Aharei-Mot/K’doshim

The second of this week’s two parshiyot, K’doshim, begins with the command:  “You shall be holy (k’doshim) as I YHWH your God am holy.”  It then goes on to teach a long list of practices, both ritual and ethical, that help to make us holy.

Although the parashah gives us many examples of what holiness looks like, it never actually defines the term.  What is holiness? The root meaning of the word kadosh is “separate,”  “set apart.”  But what is it that we are to be separate from?

Perhaps the Torah’s point is that, just as God is transcendent —  i.e. separate from us —  so we must, in a sense, be separate from ourselves.  Our work as human beings is to step back from the personal preoccupations that tie up so much of our energy so that we can see the world (including ourselves) from a higher, God-like perspective. The whole repertoire of Jewish practice, both ritual and ethical, can be understood as a way to help us do that — to rise above our natural self-centeredness and see the world from something closer to God’s point of view.