A Call to Holiness
PARASHAT K’DOSHIM (“holy”) stands at the physical center of the Torah, coming roughly at the midway point between Genesis 1 and Deuteronomy 34. We move into this Torah portion on the heels of a series of sexual taboos (Leviticus 18), and we will end the parashah with a parallel list of taboos (Leviticus 20). Between these two sections, we encounter one of the most beautiful and inspiring passages in the Torah, Leviticus 19. This passage contains a series of seemingly disparate laws covering the gamut from ritual, criminal, and civil legislation to commandments addressing attitudes. The laws touch upon what people do in the privacy of their own homes, how they conduct their business, what they are thinking, and how they worship together. The modern distinctions between criminal, civil, and religious law have absolutely no application in this text.
The primary theme that emerges time and again in Leviticus 19 is the preservation of holiness. “You shall be holy, for I, your God יהוה, am holy.” All the commandments are set within the context that God is holy and that we ought to strive toward holiness in every aspect of our lives.
Holiness here differs radically from what we have encountered in previous Torah texts. Leviticus 19 offers a fundamentally new vision of holiness, one that has the potential to bring women and other disenfranchised populations within Israel into the realm of holiness. No longer limited to the male, hereditary priesthood, parashat K’doshim democratizes access to and relationship with the Divine in a new way.
Within the particular laws of this parashah, women figure rather prominently as we hear about mothers, daughters, wives, and slaves. The tendency is to protect the rights of women in particularly vulnerable positions. We might wish for equality, and thus a complete dismantling of the practice of categorizing women only in relation to men in the biblical period. The Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26) does not go that far; however, it is somewhat progressive given its ancient context.
—S. Tamar Kamionkowski
Outline—
I. A COMPENDIUM OF PATHS TO HOLINESS (19:1–37)
A. The holiness formula (vv. 1–2)
B. On parents and idols (vv. 3–4)
C. Democratization of sacrifice (vv. 5–8)
D. Rights of the poor (vv. 9–10)
E. Theft, deceit and fair courts of law (vv. 11–16)
F. Handling anger in action and thought (vv. 17–18)
G. Maintaining distinct categories (v. 19)
H. Ambiguous status of the slave woman (vv. 20–22)
I. First fruits (vv. 23–25)
J. What we do with our bodies (vv. 26–28)
K. The sacred status of daughters (vv. 29–30)
L. Consulting ghosts and spirits (v. 31)
M. Respect for elders (v. 32)
N. Care for the stranger (vv. 33–34)
O. Fair commerce practices (vv. 35–36a)
P. Conclusion (vv. 36b–37)
II. DANGER TO HOLINESS AND THE DYNAMICS OF HOLINESS (20:1–8)
A. Desecrating God’s name through Molech worship (vv. 1–5)
B. Consulting ghosts and spirits (v. 6)
C. The dynamics of holiness (vv. 7–8)
III. FAMILY AND SEX ETHICS (20:9–21)
IV. HOLINESS OF THE LAND (20:22–27)