Dear TBZ Community,
This week we read the double Torah portion of Acharei Mot–Kedoshim. Parashat Kedoshim opens with a call that is at once aspirational and deeply demanding:
קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם
You shall be holy, for I, the Eternal your God, am holy (Leviticus 19:2)
It is a radical invitation to shape a life, a community, a society rooted in holiness. And so the question of how holiness is pursued becomes, in many ways, the container for all of the mitzvot (commandments) that follow. Torah does not leave holiness in the realm of abstraction; very quickly, it grounds that call in relationship, in the way we treat one another. At the heart of this parasha is the command we recite as a daily kavanah (intention) and each Shabbat here at TBZ:
וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Our tradition asks: if there is a single teaching that captures the essence of Torah, what would it be? What is the organizing principle, the beating heart of Judaism? A deeply insightful passage in Bereshit Rabbah 24:7 offers a profound exploration of that question:
בֶּן עֲזַאי אוֹמֵר (בראשית ה, א): זֶה סֵפֶר תּוֹלְדֹת אָדָם, זֶה כְּלַל גָּדוֹל בַּתּוֹרָה, רַבִּי עֲקִיבָא אוֹמֵר (ויקרא יט, יח): וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ, זֶה כְּלַל גָּדוֹל בַּתּוֹרָה, שֶׁלֹא תֹאמַר הוֹאִיל וְנִתְבַּזֵּיתִי יִתְבַּזֶה חֲבֵרִי עִמִּי, הוֹאִיל וְנִתְקַלַּלְתִּי יִתְקַלֵּל חֲבֵרִי עִמִּי. אָמַר רַבִּי תַּנְחוּמָא אִם עָשִׂיתָ כֵּן דַּע לְמִי אַתָּה מְבַזֶּה בִּדְמוּת אֱלֹהִים עָשָׂה אוֹתוֹ
Ben Azzai says: “This is the book of the descendants of Adam” – this verse represents the central tenet of the Torah. Rabbi Akiva says: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) – that verse represents the central tenet of the Torah, [as it teaches] that you should not say: Since I have been disparaged, let someone else be disparaged along with me; since I was cursed, let someone else be cursed along with me. Rabbi Tanḥuma said: If you do act like that, know who it is that you are disgracing: “in the likeness of God, God made him” (Genesis 5:1).
Ben Azzai roots everything in tzelem Elohim – that every human being is created in the image of God, that we all come from the same Adam, the same first creation, and that there is ultimately no hierarchy of human worth. Rabbi Akiva centers love – v’ahavta l’reacha kamocha (love your neighbor as yourself) – as the guiding principle of ethical life. And Rabbi Tanhuma reminds us that these are not competing claims; rather, they illuminate one another, because to harm another, to humiliate another, is to diminish the divine image itself. In a way, Ben Azzai offers the theological foundation for what Rabbi Akiva names as the central ethical demand.
In the book You Are My Witness, Jane Isay shares an anecdote from Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer – who was the teacher of my father, Rabbi Angel Kreiman-Brill, and of my mentors Rabbis Marcelo Bronstein and Roly Matalon – about his teacher, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. One shabbat afternoon, as he was teaching his students, Heschel said to them:
“You all have, I’m sure, mitzvot or commandments in the Bible that you would like to take out.” Which, of course, is not true. Who would have thought of saying that! He said, “I would like to make a motion, that we take Leviticus 19:18 – ‘thou shalt love thy neighbor as they self’ – out of the bible.” There was a hush. “Gentlemen, you are probably very surprised that I am saying that I would like this commandment removed from the Bible. It’s simply impossible to fulfill, and it’s so important, it’s the basis of all civilization” (page 81).
There is a deep truth here. This mitzvah (commandment) is both foundational and unreachable, calling us toward a way of being that we can never fully achieve, because we do not consistently love others as we love ourselves. And, truthfully, we do not always love ourselves with steadiness or compassion either. We fall short in patience, in empathy, in generosity of spirit, and still the command remains, not because we can complete it, but because we must live in its direction. If we remember that we were all created in God’s image, perhaps we can, again and again, do our best to love God’s creation.
So what does it mean to take this mitzvah seriously in our time?
Parashat Kedoshim refuses to let us remain in the realm of lofty ideals or abstract feelings, and instead translates holiness and love into the texture of daily life, into concrete and often difficult actions:
לֹא תִּגְנֹבוּ… וְלֹא תְשַׁקְּרוּ
You shall not steal; you shall not deal deceitfully or falsely.
לֹא תַעֲשֹׁק… לֹא תָלִין פְּעֻלַּת שָׂכִיר
You shall not defraud… you shall not withhold a worker’s wages.
לֹא תְקַלֵּל חֵרֵשׁ… וְלִפְנֵי עִוֵּר לֹא תִתֵּן מִכְשֹׁל
Do not insult the deaf or place a stumbling block before the blind.
בְּצֶדֶק תִּשְׁפֹּט עֲמִיתֶךָ
Judge your fellow with justice.
לֹא תֵלֵךְ רָכִיל… לֹא תַעֲמֹד עַל דַּם רֵעֶךָ
Do not gossip… do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.
לֹא תִשְׂנָא… לֹא תִקֹּם וְלֹא תִטֹּר
Do not hate… do not take vengeance or bear a grudge.
The Torah is teaching us something essential: that to live a life of holiness, and to love, is not only a feeling but a discipline and a practice, expressed in restraint, in honesty, in fairness, in how we speak, in how we judge, and in whether we act when another is in danger. Holiness, then, is not removed from the world; it is built, slowly and imperfectly, through the ways we honor the dignity of others.
To be holy is to refuse the instinct that Rabbi Akiva warns against, the instinct that says, I was hurt, so let others be hurt as well. To be holy is to remember, as Rabbi Tanhuma teaches, that every act toward another human being is, in essence, an act toward the image of God. And perhaps to be holy is also to live in the paradox that Heschel names: to take seriously a commandment we know we cannot fully fulfill, and yet to refuse to relinquish it.
In a time when it is so easy to harden our hearts, to reduce others to categories, to respond to pain with more pain, this mitzvah asks something profoundly countercultural of us: to keep turning ourselves toward compassion, to keep expanding the circle of who we are willing to see as “our neighbor,” and to keep choosing dignity over dismissal, responsibility over indifference, even when it is difficult and even when we know we will not get it right.
קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ
You shall be holy
The call to holiness is not abstract; it is the call to build a world in which every human being is treated as if they truly bear the image of God, and that work – unfinished, demanding, and deeply sacred – is placed in our hands.
May we continue to return to this call, even when it feels beyond us, and allow it to shape not only what we believe but how we live.
May we cultivate in ourselves the discipline and practice of love, expressed in small, daily acts of honesty, fairness, and care.
And may we, in seeing one another more fully, come a little closer to honoring the Divine Image that lives within us all.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rav Claudia