Dvar Torah on Parshat Kedoshim

Kedoshim is a remarkable parsha, containing a large amount of beautiful and important moral and ethical law. It begins with a verse which is quite inspiring, but so general that there is a good deal of dicussion about what it actually means: "And God said to Moshe, saying: Speak to the congregtion of the children of Israel and say to them: 'you shall be holy (קדושים תהיו), for I, the Lord your God, am holy.'" The exact contents of this exalted demand, to be holy as God is, are unclear. Rashi, from the midrash, says it is about being especially careful about sexual prohibitions. The Ramban sees it as a general demand that we be careful about the permitted things we do: eat kosher food, but don't make a pig of yourself. Drink kosher wine, but don't be a drunkard, etc. Others see it as a kind of explanation of what the commandements in general are all about, what their goal is: they will make you holy. 

I would like to suggest that perhaps an explanation of this call to be holy can be found in the verse which immediately follows: "A man must fear his mother and father, and keep my Sabbaths; I am the Lord your God."  Why are the two seemingly unrelated mitzvot of fearing our parents and keeping the Sabbath connected, and why are they chosen to kick off a very long series of ethical and  ritual commandments? How might they be the first, essential step towards holiness?

The commandment to fear one's parents is a companion to the mitzvah in the ten commandments to honor one's father and mother. The Rabbis understand honor (כבד) as to care for, to love. Our mitzvah of fear is seen as being about showing respect and obediance. This seems to parallel the two mitzvot to love and fear God, and clearly is a bedrock commandment about one of the most basic human relationships. The Torah knows that our first relationship, our relationship with our parents, is crucial for a healthy personality, and a very basic building block in the formation of society. You don't need to be a psychologist to know that who we are begins with how we are with our parents, and the Torah, with these mitzvot of love, respect, and care for one's parents,  lays the groundwork for a healthy personality and family, and by extension, a healthy  community.

The Sabbath, on the other hand, is most essentially about our covenant with God, our belief that the world is not ours to do with as we wish, but has a Creator, who demands that we recognize, by refraining from work once a week, that the world does not belong to us, but was given to us by God to care for. The laws of Sabbath also demand that I look beyond my personal needs and desires and concern myself with the common good, the good of all God's creatures: when we all refrain from work one day a week, we create a time in which all can rest, refresh themselves, and reaffirm their value as individuals. I keep Shabbat so that the weakest - the slave, the stranger, even my domesticated animals - can have a day of rest. The Shabbat teaches us that it is God's world, not ours, and that means being unselfishly concerned for all of God's creatures.

It would seem that the juxtaposition of these two laws, at the start of the Kedoshim section, teaches us that these are the basic elements of sanctity: a commitment to a healthy relationship with the people around us, beginning with the first relationship, that with our parents, along with a commitment to the Creator, and to a world which we relate to as His creation. These two directions, the personal/ familial, on the one hand, and the God-centered and communal centered on the other, would seem to be the basic building blocks of sanctity.

The Rabbis do a remarkable thing to our verse. They see the juxtaposition of fearing our parents and keeping Shabbat as indicating a possible tension between the two: what if one of our parents instructs us to desecrate the Sabbath? What do we do then? The Rabbis make it clear that the verse, read properly,  has the solution: fear your mother and father, but don't let that ever stop you from keeping the Sabbath. If a parent asks you to break it, do not listen, as the commitment to God, and to the day of recognizing the creation and the covenant, trumps the other, albeit important, relationship we have, the one with our parents.

I think this tension, and its resolution, is an important element in achieving sanctity. Holiness in achieved in balance. In the proper making of distinctions between various commitments and needs. The commitment to our parents, our family, our close, personal circle, ourselves, is important. One can not be holy without at least trying to get these relationships right. Similarly, our dedication to a larger circle of obligations - the world as a creation of God's, to which we must relate accordingly - is basic to holiness. Getting the balance between the two right - in this case, not listening to parents who ask us to betray the covenant - is what holiness is really all about; harmonizing the personal and the eternal. In our case, the eternal wins, but this is not always the way this tension will work out. There are times, and halachic categories tell us so, when a commitment to personal relationships, to people's personal needs, may trump our other, broader commitment to the covenent. (My 2005 Dvar Torah on Kedoshim deals with aspects of that dynamic - you can find it here https://parshaoftheweek.com/kedoshim/2005) Much of what halacha - Jewish law - is about is getting this balance right, understanding when the personal is more important that the eternal, and when, as in the case in our verse, the eternal values win out. One without the other, a sanctity that knows only of the personal, the individual, or, on the other hand, is only concerned with our relationship with God, is actually no sanctity at all.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix