Kedoshim (Leviticus 19:1-20:27) and Haftarah (Amos 9:7-15): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary
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Kedoshim (Leviticus 19:1-20:27) and Haftarah (Amos 9:7-15): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary
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Overview
The complete set of weekly portions is available in Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin’s book The JPS B’nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary (JPS, 2017).
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780827616318 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The Jewish Publication Society |
| Publication date: | 12/01/2018 |
| Series: | JPS Study Bible |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 24 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Torah
Kedoshim: Leviticus 19:1–20:27
If you could look at the location of Parashat Kedoshim in the Torah scroll, you would notice that the parchment is pretty much evenly balanced on each side. That's because Kedoshim is the "spine" of the entire Torah. It's simply that important. Kedoshim comprises the Holiness Code, the handbook for what Jews must do in order to be a holy people.
While much of the book of Leviticus is addressed only to the priests, the text makes it clear that the Holiness Code's commandments are addressed to "the whole Israelite community." Kedoshim is the most systematic understanding of Jewish ethics to be found in the Torah, and in many places contains parallels with the Ten Commandments.
Summary
• The Israelites are to be holy, as God is holy. Through ethical and communal action, all Jews can potentially achieve holiness. (19:1–2)
• The Israelites are commanded to leave the corners of their fields unharvested, and to leave any fallen fruit for the poor and the stranger. (19:9–10)
• The commandment not to steal and not to defraud immediately leads to the commandment to pay workers on time. To not pay workers on time is the same as stealing from them. (19:13)
• It is forbidden to curse the deaf or to put a stumbling block before the blind. (19:14)
• It is forbidden to hold a grudge or to exact vengeance against people. That is one way that you will "love your neighbor [or fellow] as yourself." (19:18)
The Big Ideas
• Holiness is one of the most precious ideas that Judaism gave to the world. Holiness means something that is distinct, set apart, lofty. It is an attribute that "belongs" to God, but human beings can become holy in the ways that we interact with others and by the kind of society that we choose to create. Holiness, in fact, is the only quality of God to which human beings can aspire.
• Judaism believes in tzedakah (righteous giving). The Torah makes it clear that we must take care of the poor and the vulnerable in our midst, and that those actions must become public policy.
• People should not compromise their dignity by having to wait for something that is owed to them. That is the rationale for paying workers on time. So, too, the corners of the field "belong" to the poor; they should not have to beg for tzedakah.
• Putting a stumbling block before the blind does not necessarily mean putting something in front of a blind person so that he or she will fall over it. It is usually interpreted to mean that you should not deceive people and not take advantage of their ignorance or lack of awareness.
• "Love your neighbor as yourself" is perhaps the best-known verse in the entire Torah, and is sometimes also known as the Golden Rule. Some old Jewish prayer books had this commandment printed on the first page; it was considered to be the sha'ar tefilah, the gateway to prayer itself. But love is not primarily an emotional response to our fellow human beings. It is love in the form of action — specifically, the understanding that our neighbors are, in deep ways, just like us, and that we should treat them as we want to be treated.
Divrei Torah
Giving Is All We've Got
Everyone knows that tzedakah is an essential Jewish value. Sooner or later, every Jew learns that the proper translation of tzedakah is not "charity," but "justice." There is a big difference between these two terms. "Charity" comes from the Latin word caritas, which means "to love." Charity, therefore, means giving as an act of love. Tzedakah comes from the Hebrew tzedek, which means "justice." It means giving because it is the right thing to do. It's a mitzvah, a commandment (not just a good deed) that you perform out of a sense of obligation, whether you are feeling "charitable" or not.
But have you ever wondered when and where the idea of tzedakah came from? From right here, in Parashat Kedoshim. The Torah portion actually offers the ancient Israelites two ways to do tzedakah, and both have to do with agriculture. The first (peah) is to leave the corners of the field unharvested so that the poor can help themselves. The Mishnah says: "These are the obligations without measure, whose reward lasts into eternity" — and the first item on the list is peah. The second is leket, letting the poor take anything that falls to the ground during the gleaning (harvesting) of the field.
Yes, we care about the dignity of the poor. But it's not as if you are giving away what is yours, because you don't own it in the first place! According to Jewish law, if you own a field, the corners of that field are really not yours; they belong to those who are not as fortunate as you. In fact, if you don't give to the poor, it's as if you are actually stealing from them! Tzedakah is the mandatory sharing of your field or your income.
Tzedakah is part of the Holiness Code; it's a way of becoming holy. It is based on the still-radical notion that you can't have it all. You don't own all your stuff (whether it's a field or money); the poor get a share of it. You don't own all of your time; Shabbat is a day of the week when you don't think about what you own (which is one good reason why traditional Jews don't go shopping on Shabbat). Ideally, on Shabbat you don't think about what you have, or about what you can consume, or about what you can buy. You think about relationships, which are themselves holy. You think about your responsibility to others, especially those in need.
The contemporary scholar and teacher Micah Goodman teaches: "The holiest word in Hebrew is a word we cannot pronounce: the four-letter Name of God, the vowels of which have disappeared. The holiest place in the world (the Holy of Holies) is a place that we cannot enter. The holy is about what is beyond you and not accessible. It is about what I cannot control."
This is perhaps the most beautiful thing about tzedakah. It means giving of yourself. But it also means giving up something that is part of yourself — your money, your time, your efforts. Because you don't fully own or control anything. And because God wants us to share.
Not only that: some of the happiest people you'll ever meet are those who give tzedakah. Try it.
The Greatest Mitzvah
Quick joke: A rabbi and an astronomer sat next to each other on a plane. The astronomer said to the rabbi: "I don't know much about Judaism, but wouldn't you say that the essence of Judaism is 'you shall love your neighbor as yourself'?" To which the rabbi responded: "I don't know much about astronomy, but wouldn't you say that the essence of astronomy is 'twinkle, twinkle, little star'?"
The point of the joke: one should be very careful about not oversimplifying things — including Judaism. And yet, we can forgive the astronomer for thinking that loving your neighbor is the essence of Judaism. No less an authority than the great Rabbi Akiba said: "'Love your neighbor as yourself' is the great principle [k'lal gadol] of the Torah."
This great principle culminates the Holiness Code in this Torah portion, and is one of the most commonly quoted verses of the entire Bible.
But wait a second. It's a commandment. How can you command someone to love? For that matter, how can you command someone to feel anything?
The clue is right there in the Hebrew. "Love your neighbor as yourself" is ve-ahavta le-rei'akha kamokha. Most of the time, when the Torah speaks of loving, it's more like ve-ahavta et ... The et is a small Hebrew word indicating that the object of the sentence is coming up. Here, it's "you should love — to your neighbor." This doesn't even make sense. How do you love to someone?
That's the whole point. Love is not only a way that you feel; love is an action. Love is therefore something that you do to your neighbor. In fact, in the Bible, quite often ahavah, which means "love," doesn't really mean love as an emotion, but as a way of saying that you live in a sacred relationship with someone — that there are responsibilities. We are commanded to love the stranger, which means that we have responsibilities to him or her. We are commanded to love God, which means that we have sacred responsibilities. And, yes, our love for our neighbor is based on taking care of that person as well.
And because love is more than just a feeling, because "love" means that you have to act in certain ways, it takes practice. If you want to be a great baseball player or guitarist or dancer or artist, you have to work at it. In the same way, if you want to be a good Jew and a mensch, you have to work on it as well. Many of the mitzvot are actually part of an exercise program to make people better.
In an old Peanuts cartoon, Snoopy says: "I love humanity; it's people I can't stand." Martin Luther King Jr. once said of a senator who believed that blacks and whites should be completely separated: "I do not like Senator Eastland, but I must learn to love him."
The great Jewish theologian and social activist Abraham Joshua Heschel (and a friend of King) writes: "The basic dignity of man is not made up of his achievements, virtues, or special talents. It is inherent in his very being. The commandment, 'Love your neighbor as yourself' (Lev.19:18) calls upon us to love not only the virtuous and the wise, but also the vicious and the stupid person."
You love humanity, in the abstract? Great. You love your family, and your friends? Wonderful. But how are you going to love the neighbor you don't like, the classmate you don't care for, or the coworker who is a pain?
Try treating them as you would want to be treated. That's where you start.
Connections
• What is your definition of holiness? What things, places, times, and relationships are holy for you?
• What kind of tzedakah do you and your family support? Why are those causes important to you?
• In what ways do you try to fulfill the mitzvah of "love your neighbor"?
• Do you agree that "loving your neighbor" is a difficult commandment?
CHAPTER 2The Haftarah
Kedoshim: Amos 9:7–15
Judaism believes that Jews can be holy, and that's the topic of this week's Torah portion. But that doesn't mean that you are an angel, and it certainly doesn't mean that you can imagine yourself to be morally superior. The haftarah, from the book of Amos, warns us about that.
Amos was a native of Tekoa, a village south of Jerusalem, in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, who lived in the eighth century BCE. At a certain point in his life he moved to the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The Northern Kingdom was far wealthier than its southern neighbor, and the people tended to act in inappropriate ways. They were heavily into idolatry. The old Canaanite kingdom of Phoenicia was just over the border, in the territory that we call Lebanon, and elements of the ancient Canaanite religion heavily influenced the people of the Northern Kingdom. More than that, because Israel was fairly prosperous, the people there became materialistic and morally lazy.
Amos has to get the people off their high horse. He reminds them that although God made a covenant with them, God's activity is also evident in the history of other nations. And, specifically because God made a covenant with them, God will hold them responsible for all their shortcomings.
But prophetic words never end on a negative note. While Amos foresees that the kingdom of Israel will be destroyed, he also predicts that it will be rebuilt, and that this will be a sign of God's favor.
Get Over Yourselves!
"My child is special." Of course, every parent thinks that his or her child is special (and no doubt, your parents feel that way about you). But the biggest problem with "specialness" is that you might think that you are, in fact, special — and that never ends well.
That's what the prophet Amos is talking about. "To Me, O Israelites, you are just like the Ethiopians — declares the Lord. True, I brought Israel up from the land of Egypt, but also the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir" (9:7). In other words, God is telling the Israelites, "Get over yourselves. You are not that special."
Wait a second. Of course Israel is a special people for God. God brought them out of Egypt, right? God gave them the commandments, right? God chose them, right?
Yes, but ...
Let's take a deeper look at what Amos is saying. "You are just like the Ethiopians." Amos is telling the people that, in God's eyes, the People of Israel are no different than a faraway people in Africa. And then God says that the Israelites shouldn't go overboard in thinking about the "specialness" of the Exodus from Egypt — because God is also present in the lives of other nations.
Take the Philistines, for example. In biblical times, they were the hereditary enemies of the nation of Israel. They were probably from Asia Minor (contemporary Turkey), and they lived on Caphtor (Crete, in the Mediterranean Sea), and God brought them out of Caphtor. And the Arameans? (The ancient Syrians, not exactly the best friends of the Israelites.) But, there again, God moved them out of Kir. God is involved with other nations as well as Israel. So much for "specialness."
The Ethiopians are sub-Saharan Africans. They are black skinned. You got a problem with that? The Talmud states, "Only one person was created at the dawn of creation, so that no one can say, 'my ancestors are better than your ancestors!'" We are all human beings with a common ancestor. Remember that.
The great sage and activist Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel comments: "The nations chosen for this comparison were not distinguished for might and prestige, but rather, nations which were despised and disliked. The Ethiopians were black, and in those days many of them were sold on the slave markets. The Philistines were the arch-enemies of Israel, and the Syrians continued to be a menace to the Northern Kingdom. The God of Israel is the God of all nations, and all men's history is His concern."
Rabbi Heschel was firmly committed to civil rights (he was a friend of Martin Luther King Jr. and marched with him). From that quote you can see why.
Although God has a special relationship with Israel, God also cares about other nations. Jews learn from these prophetic teachings to look at other peoples' experiences and see the similarities. The Armenians, like the Jews, have suffered exile. African Americans, like the Jews, have been persecuted. The list goes on. ...
God lifted the Jews up again — like a fallen sukkah. And God can do the same for other peoples as well. In the meantime, we're told to lend a hand to help make it happen.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Kedoshim (Leviticus 19:1–20:27) and Haftarah (Amos 9:7–15)"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Introduction,
The Torah: Kedoshim: Leviticus 19:1–20:27,
The Haftarah: Kedoshim: Amos 9:7–15,