Rabbi Bockman on Acharei Mot and Kedoshim

The portion read this week is actually two - Acharei Mot and Kedoshim.
Since we are in the 3rd year of the triennial cycle, we will bereading Lev 19:15 - 20:27 (all in Kedoshim).

Parashat Kedoshim consists of an anthology of laws or commandments.

Some of these are (Click ReadMore)
actionable in court, while others concern "hidden actions," ones that other people may never even know about. Thus,there is a strange mixture between what we might recognize as a "law book" and what we might view as a moral guide. The reading is thus addressed to both society at large and its representatives, but to each individual Israelite, as well.

We are told not to do injustice in a legal setting, neither favoring the rich nor the poor (clearly intended for judges). But we are also taught not to hate your fellow citizen "in your heart" (privately),thereby incurring guilt because of YOUR hatred.

We are also commanded regarding the forbidden mixtures of species[seeds in planting, different types of fibers (wool and linen) in one garment] and the illegality of bedding your neighbor's slave girl,eating fruit from a newly planted tree in its first 4 years, or eating the blood of an animal.

There are many more laws in even our little slice of the Torah portions, including idolatry (a sin) incest and bestiality (also sins) and sorcery (a sin, too!). Each of them has inspired subsequent treatises and books, but the Torah merely mentions them in a very basic and pared down format, as if the expectation were that each Israelite family would cut out this list and hang it on the refrigerator door.

Does anything within this section jump out at us? Or, to put it another way, if we were creating such a list of basic rules, is there a section that we might skip over as not intuitively appropriate for such a list?

Perhaps strangest and most prominent (repeated multiple times) among these laws is the mention of God's rescuing us from Egypt. It is both a reason to follow the laws (we owe God) and a condition of being (freedom is the ultimate basis of responsibility). Unfortunately, as we see in many societies, the most basic assumptions undergirding thelaws are not always mentioned - thereby introducing the possibility that the laws can become unmoored in practice, loosened from their moral underpinnings.

How wonderful that the Torah goes out of its way to tell us that God cares about us, rescued us, and demands in return that we build a certain type of just society! If ever I were to create a civilization from scratch, I could conceive of no better basis for asking citizens to live up to their highest potential humanity than by reminding them of the great ethical gift they have been given. Far better than police or jails, the appeal to a person's aspirations has kept the Torah relevant long after the society in which it was created has passed away.

Shabbat Shalom!

R' David Bockman

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