I sometimes regret that I don’t keep a running list of things I would never have thought I would need to say, but that, somehow, had to be made explicit. I think all parents and teachers must have a list of these instructions that should probably go without saying, but we find ourselves articulating. When I have to make one of these pronouncements, I often find myself going from specific instruction, to a more generally applicable, though perhaps still unbelievably obvious, principle, to a principle that applies broadly and should have prevented the child even considering the behavior in question. (A specific personal example fails me, but it would go something like this; “Get your toes out of his plate!! No parts of your body should ever be resting in anyone else’s food! It is important to always respect people’s personal space, especially around the table.”)
This week we read parshat Kedoshim, which makes up a piece of what is often referred to as “the holiness code.” Unlike most of the book of Vayikra, Leviticus, which is concerned largely with the procedures of the priestly class, this section is addressed to all of the people demanding holiness from everyone, rather than delegating it entirely to a small segment.
The first part of the parsha could be considered the core of the holiness code, the part were God articulates the overarching principles of what the people need to know. The code started part way through the last parsha, with some instructions for sacrifices that needed to be known to all of the people, rather than just the priests. It details a number of very specific things to do and not do, before reaching, as our parsha begins, a statement that God precedes by demanding the attention of the whole people.
In an ideal world, the first four verses of our parsha might say all that needed to be communicated about how to be in the world, and everything else might be extrapolated.
“The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the whole Israelite community and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, the LORD your God, am holy. Each person shall respect their parents, and keep My sabbaths: I the LORD am your God. Do not turn to idols or make molten gods for yourselves: I the LORD am your God.”
It seems so simple and elegant. Learn from your parents how to be respectful, responsible, kind, generous. Honor your traditions, and do not raise up false idols or ideals to distract you from what is important and what is right.
But God, knowing that our world, our lives, and the human condition are complicated, and that we are distractible and prone to rationalizing, gives us some examples of what living a life of holiness would look like. Reading the next chapter or so of instructions, many are the kind of rules that we understand rationally. They are rules of fairness, forbidding cheating, stealing, lying and taking advantage of others’ weaknesses. Others go beyond fairness, to communal responsibility, demanding generosity, kindness, taking care of those in need. And a third group inculcates gratitude and awareness of the miraculous nature of the world around us, not allowing us to take for granted the plants that grow, giving us food, the lifeblood of the animals that we use for meat, the humanity of the friends and neighbors who we know so well in both their qualities and their faults, or even the fact of our own existence.
Interspersed through this laundry list of how to be an upstanding, holy person is the regular reminder “I, the Lord, am your God” Like the parent or teacher, who in the midst of correcting a child’s outrageous behavior is met with the quintessential question of (self-)righteous indignation, “What!? WHY!?”, God needs to remind us that our perspective on our own situation can be skewed, and that we can often use a reality check. Human beings, of all ages, are terribly prone to see our side of a dispute as far more noble than the other. As humans, we come with a penchant for selfish thinking, but we also come with a healthy spark of generosity and empathy that we can nurture in ourselves and our children. Parshat Kedoshim demands that all of us do that work of nurturing, that we don’t leave it to a delegated class of holy priests.
It is kind of revolutionary that in the middle of a book of instructions to the select few on how to embody holiness for the people, comes an instruction manual for every member of the community, putting the responsibility for holiness in our own hands, in the actions and interactions of day to day life, and asserts that if we were truly listening, we could really learn all we needed about how to do so out of respect for our parents and commitment to God.
In those moments of disbelief and frustration at the detail that we find we must explicate to our children when they fail to apply the general principles we have tried to teach them, maybe there is some comfort in knowing that God is in the same position. And if God holds out hope, giving us both the overarching principles and the nitty-gritty details, and trusting us to get it eventually, let us do our best to follow suit, and extend the same hope and trust to our children.