Holiness in every choice: Lessons from Parshat Kedoshim

Parshat Kedoshim contains the most essential mission statement of the Torah and the Jewish people: “Kedoshim tihyu, ki kadosh ani Adonai Eloheikhem. You shall be holy, because I, your God, am holy” (Vayikra / Leviticus 19:2). Our job here on Earth is to be holy creatures, and we must remind ourselves constantly that we have work to do every moment of every day, and that is the work of kedushah, holiness.

What does being holy require of us? According to Chapter 19 of Vayikra, which scholars refer to as the Holiness Code, it is a series of essential mitzvot: honoring your parents, leaving some of your harvest for the needy, not swindling your neighbor and so forth. These mitzvot are the foundation of society built on trust and respect.

And then there are mitzvot which seem to be in the same vein, but perhaps a little too specific: paying a day laborer on the same day, neither insulting the deaf nor placing a physical obstruction before a blind person, not hating your neighbor in your heart. It seems that it might be just as important, for example, to pay an employee a fair wage as it is to pay it in a timely manner, so why is only the latter mentioned here? And Rashi suggests that placing a stumbling block before the blind is not literally about one who cannot see, but rather about a person who is “blind” in a variety of possible ways, expanding the applicability of this mitzvah.

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The Holiness Code is therefore not to be understood as a finite list of behavioral mores, but rather a set of principles which, when stitched together, suggest a much larger guide book for how to live and be holy people. This is an idea described in our tradition as, “lifnim mishurat hadin” — going beyond the letter of the law. To be holy is to see our behavior as never isolated from the people around us. Every choice we make will affect others, from the food we eat and the clothes we wear, to using our turn signals properly, to shoveling the snow off the sidewalks in front of our homes. “Lo ta’amod al dam re’ekha / Do not stand by the blood of your fellow” (19:16) is an elastic imperative: We are not only obligated to pursue a livelihood which does not hurt others, but also we must help people in physical distress when possible.

Furthermore, Maimonides tells us in the “Guide for the Perplexed” (3:54) that actually the end goal is not the performance of the mitzvot themselves, but ultimately those actions which are lifnim mishurat hadin, in the spirit of the law. That is, the mitzvot are designed to train us to live within those behavioral guardrails; honoring our parents teaches us to honor all people; not stealing teaches us to respect everybody else’s property in every way. The mitzvot then become not distinct items to check off, but rather a system designed to create a world in which we are all committed to each other’s kedushah, to ensure that every action we take elevates the holiness between people. And would that not be a better world than the one we have? PJC

Rabbi Seth Adelson is senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Shalom. This column is a service of the Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Clergy Association.