Holiness is about Honesty and Humility |
Aharei mot – Kedoshim (Leviticus 16:1 – 20:27)
This weekly reading is titled “After the Death” and begins with a reference to the death of Nadav and Avihu, two sons of Aharon. They were burned alive by a celestial fire in the course of a divine service. One commentary on the possible causes of their death points to love—spontaneous and sincere love—that got them carried away. The reading continues with a set of procedures required for the divine service that cost Nadav and Avihu their lives. This service is none other than that of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Judaic calendar.
The following reading is titled “Kedoshim,” meaning “holy.” It is often (as this year) read together with the preceding one. It begins with a demand that appears prima facie unrealistic: “Speak to the whole Israelite community and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, the Eternal, your God, am holy” (19:2). How can an entire community be holy, let alone holy like God?
The ceremony of Yom Kippur sketches a way forward. Its centerpiece is the admission of wrongdoing. It is the High Priest who publicly makes this admission and asks for atonement for himself, his household, and the entire community. It is significant that the first to admit wrongdoing is the highest official in the religious hierarchy. This sets the tone for the community. “Holy” does not mean “perfect.” It means honesty and humility to admit fault and thereby strive to improve oneself. Rather than indulge in self-satisfaction and blame others, a true believer must look in the mirror.
Even God is said to regret past actions, however anthropomorphic this may sound. Twice the Torah says that God regretted something He had done in the past (Genesis 6:6–7; 1 Samuel 15:11). And in at least 15 places, the Torah says He regretted, or might regret, something He was about to do in the future (Exodus 32:12–14; 2 Samuel 24:16; 1 Chronicles 21:15; Psalms 106:45; Jeremiah 4:28; 18:8; 26:3, 13, 19; 42:10; Joel 2:13–14; Amos 7:3, 6; Jonah 3:9–10; 4:2).
The tragic story of love that ends in the death of Aharon’s two sons finds its continuation in an exceedingly difficult commandment: “Love your fellow as yourself: I am God” (19:18). Love is a challenge, particularly when it is commanded. We somehow expect it to emerge naturally. Yet we are commanded to love “our fellow”. Lest one think that only Israelites are to be loved, a few lines below the Torah says: “The strangers who reside with you shall be to you as your citizens; you shall love each one as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the Eternal am your God” (19:34).
Quite a few Jews have discarded this Judaic principle as quaint but démodé. In a 1910 essay, characteristically titled “Homo homini lupus” (Man Is Wolf to Man), the founder of the stream of Zionism that has triumphed in Israel, Vladimir Jabotinsky, expressed a political philosophy that one can recognize in Israel’s behavior—including its genocide in Gaza and, more generally, its unprovoked attacks on peoples in West Asia:
Only in the Bible [in the Russian original: Old Testament] is it written “You should not wrong a stranger, nor should you oppress him; for strangers you were in the Land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:20). In our contemporary code of morality there is no room for this type of slobbering love and childish humanism of fellow man it would seem.[1]
Israel is not alone. Descendants of refugees who founded the United States now hunt “illegal aliens” and deport them to the most abysmal places of confinement around the world.
Conversely, the Spaniards, burdened by a history of bloody persecution of heretics, Muslims, and Jews, as well as brutal colonial practices in their colonies, have now repented. They welcome undocumented refugees and help them settle in a country that remains for many Latin Americans la madre patria. This gives the Spaniards the right to condemn Tel Aviv’s ferocious violence and Washington’s “epic fury” and to refuse any complicity in their crimes.
Some interpret the title of these two readings, “Aharei Mot – Kedoshim” (After Death – Holy), in a lighter mode: “After death, we are all holy,” as if to mean that striving for holiness in this life is futile. This is certainly not the plain meaning of this week’s reading.
[1] https://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9742/homo-homini-lupus.pdf