Dear friends;
I hope that you’ll enjoy the following Parsha summary, followed by a Dvar Torah;
” Parsha in a Nutshell “
The Parshah of Kedoshim begins with the statement: “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your G-d, am holy” followed by dozens of commandments through which the Jew sanctifies him or herself and relates to the holiness of G-d. These include: the prohibition against idolatry, the mitzvah of charity, Shabbat, sexual morality, honesty in business, honor and awe of one’s parents, prohibition against taking revenge and holding a grudge against another Jew; and also the ultimate principle of Torah is mentioned, which is:
— Love your fellow as yourself.
” Dvar Torah “
After weeks or maybe months of the Torah dedicating its Parashiot to the building of the Mishkan – Portable sanctuary for G-d, and talking about the duties of the Kohanim in the Temple and the services and the rituals that they performed, finally, in this week’s Parsha, the Torah talks about the laws and commandments concerning every single Jew. Not that we have anything against our beloved Kohanim, but sometimes we want to know what the Torah teaches the rest of us “ordinary” Jews!
Parashat Kedoshim begins with the words: “Hashem spoke to Moshe saying: Speak to the entire assembly of the Children of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, Hashem your G-d, am holy.” A very powerful and yet a very generalized commandment. What exactly does Hashem mean by being holy? The English dictionary defines holiness as being “a dedication or devotion to serve G-d”! But if we follow the western mentality to find the meaning of holiness, one could perhaps mistakenly come to the conclusion that the only way to achieve this level of sanctity would be to dedicate one’s life completely to spirituality and G-d, and forget about the physical world. One could think that one should ideally have nothing to do with other people; one should not get married and should not get engaged in sexual relationships. So according to western society, to achieve holiness, one should lock himself up on top of a mountain in a monastery and dedicate his life to G-d!
But according to our sages, this is not what the Torah means by being “holy”. There are many different interpretations given to the meaning of “holiness” and even among our early commentators there has been disagreements about the exact meaning of “You shall be holy”. Rashi interprets the mitzvah as one of self-control. He says that you can become holy if you can refrain from engaging in forbidden relationships and from forbidden sins. The word “Kadosh” literally means, “separate”. Thus, the meaning of “You shall be Kedoshim” is “You shall be separated – from forbidden sins.”
Ramban on the other hand, disagrees with Rashi and says that “You shall be holy” has nothing to do with the forbidden relationships. Rather “to be holy” means to have self-control over activities which are permissible to you. For example, we are allowed to eat, but to be holy, we should not be a glutton. We should put a limit on what we can eat and how much we should eat. We are allowed to drink wine, but to be holy, we need to drink to moderation. We are allowed to have sexual relationship with our wives, but we should not do it voraciously. According to Ramban, holiness can be achieved by restraining oneself somewhat from even those physical pleasures that the Torah permits.
What I love the most about our religion is that there are no right or wrong interpretation of Torah. Each commentator gives his opinion and you can relate to the one which touches your heart the most. So after reading a few commentaries, I came across an interpretation given by “Chatam Sofer”, one of the leadingOrthodoxRabbis of EuropeanJewry in the first half of the nineteenth century. He says that the answer to how to be holy is given in the pasuk itself. The Pasuk says: “You shall be holy, because I, Hashem, your G-d, am holy”. He says to reach the ultimate level of holiness, we have to act like G-d. we have to imitate Him so to speak! Well, we don’t know much about G-d’s character, but the main characteristics of Hashem that is mentioned in the Torah are his 13 attributes of mercy which says:”G-d is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in kindness and truth…” So in order to reach the highest level of holiness, we have to be compassionate towards our fellow Jew and act kindly towards him, just like Hashem is toward us! That’s why the rest of the Parsha is mainly about how to act compassionately towards your fellow Jew. It talks about how we should care and respect our parents. It talks about not to take advantage of the “blindness,” handicaps and mistakes of others. It talks about our obligation to give to the poor. It talks about not to take revenge and not to hold a grudge. And above all, to love your fellow Jew like yourself.
Yes my friends, according to Chatam Sofer, “holiness” is not measured by the level of your observance, but rather, it’s measured by how much you care for your fellow Jew. That’s why, in order to be holy in our religion, we can not isolate ourselves like the monks and live on top of a mountain. To be holy, G-d wants us to live in the midst of our people in order to show that we do care about them. In order to be holy, one must get married and one must raise children, and one must belong to a community. One must show that he cares about his family, his parents, his community and his fellow Jew. Nobody can reach the ultimate level of holiness all by himself. You can not separate yourself from the rest of your people and think you can become a very holy person. Ultimate holiness is achieved when you can show that you care about others, and you can get along with everyone else. And thats what holiness is all about: “Love, respect and compassion towards your fellow Jew….”
So my friends, make sure that you have respect for everyone you meet, because you’ll never know, the next person you meet might be a very “holy” person!!
Shabbat Shalom & Regards;
Martin