"You Shall be Holy"

D’var Torah 4/23/18

שבת שלום

We have reached the Holiness Code in our weekly readings, the center of the Torah! If you were very careful about it, you could balance the entire Torah on a fulcrum placed at this portion. In ancient times, texts were written from the center outwards, with the most important material in the middle, and this is what we have with our Torah – this is the heart of it. We find the Holiness Code included in today’s reading of the double portion אַֽחֲרֵ֣י מ֔וֹת – קְדשִׁ֣ים, which is Leviticus 16:1 – 20:27.

In my home synagogue, our Torah study is set up so that we read the entire Torah line by line. We used to take as long as we needed to going through, but now that we have about 60 regulars, we have an assigned number of lines for each week so that we can move ahead. We are on our fourth time through the Torah; the last time through took almost 15 years, which is why our clergy were trying to find a way to move things ahead. When we got to the Holiness Code that last time through, and read Lev 19:2 קְדשִׁ֣ים תִּֽהְי֑וּ כִּ֣י קָד֔וֹשׁ אֲנִ֖י יְהוָֹ֥ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶֽם [You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy], we spent two full weeks on that single line. What does that actually mean? In what sense are we supposed to be holy to be similar to God? The root of the word for holiness also means being set apart. So are we supposed to remain separate from secular things? Does this have to do with ritual purity? So much of the Torah emphasizes ritual purity that we might believe that this commandment too is exclusively about ceremony and not touching unclean objects and purifying ourselves.

But then we read what is really at the heart of this parasha in my opinion:

וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵֽעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ19:18

[You shall love your neighbor as yourself] Not only my opinion, but quite famously Rabbi Akiba’s as well! Shai Held pointed out that this says לְ and not את. We act toward the people around us with love. The Torah tells us over and over again that what matters is our behavior; act in a certain way and your feelings will eventually follow. If we behave lovingly to all, we will begin to feel love and compassion for all.

We owe honor and respect to our fellow human beings. All are created צֶלֶםב אֱלֹהִים [in the image of God] and it is incumbent upon each of us to recognize and acknowledge that divine spark in the other. We are given laws in today’s parasha about how to treat others, especially those less fortunate than ourselves – don’t hold back our workers’ pay, since they depend on it to take care of their families, but pay them promptly. Treat the stranger in our midst well, for we understand what it is to be a stranger in a strange land. Care for the widow and the orphan. Be honest in your business dealings as well as in your personal life. Feed the poor and clothe the naked. Do not put impediments into anybody’s path and do not humiliate anybody else – no barriers in front of the blind and no curses in the presence of the deaf.

This is in the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel. Genesis 18:18-19 says: “And Abraham will become a great and powerful nation, and all the nations of the world will be blessed in him. For I have known him because he commands his sons and his household after him, that they should keep the way of the Lord to perform righteousness and justice …” As Rabbi Uri Regev of Hiddush points out, we were NOT selected by God to keep the Shabbat or to keep kosher. We were chosen by God to live moral and ethical lives – to be righteous and do justice. And this starts out in the very first book of our Torah. It is not only the realm of the prophets.

The commandment not to curse the deaf gave pause to Shai Held. If the deaf cannot hear your curses, you will not be hurting him or her, so why is this also important? And his answer was that the laws are there also for ME. I am made a better person and will be closer to the image of God if I follow these laws. It’s not only about honoring the other person but about my personal growth and development. This parasha is certainly about building a better social order and a community that functions on openness and integrity, but it is also here to teach me personally how to be a better person, and thus acting more as one made in the image of God. I aspire to be holy because God, to whom we owe our allegiance, is holy, and the way I go about doing this is by treating all of the people I encounter as worthy of my love and respect.

כן ׳ה׳ רצון