April 24, 2010 | 10 Iyar 5770 

Our parasha this week is the most challenging one I can think of in the entire Torah…  “challenging” not in the sense of “difficult to understand,” but rather challenging us to think about the purpose of Jewish life, in the fullest sense, and to live in accordance with that purpose.

Rabbinical student Joshua Ratner offers an excellent analysis on the purpose of the laws in the opening chapter of our second parasha, Kedoshim. Biblical scholars refer to this chapter as the “Holiness Code.”  That is a very apt description of Leviticus Chapter 19’s content. What follows is Joshua’s analysis. His thoughts capture something of the manner in which this chapter provides us with direction in life. Both you and I are grateful to him for his clarity and understanding.

 “(The Holiness Code) begins in Leviticus 19:1-2 with God instructing Moshe to convey to the Israelites a powerful yet perplexing challenge: “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” The text then follows with a plethora of commands and injunctions.  One might surmise, therefore, that these succeeding laws constitute the definition of what it means to be holy. Yet these laws appear to defy any basic taxonomy. They range from ritual (19:5-6) and socio-economic (19:9-10, 19:13) commands and prohibitions to moral (19:14), psychological (19:17-18), and horticultural (19:19, 23-25) ones. So what, then, is the meaning of “kedoshim tihyu?”

I think the unifying dimension of most, if not all, of these mitzvoth is that they require individuals to exercise restraint, to limit what they are capable of doing. For example, the Israelites are commanded not to eat a well-being sacrifice on the third day (19:5-6).  Likewise, in Leviticus 19:9-10, the Israelites are enjoined from reaping their field all the way to the edges or gathering in the gleanings from their field; they are required to leave some of their agricultural yield behind. Additionally, God instructs in Leviticus 19:13 that wages must be paid on the day they are owed, not on the next day, even though the payer—as the party with power in this commercial context—could probably get away with paying the laborer whenever he or she wanted. Further, the prohibition against insulting the deaf or placing a stumbling block before the blind (Lev. 19:14) is interpreted by the 15th century Iberian commentator Don Isaac Abarbanel as a metaphor for the powerful exercising restraint over the Waker. Similarly, the command against profiting by the blood of one’s neighbor (Lev. 19:16) is interpreted by the 11th century northern French commentator Rashi as a command against standing idly by one whom you could save. Then the injunction against hating or bearing a grudge (Lev. 19:17-18) requires one to let go of the anger boiling within and to seek reconciliation rather than retribution.  Finally, the commands against interbreeding livestock or plants, or of eating the first fruits from trees (Lev. 19:19, 23-25) require the Israelites to rein in whatever scientific or technical agricultural abilities they might have exercised lest they, as the 13th century Spanish commentator Ramban suggests, intrude upon God’s creative domain.

The key to each of these commands and injunctions is that, despite our having the capacity to act, God urges our restraint. Just as, according to Lurianic myth, God had to limit God’s self through the principle of tzimtzum in order to leave space for the creation of this world, so too we, as images of God, need at certain times to reign in our power over the natural world.”

Quite an interesting insight, isn’t it?  Self – restraint is not only healthy.  It is also the way of holiness.

Shabbat Shalom.