Two principle ideas are noteworthy in this parasha.
“With righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” When we look at others we make judgments about their behaviors based on what we know about them (this is called prejudice) or what we judge them as doing at the moment. In the latter instance, we are directed to be fair. Being fair means not rushing to condemn or be harsh. We are told not to magnify faults or look for the worst in them. Rather, Torah tells us to look for the best.
"Love your neighbor as you love yourself."Rabbi Akiva called this the cardinal principal of Torah, while Hillel said, "This is the entire Torah, the rest is commentary."
The word for love in Hebrew is "ahava." “Ahava” in gematria, the numerical value of the letters is 13. When that love is amplified (in other words we love ourselves and extend that love to others) we get the number 26. Twenty-six is the gematria of God’s name. Through loving one another and ourselves we achieve “kedoshim,” the name of our parasha, which means holiness.
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D'Var Aher
The Torah reading this week called kedoshim seems to say something different. It states, “You shall be holy.” Were they holy? Or were they to become holy? Was the Israelite nation that saw and heard God kodesh, holy, because of the encounter? Or did holiness come to them because of some other event?
Rav Soleitchik observed that every Jew has an innate kedusha. There exists inside of us a soul, a kernel of holiness, that we always carry. Yes, each one of us is holy tells Rav Soleitchik. Yet, Korah was exaggerating in one not-so-obvious way.
There are levels of holiness. The degree of holiness depends upon the realization and accessing of that soul-gift. True, our soul is innately holy but if the soul is ignored or squashed, its voice can go unheard. It is almost as if it does not exist. At any moment the soul could awaken and break through the barriers that have kept it contained but until then it passes unseen, unacknowledged, as if it did not exist.
When the soul-voice is heard the physical actions of the person can allow it to ascend making the person more holy. In other words, holiness is not an absolute; it happens in degrees. There is less and more holy. This is the meaning of this Torah reading where God declares, “You shall be holy.” The people obviously had holiness within them but they could still spiritually grow. Rashi again helps us when he reveals that when a Jewish person resists the temptation to give in to the sitra achra, the dark side, they rise in holiness. That is why the Torah uses the future tense, shall, which tells us that the path to holiness is always open. One can aspire to greater holiness.
In the same verse, Leviticus 18:1, God adds that we can become holy because He, God, is holy. This is not a platitude. The Safat Emet explains that the holiness of the One God is limitless. There is not end to His kedusha. There is no point when a person can declare - as Korah seems to do - that they have already reached the highest level of holiness. They can never say that there is no need to do anything more. On the contrary, our potential for growth and holiness is without end.
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev goes even further by saying that every time we observe mitzvot and grow in holiness God also increases in holiness. We are inseparably connected to God and our actions inflate the holiness of the Master. Is this true? Can it possibly be that we make God more holy?
What Levi Yitzchak means is that the more we grow in holiness the greater our awareness of holiness becomes. At first our vision is limited by our understanding. We see little and we understand little. As our understanding of things holy expands, we begin to see more and more of the radiance of haKadosh Barukh Hu everywhere. Our limitations no longer hold us back from seeing the grandeur of God. The expansiveness of God seems to grow.
The Talmud 2 explains that holiness hangs on the way we connect with God and Torah. In fact, the word for holy, kodesh, really means separating. When we take the time to categorize our speech, behavior and observance in terms of mitzvot, we separate or infuse our behavior with holiness. The simple act of thinking about what we do and asking, “Is this what God wants from me?” fills every space with kedusha.
Sanctified living is about the small matters of life. Looking at the world through the lens of what God wants of us means weighing our words very carefully before speaking. It means thinking about how we conduct business. It involves considering how we dress and our mode of sexual behavior. Even eating is a part of our identity. Each nuance of living can be guided by holiness. This is what the Torah means when it expresses the thought “You shall be holy.” Do not stop growing. Walk with God.
1 Bamidbar 16:3
2 Yevamot 20a
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