Hebraic Studies – Parashat Kedoshim
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Shemot - Exodus 3:15.
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Parashat Kedoshim
Study Two
Vayikra - Leviticus 19:1 - 20:27
With
Of course most
commentaries about ‘Vayikra’ is mostly
regarding sacrifices, purity, the Sanctuary, and of course the Priesthood.
It is usually about the holy
place, the holy offerings, the elite and Acharon -Aaron and his descendants who minister in the
Sanctuary. However, in chapter 19, everything seems to open up and it embraces
all the people.
“And spoke unto Moshe, saying: Speak unto all
the congregation of the children of your Elohim am holy” Vayikra - Leviticus 19:1-2 (JPS version of the Torah).
Indeed, this was the
first and only time in ‘Vayikra’ that such an inclusive address is commanded by Elohim, blessed be He! There is no doubt that the
content of this chapter was proclaimed by Moshe to a huge and formal gathering
of the entire nation 
- ‘Hakhel’. It is the people as a whole
who are commanded to “be holy”, and not just the priests. It is
life itself that is to be sanctified, and as the chapter goes on it makes that
quiet clear. Holiness is to be made the norm in the way the nation will make
their clothes and sow their plants its fields, especially in the manner justice
is administered, workers are paid, and their businesses are conducted. The
vulnerable - the deaf, the blind, the elderly, and the stranger, are to be well
looked after and provided care and special protection. B’nei
Yisrael as a whole is to be governed by love, without
resentments or revenge!
What we witness here, in
other words, is a radical democratisation of holiness. As we know, all ancient societies had
priests. The Torah revealed four instances of non-Israelite priests: ‘Malchizedek’, Avraham’s contemporary, described as a ‘Priest of Elohim
Most High’; ‘Potiphera’, Yoseyf - Joseph’s father-in-law; and the
Egyptian Priests as a whole, whose land Yoseyf - Joseph’s did not nationalise; and ‘Yitro’, Moshe’s father-in-law, a Midianite Priest. Thus, the priesthood was not unique to
It should not come as a
shock, for this comes as no surprise. For the idea, if not the details, I have
already been hinting at. The most obvious instance came at the prelude to the
great covenant-making ceremony at
“Now therefore, if ye will hearken unto My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be Mine own treasure from among all peoples; for all the earth is Mine and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation” Shemot – Exodus 19:5-6 (JPS version of the Torah).
Meaning, a kingdom all of whose members are to
be in some sense priests, and a nation that is in its entirety holy.
The first intimation is
much earlier still, in the first chapter of Bereshit - Genesis, with its monumental assertion:
“And Elohim said: ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ … And Elohim created man in His own image, in the image of Elohim created He him; male and female created He them” Bereshit - Genesis 1:26–27 (JPS version of the Torah).
Of course what makes this
declaration so revolutionary is not just that a human being could be in the
image of Elohim. For of course that was also
precisely how the kings of
How time eventually
changed, with the non-negotiable dignity of the human person, the idea of human
rights, and eventually, the political and economic expressions of those ideas,
liberal democracy on the one hand, and what became the free market on the
other. These ideas were not fully formed in the minds of mankind during the
period of biblical history. The truth is concept of human rights became a new
product of the 17th century.
The irony is that these
three texts – Bereshit -
Genesis 1, Shemot - Exodus 19:6, and Vayikra - Leviticus 19 - are all spoken in the priestly voice Judaism
calls Torat Kohanim. On
the face of it, Priests were not egalitarian. They all came from a single
tribe, the ‘Levites’, and from a single family within the tribe,
that of Acharon - Aaron. To be sure, the
Torah tells us that this was not Elohim’s
original intention. Initially it was to have been the firstborns - those who
were saved from the last of the Ten Plagues who were charged with special
holiness as the ministers of Elohim. It was only
after the sin of the Golden Calf, in which only the tribe of Levi did not
participate, that the change was made. Even so, the priesthood would have been an elite, a role reserved specifically for firstborn males.
So deep is the concept of equality written into monotheism that it emerges
precisely from the priestly voice, from which we would least, expect it.
The reason is this:
religion in the ancient world was, not accidentally but essentially a defence of hierarchy. With the development, first
of agriculture, then of cities, what emerged were highly stratified societies
with a ruler on top, surrounded by a royal court, beneath which was an
administrative elite, and at the bottom an illiterate mass that was conscripted
from time to time either as an army or as a labour
force used in the construction of monumental buildings.
What kept the structure
in place was an elaborate doctrine of a heavenly hierarchy whose origins were
told in myth, whose most familiar natural symbol that was the sun, and whose
architectural representation was the pyramid or ziggurat, being a massive
building broad at the base and narrow at the top. Their gods had fought and
established an order of dominance and submission. To rebel against the earthly
hierarchy was to challenge reality itself. This belief was universal in the
ancient world. Aristotle thought that some were born to rule, others to be
ruled. Plato constructed a myth in his Republic in which class divisions existed because the gods
had made some people with gold, some with silver, and others with bronze. This
was the “noble lie” that had to be told if a society was to protect
itself against dissent from within.
Monotheism removed the
entire mythological basis of hierarchy. There is no order among the gods
because there are no gods, as there is only the one, Elohim, blessed be His Sanctified Name, the Creator of everything!
Some form of hierarchy
will always exist: armies need commanders, films need directors, and
orchestras, require conductors. But these are functional, not ontological. They
are not a matter of birth. So it is all the more impressive to find the most
egalitarian sentiments coming from the world of the Priest, whose religious
role was a matter of
birth.
The concept of equality
we find in the Torah specifically and in Judaism generally is not an equality
of wealth: Judaism is certainly not communism. Nor is it an equality of power:
Judaism is not anarchy. It is fundamentally an equality of dignity. We are all
equal citizens in the nation whose sovereign is Elohim, blessed be He. Hence the elaborate political and economic structure
set out in Leviticus which is organised around the
number seven, the sign of the Holy. Every seventh day is a Day of Rest. Every
seventh year, the produce of the field belongs to all, Israelite servants are
to be liberated, and debts released. Every fiftieth year, ancestral land is to
be returned to its original owners. Thus the inequalities that are the
inevitable result of freedom are mitigated. The logic of all these provisions
is the priestly insight that Elohim, Creator of all,
is the ultimate Owner of all:
“And the land shall not be sold in perpetuity; for the land is Mine; for ye are strangers and settlers with Me. And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land” Vayikra – Leviticus 25:23-24 (JPS).
Elohim therefore has the right, not just the power,
to set limits to inequality. No one should be robbed of dignity by total
poverty, endless servitude, or unrelieved indebtedness.
What is truly remarkable
however, is what happened after the
biblical era and the destruction of the
Torah study, once the speciality of the priesthood, became the right and
obligation of us all. Not everyone could wear the crown of Priesthood, but
everyone could wear the crown of Torah. A mamzer talmid
chacham,
a Torah scholar of illegitimate birth, it is said, is greater than an am ha’aretz Kohen Gadol, an ignorant
High Priest. Out of the devastating tragedy of the loss of the
“Speak unto all the congregation of the
children of your Elohim am holy”
Holiness belongs to all of us when we turn our lives into the service of Elohim, and society into a home for the Divine Presence. That is the moral life as lived by the kingdom of priests: a world where we aspire to come close to Elohim by coming close, in justice and love, to our fellow humans.
For those who have a yearning to learn more about the Torah and grow in being a good and faithful Jew, there are many valuable studies on Hebraic Studies enter the index below. If you have any questions you are welcome to email me.
Elohim, blessed be His
Sanctified Name, is the one who gave us our Life!”
Rabbi
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