the command "Kedoshim tihyu" (you shall be holy, for I am holy), arguing that holiness means consistency in the way Hashem is consistent. The talk draws on Parshat Kedoshim's everyday moral laws and on the honesty of the Tanna'im as described in the Tosefta and Gemara.
Key Points
- Parshat Kedoshim opens with Hashem telling Moshe to speak to all of the Jewish people: "Kedoshim tihyu, for I, Hashem your God, am holy," and the mitzvot that follow are basic moral laws such as not stealing, honoring parents, and proper relations between men and women.
- The talk describes two struggles: the rare struggle against sudden, serious temptation, and the more common "daily grind" struggle against slowly eroding values.
- The Tosefta and Gemara praise the Tanna'im for keeping honest weights and measures in their Yerushalayim store, showing that even great people can let daily pressures wear down their standards.
- Rationalization is the mechanism of drift: "it's too hard to keep track, everybody does it this way," which is how people start giving in "a little here and a little there."
- Hashem's own holiness is described through the posuk in Malachi, "Ki Ani Hashem lo shinisi" ("For I am Hashem, I do not change"), presented as the model of holding the line.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: Keep your standards in everyday situations, including when nobody is watching. Track what you commit to, for example billing a client only for the time you actually worked, keeping a close watch on each dollar, and including all income in your tax return. Catch rationalizations early when they say "everybody does it" or "it's too hard to keep track." To build kedusha at home, create a Shabbos feeling through small acts: get dressed up nicely, sing a song, or share Torah at the table.
- The speaker frames holiness as "holding the line on who we are and what we believe," living by Torah values even when it isn't the norm and without excuses.
- A source transcribed as 'Rabbi Shmuel Stein's Alice' (likely a mistranscription) is cited for the two-struggle distinction.
- Rabbi Moshe Weinberger is cited for the explanation of why the Tanna'im's honesty is praised.
- The talk says the mitzvot in Kedoshim are not elite piety but the "epitome of kedusha" in Yiddishkeit.
- The closing emphasis is that every Jew, man, woman, and child, has the potential to be kadosh, and that small details create kedusha in the heart and in the home.
Bottom Line
Holiness is less about a single heroic choice and more about steady, unglamorous consistency in ordinary life, which is exactly what the speaker says Hashem models.
