You shall guard yourself from every evil thing. (Devarim 23:10)
Kedushah = Success
Kedushah and distancing oneself from aveiros is a key factor in bringing success to a person. It is the root of all spiritual acquisitions.
If we open the Tanach and take a look at the destructions that the Jewish people has experienced, leading up to the churban of the first Beis Hamikdash and until the period of the second Beis Hamikdash, we can see that the most destructive force of all was idol worship.
We don’t have an inclination toward avodah zarah nowadays. We don’t understand what it even is. But King Menashe, a notorious idol worshipper, appeared to Rav Ashi in a dream, and told him that if Rav Ashi had been there, in Menashe’s time, he would have rolled up the hem of his garment so he could run as fast as he can to go worship avodah zarah.
That’s how strong the pull to avodah zarah was.
The Maharal explains that Menashe meant as follows: I, too, ran to do avodah zarah. But I hoped I would be slowed down a bit, by tripping over my long robe. You, on the other hand, would have rolled up the hem of your garment so you could get there as fast as you can.
This is how Chazal described the yetzer hara that people used to have for idol worship.
Avodah zarah was so strong back then! It was at the root of their downfall from the very beginning. The Cheit Ha’eigel was idol worship, and so we see later in the Books of Yehoshua and Shoftim that idol worship was a major issue. Everything revolved around it.
But Chazal revealed an awesome secret about this whole phenomenon of avodah zarah.
The Jewish people knew that there is nothing to idol worship. They only worshipped idols in order to permit for themselves illicit relationships in public.
So we see that the Jews back then did avodah zarah only for the goal of “permitting” illicit relationships.
This says a lot. The whole great apparatus of idol worship was really just a front, a façade. Inside it was a completely different issue. This different issue was about a force that never went away and that is relevant to us today. It’s an issue we are all familiar with. Illicit relationships, arayos, are definitely something that people are drawn to nowadays.
Any Torah Jew who doesn’t work on overcoming this matter, and doesn’t daven to gain control over it, by bringing kedushah into himself, is not going to see success in spiritual matters.
This is a hidden thing. It’s not out in the open. No one knows why a certain bachur succeeds more in learning, and another one less. But we need to know that kedushah is one of the roots of success.
