(א) בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְותָיו וְצִוָּנוּ לַעֲסוק בְּדִבְרֵי תורָה:
(1) Blessed are You, Hashem, our God, Ruler of the Universe, Who has sanctified us with commandments and commanded us to be involved with words of Torah.
(1) Hashem spoke to Moses, saying: (2) Speak to the whole Israelite community and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, Hashem your God, am holy.
(יג) עוד ירצה על זה הדרך קדושים תהיו לשון עתיד פירוש אין הפסק למצוה זו, כי כל שער מהקדושה אשר יכנס עדיין ישנו בגדר הכנסה שער אחר למעלה ממנו, כי אין שיעור להדרגות הקדושה המזומנת לכל הרוצה ליטול את השם... לזה אמר תהיו כי מצוה זו אין לה הפסק ותמיד ישנה בגדר מצוה זו להיות קדושים. (יד) ונתן טעם לדבריו כי קדוש אני ה' אלהיכם שאין שיעור אל קדושתו יתברך, וחפץ ה' בבניו ידידיו להדמות לקונם בהפלגת הקדושה, ומעתה דון בדעתך ההדרגות אשר תבא בהם:
(13) We may also interpret the words קדושים תהיו by emphasizing the future tense, i.e. תהיו, "you shall become holy." The implication is that this is a commandment which is an ongoing process. The Torah asks us to eat מצה on Passover, to sit in huts on סוכות, to abstain from certain kinds of activities on the Sabbath, etc. The common denominator of all those commandments is that they apply on certain days or on certain dates only. Not so the commandment of "be holy." This commandment applies day in day out throughout our lifetime. The imperative to strive for sanctity is one that we cannot take a vacation from. Even while we are busy performing this commandment it is one that we never have mastered completely. Whatever sanctity we attain is superior to what we had achieved previously but inferior to what we still hope to achieve. . . The Torah writes תהיו in order to remind us that the ultimate realisation of the ideal of holiness will forever remain "in the future." (14) The Torah supplies the reason for this with the words "for I the Lord your G'd am holy." G'd implies that just as there is no limit to His holiness, so our striving for holiness must remain something that has no upper limit. G'd desires that His favourite creatures engage in an ongoing process of becoming more and more like their father in Heaven.
(3) You shall each revere his mother and his father, and keep My sabbaths: I Hashem am your God. (4) Do not turn to idols or make molten gods for yourselves: I Hashem am your God. (5) When you sacrifice an offering of well-being to Hashem, sacrifice it so that it may be accepted on your behalf. (6) It shall be eaten on the day you sacrifice it, or on the day following; but what is left by the third day must be consumed in fire. (7) If it should be eaten on the third day, it is an offensive thing, it will not be acceptable. (8) And he who eats of it shall bear his guilt, for he has profaned what is sacred to Hashem; that person shall be cut off from his kin. (9) When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. (10) You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I Hashem am your God. (11) You shall not steal; you shall not deal deceitfully or falsely with one another. (12) You shall not swear falsely by My name, profaning the name of your God: I am Hashem. (13) You shall not defraud your fellow. You shall not commit robbery. The wages of a laborer shall not remain with you until morning. (14) You shall not insult the deaf, or place a stumbling block before the blind. You shall fear your God: I am Hashem. (15) You shall not render an unfair decision: do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich; judge your kinsman fairly. (16) Do not deal basely with your countrymen. Do not profit by the blood of your fellow: I am Hashem. (17) You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove your kinsman but incur no guilt because of him. (18) You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your countrymen. Love your fellow as yourself: I am Hashem.
ומה שהקדים האם לאב, לפי שמנהג הבנים שיקלו ביראת אמותם ואין כן המנהג באב, לכך הקדים בענין היראה האם לאב, אבל אצל הכבוד הקדים האב לאם, הוא שכתוב (שם כ) כבד את אביך ואת אמך. ואם היו שניהם מסכימים בכך שתחלל את השבת, לכך סמך ואת שבתותי תשמרו אני ה' אלהיכם, כלומר של כלכם, כי אתה והם חייבין בכבודי.
The reason the Torah writes the commandment to revere mother and father, letting the mother precede the father in importance (as opposed to a similar commandment in the decalogue where the Torah writes: “honour your father and your mother”), is that it is natural for children to love the mother more than the father and to fear the authority of the father more than that of the mother. The Torah wants to ensure that we do not make such distinctions in our relationship with our respective father and mother. If both parents were to agree that the child is to violate the Sabbath, the Torah adds immediately: “and you shall observe My Sabbath days,” meaning that this commandment overrides even a joint command by father and mother to the contrary. The addition of the words: “I am the Lord your G’d” at the end of verse three means that G’d is the supreme authority for both the child and his parents and thus has overriding authority when there is a conflict involving the loyalties of the child. Both the parents and the child are obligated to carry out His instructions.
Until now, holiness has been seen as a special attribute of the Priest. But there was a hint at the Giving of the Torah that it concerned not just the children of Aaron but the people as a whole: “You shall be to Me a Kingdom of Priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:6). Our chapter now spells this out for the first time. “The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:1-2). This tells us that the ethic of holiness applies not just to Priests but to the entire nation. We, too, must to be distinctive, set apart, held to a higher standard.
What in practice does this mean? A decisive clue is provided by another key word used throughout Tanach in relation to the Kohen, namely the verb b-d-l: to divide, set apart, separate, distinguish. That is what a Priest does. His task is “to distinguish between the sacred and the secular” (Lev. 10:10), and “to distinguish between the unclean and the clean” (Lev. 11:47). This is what God does for His people: “You shall be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy, and I have distinguished you [va-avdil] from other peoples to be Mine.” (Lev. 20:26).
There is one other place in which b-d-l is a key word, namely the story of creation in Genesis 1, where it occurs five times. God separates light and dark, day and night, upper and lower waters. For three days God demarcates different domains, then for the next three days He places in each its appropriate objects or life-forms. God fashions order out of the tohu va-vohu of chaos. As His last act of creation, He makes man after His “image and likeness.” This was clearly an act of love. “Beloved is man,” said Rabbi Akiva, “because he was created in [God’s] image.”[6]
Genesis 1 defines the priestly moral imagination. Unlike the Prophet, the Priest is not looking at society. He is not, like the wisdom figure, looking for happiness. He is looking at creation as the work of God. He knows that everything has its place: sacred and profane, permitted and forbidden. It is his task to make these distinctions and teach them to others. He knows that different life forms have their own niche in the environment. That is why the ethic of holiness includes rules like: Don’t mate with different kinds of animals, don’t plant a field with different kinds of seed, and don’t wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.
Above all the ethic of holiness tells us that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God. God made each of us in love. Therefore, if we seek to imitate God – “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” – we too must love humanity, and not in the abstract but in the concrete form of the neighbour and the stranger. The ethic of holiness is based on the vision of creation-as-God’s-work-of-love. This vision sees all human beings – ourselves, our neighbour and the stranger – as in the image of God, and that is why we are to love our neighbour and the stranger as ourself.
I believe that there is something unique and contemporary about the ethic of holiness. It tells us that morality and ecology are closely related. They are both about creation: about the world as God’s work and humanity as God’s image. The integrity of humanity and the natural environment go together. The natural universe and humanity were both created by God, and we are charged to protect the first and love the second.