Reaching For the Highest: Kedoshim

Reaching For the Highest

D’var Torah for Parashat Kedoshim

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

The parasha that we study this week, Kedoshim (Leviticus 19:1—20:27), contains the essence of the Jewish view on holiness.

Unlike the previous portion (Acharei Mot) with its worthy but impossible standards of being at one-ness with God, Kedoshim brings the bar a bit closer to our own, more human level.

In the Torah, the Hebrew word kadosh doesn’t only mean “holy.” Kadosh means that we are in a special relationship, in a state of personal dedication to and with something or someone else, be it a loved one or God.  K’dusha, holiness or sanctity, is a state of being, a condition that we can experience emotionally, physically and psychologically.  But k’dusha isn’t something we can dwell or exist in permanently.  Only God can do that.  All that we humans can do is try to bring it into our lives for a moment or two.  By doing something special for ourselves or for someone else, each of us can become kadosh for an infinite moment of sacred time.  Collectively, we can be k’doshim as we reach for the Eternal that is within and around us.

For Jews, holiness is a verb.  It isn’t about how we feel or what we believe, but rather about what we do. 

From the Torah’s perspective, to be holy doesn’t mean you have to give yourself totally to God.  Asceticism and seclusion may work for an individual here and there.  But for the larger community, holiness is found in the way we relate to one another, not only to God. 

Kedoshim has very little to say about how we must worship God, restricting itself to a couple of verses about sacrifice, about not worshipping idols and about keeping the Sabbath holy.  The rest of the portion details laws that regulate our behavior with other people.  Starting with honoring our parents, it quickly moves to the kind of respect we must show the elderly.

On Israeli busses, there are stickers that identify and reserve the first couple of rows of seats for the aged.  This isn’t state or civil law, however.  Common courtesy for some, for us it is holy to give our seat to the aged, to show them respect and to accommodate their needs before ours.  On the posted signs, words quoted from this portion affirm the sacred value:  Mip’nei seiva takum, “you shall rise before the aged” (Lev. 19:32).  It’s a value that as children we learned and discussed in school, a cultural and moral teaching that became ingrained in us.  As the Torah teaches us to see it, it’s more than just respectful to show thoughtfulness and consideration to the elderly, the weak and the tired.  It is holy.

Justice, fairness, compassion—these are the values that the Torah calls holy.  They are the means by which we can attain a kernel of God’s holiness and make it our own.

It’s the deeds, the actions, the behavior, that define “holiness” for us.  It’s in how we reach out to one another that we show our devoted and unwavering reach for God.  It’s in our deeds of kindness and generosity that we respond to and acknowledge God’s gifts to us. 

Holiness is a relationship, not a state of being.  It’s found in the space between our own, outstretched, hands and the hands of those around us.  As we reach out to one another, we also reach up, toward God.

Hidden behind and within these verses that we call “The Holiness Code” (and which we also read at afternoon services on Yom Kippur) we see a reflection of what life must have really been like when these rules first appeared, more than three thousand years ago.  Against this primeval background, we realize that Parashat Kedoshim has done more than just about any other reading in the Scriptures to define Judaism for us. 

It’s no wonder that Hillel, that ancient and venerable rabbi of the 1st century in Israel, chose a verse from this portion to define Torah and Judaism for a potential convert.  Responding to the man who wanted to learn the entire Torah while standing on one foot, Hillel quoted Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18:  “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  And, wisely, he added, “the rest is commentary; now go study it.” 

For Judaism, holiness is in in the learning.  It’s the reach.  It’s in the generosity, kindness and devotion that we extend to ourselves and as well as to the community around us.  It’s in our actions and behavior as we aim to raise the lowest standards of behavior to the highest. 

In a world of mortality, we Jews strive for morality.  Holiness, the Torah teaches, isn’t about survival at any means; rather, it’s about existence with meaning. 

To be kadosh, to be holy, we need to go beyond the momentary and reach for the eternal.   We do that when we see what needs to be done and do it.    When we take a need and fill it.  When we take a broken world and fix it.

For us, it isn’t only right.  For us, it is a holy thing.

© 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman