Framing Holiness

Few Parshiyot pack as many famous commandments into so few verses. Depending on how one counts, there are over fifty mitzvot in sixty-four veres. Included, as numerous Midrashim (see, for example, Vayikra Rabbah 24) note, a parallel for each of the Ten Commandments can be found (fearing parents parallels honoring parents; observe the Shabbat parallels the fourth commandment; do not make molten images parallels the similar second commandments, etc.) The obligations to love one’s neighbor, to provide from ones harvest for the poor, the prohibition against revenge and talebearing, all appear. All these commandments are framed by the second verse of the Parsha.

דַּבֵּ֞ר אֶל־כׇּל־עֲדַ֧ת בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֛ל וְאָמַרְתָּ֥ אֲלֵהֶ֖ם קְדֹשִׁ֣ים תִּהְי֑וּ כִּ֣י קָד֔וֹשׁ אֲנִ֖י ה'  אֱלֹקיכֶֽם׃

Speak to the whole Israelite community and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, your God, am holy. (Vayikra 19:2)

There are two framing points that seem critical. The first is that the Torah freely integrates values that are seen in Western society as belonging to morality and those that are seen as part of other systems of value. In The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon Books, 2012), Jonathan Haidt compellingly argues that a central problem in many modern discussions of right and wrong come down to basic framing. Western morality traditionally limits itself to what, in Jewish tradition, may be called bein adam lachaveiro, interpersonal issues. Thus, it focuses on three axes of value:

1. care/harm
2. liberty/oppression
3. fairness/cheating

We can leave aside the political aspects of his argument that identify those who care only about these values as liberal. He notes that many traditional (or conservative) societies include three other axes of value.

1. loyalty/betrayal
2. authority/subversion
3. sanctity/degradation

The Torah, not surprisingly includes a wide variety of values in its holistic system. However, what is surprising is that both bein adam lachaveiro and bein adam lamakom values, both those between people and those between man and God, are all subsumed under an obligation to be HOLY. Thus, what might be called “moral” and “religious” are subsumed into a unified religious system. God’s demands are wide-ranging and they integrate different kinds of values which reenforce each other.

This directs us to a second point. The Torah frames the obligation to “be holy” in this expansive sense as part of imatatio dei, the imitate God, or at least imitate His manifestations in this world (note Rambam’s slight reformulation of the commandment in the first chapter of Deot). Socrates famously posed the question in the Euthyphro whether God (or for him, gods) commanded things because they are already good, or actions become good if commanded by God. One can somewhat sidestep this question. If God commands us to imitate His (manifested) nature, calling on us to be holy, in its expanded form, because He is (manifested as) holy, then perhaps the binary is false. God commands us to be good, because we are to strive to imitate godliness, the very definition of goodness. His commands are neither arbitrary nor do they point to a goodness outside of Him. This point was made briefly by Abraham Joshua Heshchel: “Such a problem could only arise when the gods and the good were regarded as two different entities, and where it was taken for granted that the gods do not always act according to the highest standards of goodness and justice…. The dichotomy of the holy and the good is alien to the spirit of the great prophets. To their thinking, the righteousness of God is inseparable from his being.” (God in Search of Man, p. 17) In much more expanded form, a similar argument is made by Robert Merrihew Adams (Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics, Oxford Academic Books, 2002)

These two points integrate – God’s ultimate perfection is not subject to division as it is His integrated and all-encompassing goodness that is perfect. As such, His value system seamlessly includes mitzvot that from our perspective are fundamentally different, reflecting “moral” and “religious” values. Our striving to be holy, or more precisely holiness as godliness, thus calls on us to similarly commit to a plurality of values, a system that makes demands on us in every aspect of life and human experience. Thus, the command to be holy, and the commandments it entails, frame the awe-inspiring scope of God vision for our lives.