Parshat
Kedoshim
April 26, 2014
Leviticus 19:1-20:27
April 26, 2014
Leviticus 19:1-20:27
Good Shabbas everyone! It is my
great honor to be giving the dvar torah today while Rabbi Pearlson helps lead
members of our community on the March of the Living.
Sometimes we read parshas that
are difficult to relate to: parshas filled with long, obscure passages about
the minutiae of the sacrifice services in the Beit HaMikdash. This is not one of those parshas! Kedoshim is filled to the brim with relevant,
meaningful content about how a regular member of Am Yisrael can live a “kadosh,”
holy life. We are told to revere our parents, keep
Shabbat, not turn to idols, take care of the poor, and to not steal, lie, or
profane God's name. There are warnings about defrauding people, abusing those
with disabilities, and treating strangers badly, and we are instructed to pay
workers immediately after their work is completed. We are instructed not to be deceitful,
vengeful, or bear a grudge. There are many laws about sexual relations included
here as well. But perhaps the most famous rule in this part of Leviticus is
"Love your fellow [sometimes translated as "neighbor"] as
yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). These are just a sampling of the commandments
included following the words "You shall be holy, for I, the Eternal your
God, am holy."
All of these
commandments are supposed to make us holy.
But what does “holy” actually mean?
In Hebrew, “Kadosh” literally means “separate.” By following these commandments, we become a
nation that is “separate” from the other nations of the world that may not act
as God would like us to act.
One of the
most important things that makes us separate – kadosh – holy – is our concern
for the poor and for justice. For
example, this parsha instructs that “when you reap the harvest of your land,
you shall not fully reap the corner of your field, nor shall you gather the
gleanings of your harvest. And you shall
not glean your vineyard, nor shall you collect the fallen individual grapes of
your vineyard. You shall leave them for
the poor and the stranger. I am the
Lord, your God.” (Leviticus 19:9-10).
As most of
us are not farmers here, this pasuk may require a bit of an explanation. In ancient times, before modern agricultural
tools, people would have to go into the field and reap the wheat by hand. Inevitably, some of the stalks would fall on
the ground. Similarly, when picking
bunches of grapes from a vineyard, some of the individual grapes would fall off
the bunch. The Torah’s attitude is that
we are not to pick up the extra, but instead are to leave this for “the
stranger and the poor.” We are also to
leave the corners of the field unharvested, so that the poor may go onto our
land and harvest the extra.
Think
about this for a moment. The only way to
make this system work is to leave your field open and unfenced. It is a violation of God’s mitzvot to fence
off your agricultural land and make it inaccessible to the poor who would come
and take the extra gleanings.
This pasuk
is about more than just how to harvest a field.
It is giving us an attitude about how to consider our plenty. We cannot be so greedy, that we are
maximizing every bit of value at the expense of the poor. Instead, we are supposed to be generous, to
understand that those of us who have been blessed with abundance must always
consider how to support the least among us. And we must be open-hearted,
opening our fields so that the stranger and the poor may enter. They must be real and visible to us, not just
an abstraction.
How
important is this mitzvah? Consider this story from the Tanach. Many of you are familiar with the story of
Ruth. Ruth is our most famous
convert. According to the Tanakh, King
David is a direct descendant of Ruth.
Because the Moshiakh is said to be a descendant of King David, we
believe that the person who will bring our ultimate redemption is the son of
Ruth. Well, you might wonder, who was
Ruth’s husband – and how did they meet?
Ruth was a
Moabite woman who decided to adopt Judaism, and moved to Bethlehem with her
mother-in-law, choosing to become a member of B’Nai Yisrael instead of going
back to her mother’s home. When Ruth and
Naomi reached Bethlehem, it was the time of barley harvest. Ruth decided to go to the fields and pick up
the leftover grain – grain that was leftover because of Jewish observance of
Kedoshim. And it is here, in the fields,
picking up the pieces of fallen barley, that Ruth meets Boaz, the owner of the
field. Ruth eventually marries Boaz, and
together they have a son, Obed, who was the father of Jesse, the father of King
David.
This story
has an important lesson. If Boaz had not
followed the mitzvah of leaving the gleanings of the harvest for the poor and the
stranger, he and Ruth would never have met and eventually married, and King
David would never have been born. Thus, it
is from Boaz’s merit of following the mitzvot of Kedoshim that we may one day
receive the ultimate redemption of the Moshiakh.
This
should impart an important lesson for our everyday lives. We must ask ourselves: are we being too greedy
and overzealous in our business dealings? Are we so obsessed with picking up
every metaphorical “last stalk of barley” that we are forgetting how much it
would mean to someone far less fortunate than us to grasp those stalks? How can we create a life that is more open to
the poor and the stranger? These are the
questions that Kedoshim provokes us to answer.
There is
one more part of today’s parshah that I want to discuss with you today that
connects to our story of Ruth. In
chapter 19, verse 15, God instructs: “You shall commit no injustice in judgment;
you shall not favor a poor person or respect a great man; you shall judge your
fellow with righteousness.”
Rashi
helps explain this verse accordingly.
First, Rashi explains that the verse, “you shall commit no injustice in
judgment,” teaches us that a judge who corrupts the law is called unjust, hated
and disgusting, fit to be destroyed, and an abomination. Next, Rashi explains the verse: “You shall
not favor a poor person.” Rashi explains
that this means that you shall not say, “this man is poor, and the rich man is
obligated to provide him with sustenance; therefore, I will acquit him in
judgment, and he will thus be sustained respectably.” At the same time, the verse says we may not “show
respect to the great.” Rashi explains
that this means that you shall not say, “this man is rich, the son of prominent
people; how can I embarrass him and behold his shame? That would surely be a
punishable act!” Rather than show favor
or respect in either direction, we are to “Judge your fellow with
righteousness.” Rashi states that this
is to be given its plain meaning – though another explanation is to give
everyone the benefit of the doubt, and not to rush to judgment.
Putting
this all together, the Torah is making a profound statement about what our
attitude should be toward our fellow man.
We are not supposed to look at the poor man with pity, or to the rich
man with awe. Instead, we are to look at
each person as a PERSON, a fellow human being, who must be judged not by his
material position but based on his DEEDS.
Only by approaching the world in this way can we truly judge “righteously.” To do otherwise is to act in a way that God
abhors.
Again, I
am reminded of the book of Ruth. When
Boaz first meets Ruth, think of the disparity in position. Boaz is a rich man, the owner of plentiful
fields of grain. Ruth, on the other
hand, has nothing. She is a stranger
from a foreign land, a convert, a widow, toiling in the Boaz’s fields to
sustain herself and her mother-in-law. Yet
when Boaz meets her for the first time, he tells her to stop grazing in the
field, and to instead relax with his maidens, and to drink from his vessels,
and eat his bread. She bows and asks “Why
have I pleased you that you should take cognizance of me, seeing that I am a
foreigner?” Boaz replied, “It has been
told to me all that you did for your mother-in-law after your husband’s death,
and you left your father and your mother and your native land, and you went to
a people that you did not know before.
May the Lord reward your deeds, and may your reward be full from the
Lord of God Israel, under Whose wings you have come to take shelter.”
When Boaz
looked at Ruth, he did not just see a piteous poor stranger. He saw a righteous woman, a woman who had sacrificed
the comfortable life to follow God’s path.
Boaz judged Ruth with righteousness.
He did not favor her because she was poor; he favored her because of her
DEEDS.
Again,
this is a story and a lesson that is just as meaningful today as it was 3500
years ago. I am sure that every one of
us has been guilty, at one time or another, or according special favor for a
person because they were a “great person,” because they were famous, or rich,
or powerful. We need to remind ourselves
that when chosing our friends, our business partners, even our spouse, we must
look past the material and judge each person for who they really are, based on
their actions.
On this Shabbat,
let us all think about ways we can make our lives a bit more holy, by
introducing the principles of Kedoshim into our lives. Truly then, when we learn to judge our fellow
with righteousness and love, and to care for the least amongst us, we will be a
holy nation, a nation that will merit the ultimate redemption. Amen!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment