Kedoshim Tihyu / You Shall Be Holy

(6) but you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the children of Israel.”

(1) The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: (2) Speak to the whole Israelite community and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, the LORD your God, am holy.

YOU SHALL BE HOLY — This means, keep aloof from the forbidden sexual relations just mentioned and from sinful thoughts. [It is evident that this is the meaning of קדשים תהיו because] wherever you find in the Torah a command to fence yourself in against such relations you also find mention of “holiness".

Examples are: (Leviticus 21:7) “[They shall not take] a wife that is a harlot, or a profane etc.", and in the next verse "for I, the Lord, who makes you holy, [am holy]"; (Leviticus 21:15) “Neither shall he profane his seed (by the forbidden unions mentioned in the preceding verses) for I the Lord make him holy"; (Leviticus 21:6) "They shall be holy… followed by (v. 7) "[they shall not take] a wife that is a harlot or a profane" (cf. Vayikra Rabbah 24:4-6).

(1) קדושים תהיו, seeing that most commandments are designed to sanctify you and to be observed by you.

Be holy This is the prohibition against idolatry. It is given on account of the fact that I , God your God, am holy (which corresponds to the utterance that most people count as the First Commandment).

But according to my opinion, this separation is not to separate from sexual transgressions, like the words of the rabbi (Rashi). But [rather], the separation is the one mentioned in every place in the Talmud where its [practitioners] are called those that have separated themselves (perushim).

And the matter is [that] the Torah prohibited sexual transgressions and forbidden foods, and permitted sexual relations between husband and wife and the eating of meat and [the drinking of] wine.

If so, a desirous person will find a place to be lecherous with his wife or his many wives, or to be among the guzzlers of wine and the gluttons of meat. He will speak as he pleases about all the vulgarities, the prohibition of which is not mentioned in the Torah. And behold, he would be a scoundrel with the permission of the Torah.

Therefore, Scripture came, after it specified the prohibitions that it completely forbade, and commanded a more general [rule] - that we should be separated from [indulgence of] those things that are permissible: He should minimize sexual relations...And he should sanctify himself from wine by minimizing it - just as Scripture calls the Nazarite, holy (Numbers 6:5); and mentions the evil that comes from it in the Torah with Noach (Genesis 9:21) and with Lot (Genesis 19:33). And so [too], he should separate himself from impurity - even though we are not prohibited from it in the Torah - as they mentioned (Chagigah 18b), "The clothing of ignorant people are [considered] midras (a type of impurity) for perushim."

And just as the Nazarite is also called holy for his guarding [himself] from the impurity of the dead. And he should also guard his mouth and his tongue from becoming defiled from the multitude of coarse food and from disgusting speech, as mentioned by Scripture (Isaiah 9:16), "and every mouth speaks a vulgarity." And he should sanctify himself with this, until he comes to separation (perishut) - as they said about Rabbi Chiya, that he never spoke idle conversation in his life.

For these [things] and similar to them comes this general commandment - after it listed all of the sins that are completely forbidden - until he includes in this general rule the command of cleanliness of his hands and his body. As they stated (Berakhot 53b), "'And you shall sanctify yourselves' - these are the first waters (to wash hands before the meal), 'and be holy' - these are the last waters (to wash hands after the meal), 'since holy' - this is fragrant oil (to ward off bad odors)."

As even though these commandments are rabbinic, the essence of Scripture prohibits things like these; that we should be clean and pure and separate ourselves from the masses of people, who dirty themselves with those things that are permissible and with those things that are ugly.

And this is the way of the Torah to state the particulars and [then] the general rules. And similar to this is when after the prohibition of the specific laws of trade among men - do not steal, do not burglarize, do not deceive, and all of the other prohibitions - it states the general principle, "And you shall do the straight and the good" (Deuteronomy 6:18), so that it places into a positive commandment, uprightness, compromise and going beyond the letter of the law towards the will of his friend - as I will explain (there), when I get to its place, with the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. And so [too] with the matter of the Shabbat, it forbade the types of work with a negative commandment and the exertions with a general positive commandment, as it states, "rest"; and I will explain this more (Ramban on Leviticus 23:24), with the will of God.

And the explanation of the verse saying, "since Holy am I the Lord, your God," is to say that we merit to cling to Him by our being holy. And this is like the matter of the first statement in the ten statements (Ten Commandments - Exodus 20:3). And it commanded (Leviticus 19:3), "A man, his mother and father must fear" [here], since there (in the Ten Commandments), it commanded about honor, and here it will command about fear. And it said [here] "and guard my Shabbats," since there it commanded on the remembering [of the Shabbat] and here on the guarding and we have already explained the matter of both of them (Ramban on Exodus 20:8).

(5) Furthermore, our verse may reflect something we have learned in Kidushin 39: "If a person sits quietly and refrains from committing a transgression he is given a reward as if he had performed a positive commandment. This is the meaning of our verse. If you are presented with an opportunity to commit a sin and you refrain from grasping that opportunity, you have fulfilled the commandment to be or to become holy. The reason G'd commanded Moses to tell this commandment directly to the whole congregation of Israel was to inform them directly of this and to show them how easy it is to be counted amongst the people described as "holy." Every single individual can achieve that spiritual level by merely fighting off the desire to violate a commandment when the opportunity presents itself. Every Israelite is on the same spiritual level concerning the acquisition of this merit.

(13) We may also interpret the words קדושים תהיו by emphasizing the future tense, i.e. תהיו, "you shall become holy." The implication is that this is a commandment which is an ongoing process. The Torah asks us to eat מצה on Passover, to sit in huts on סוכות, to abstain from certain kinds of activities on the Sabbath, etc. The common denominator of all those commandments is that they apply on certain days or on certain dates only. Not so the commandment of "be holy." This commandment applies day in day out throughout our lifetime. The imperative to strive for sanctity is one that we cannot take a vacation from. Even while we are busy performing this commandment it is one that we never have mastered completely.

(1) Levitcus 19,2. “Be holy, etc.!” Vayikra Rabbah ‎‎24,9, considering the words: ‎כי קדוש אני‎, “for I am holy,” asks ‎whether it is possible that the Torah demands that we, the Jewish ‎people, are to be as holy as God is? The Midrash’s answer is ‎that, on the contrary, the words ‎כי קדוש אני‎, indicate that true ‎sanctity is something reserved for the Creator alone. However ‎holy we can become, God's holiness will always be superior to ‎ours.
Earlier commentators have already dealt with the ‎meaning of this verse at length, i.e. the question of how serving ‎the Eternal can be performed by means of holiness, and they ‎concluded that this refers to serving the Eternal with one’s heart.

As ‎to precisely how this is to be done, we have learned in ‎‎Taanit 2 that prayer is the best means of serving the Eternal ‎with one’s heart. The “prayer” meant by the Talmud there is not ‎that we address our requests to God, but that we express ‎our awareness of God's greatness and at the same time our ‎inadequacy to express with words what we really feel about God. ‎By stating that compared to God we are only dust and ashes, that ‎we are sullied by our sins, and that we accept the yoke of serving ‎God as our Master, we can begin to gradually develop the level of ‎holiness that it is possible for any of God creatures to attain.‎...

In this connection our author refers to the well known ‎dispute about the proper procedure in lighting the ‎‎Chanukah candles. (Shabbat 21).

The school of ‎Shammai held that we start with eight candles on the first night ‎and progressively light one candle less each evening. The school ‎of Hillel takes the opposite view, ruling that we light only one ‎candle on the first night but increase this by an additional candle ‎each night until on the last night we light eight candles.

The ‎school of Hillel explains that the reason why they want to ‎increase the number of lights each night, is although the amount ‎of miracle oil has steadily declined, the appreciation of the miracle ‎increases with each night that we pronounce the blessing when ‎lighting the candles as an act of gratitude for G’d’s miracle at the ‎time.

With increasing recognition of the miracle of Chanukah ‎there comes an increased awareness of our relationship to the ‎Creator, or expressed differently, ‎מצוה גוררת מצוה‎, “the ‎performance of one of G’d’s commandments brings in its wake ‎the desire to fulfill more of His commandments.” Recognition of ‎the greatness of G’d inevitably leads to an awareness of the ‎puniness of man when compared to God. It is this awareness of ‎our own limitations that gradually brings us closer to ‎understanding and emulating the virtue of the ‎אין סוף‎, ultimate ‎form of humility. The school of Hillel, disciples of Hillel who was ‎world renowned for his personal modesty and humility, followed ‎their mentor when they formulated the concept of ‎מוסיף והולך‎, ‎that a spark of holiness feeds upon itself and makes ripples like a ‎pebble thrown on the surface of the water.

‎
This idea is also reflected in the opening words of our portion ‎קדושים תהיו‎, “commence the process to become holy, as it is ‎continuous and feeds on itself.” An additional factor helping you ‎to progress along this route is ‎כי קדוש אני‎, “for I am holy,” i.e. ‎when you contemplate My holiness this will inspire you to ‎emulate My holiness to the extent that this is humanly possible. ‎In fact, G’d says that God's own holiness will increase proportionate ‎to the amount of holiness to be found amongst God's people on ‎earth.

One of the most welcome phenomena on earth that G’d looks ‎upon with the greatest pleasure is the virtue of humility. This ‎thought is reflected in Proverbs 22,4 ‎עקב ענוה יראת ה'‏‎, “the natural ‎result of humility is fear of the Lord; the more people practice ‎humility the greater the holiness of G’d.”