Today is the 32nd day of the Omer.
This week’s kavanot are all inspired by passages found in the weekly Torah portions from Leviticus. Among the most difficult books for a modern reader to comprehend, Leviticus (with the exception of one chapter) is an esoteric text focused on priestly (Cohanim) behavior and obscure sacrificial practices. Never ones to shirk from a challenge, commentators throughout the ages have plumbed the book for contemporary relevance. Each of the readings for this week will share some of those gems with the Wise community.
Kedoshim: The Seventh Torah Portion in Leviticus
By far, this is the most glorious portion in the Torah. Kedoshim means “holy things.” While one might expect a list of sacred objects or esoteric rituals, what follows is a text of ethical principles and moral obligations that amounts to the Torah’s own internal elaboration on the Ten Commandments mixed in with other unrelated laws.
In the middle of this legal hodgepodge is one of the Torah’s greatest principles: וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ—Love your neighbor as yourself. There in the midst of laws requiring that the wages of a laborer be paid as soon as the work is completed, that gleanings must be left for the poor, that we must not deal deceitfully with one another is the commandment to love each other. In its obscurity lies its power. Who are our neighbors? What does it mean to love another as we love ourselves? Centuries of commentators have debated its implications. Some have argued that neighbor means only those closest to you: a fellow Jew, or literally your neighbors in your community.
In a recent essay, Richard Elliot Freidman argues that it was meant in the most expansive way. “Neighbor,” as he reads the text, was anyone except oneself and one’s family. He asserts that the entire reason this particular law was included is to make the point that is most difficult for humans to embrace: being human requires the deepest compassion and empathy for those who are least like us. Linked with the Torah’s other ubiquitous command to love the stranger, Friedman asserts that the Torah is even more revolutionary than its earliest commentators assumed. He continues: “The writers of the Torah who came from the stock of those who had experienced the Exodus bequeathed to us something tremendous: Treat the alien the same. Love your neighbor as yourself.” He ends with this challenge: “Perhaps now [that the meaning of the verse is clear] we can use our time trying more than ever to live it.”
— Rabbi Ron Stern