You Shall Be Holy

Hashem speaks to Moshe first, and gives him words to pass on. Moshe does not keep them for himself - every word here is meant to be said out loud to everybody.

Why does the Torah keep repeating this same formula, Hashem spoke to Moshe saying? The last word, lemor, means roughly in order to say: the words are never Moshe’s private possession, he receives them so that he can hand them on. That matters especially here, because the next verse sends him not to the kohanim but to the entire nation.

The formula is standard in Vayikra, but it is placed here in front of an instruction that breaks the pattern of the book around it. Much of the book around it is addressed to Aharon, to his sons and to the priesthood; this is addressed to the whole assembly. The word lemor is normally taken as in order to say - Moshe is given the words as a messenger, not as their owner. Reading verses one and two together, the Torah first establishes the ordinary chain of transmission and then widens the audience at the far end of it as far as it can possibly go.

Everyone had to hear this one, so Moshe said it to the whole camp at once: be holy. It means being the kind of person Hashem would be glad to see, in ordinary everyday ways, not only in special places.

If God is holy and we are plainly not God, what could be holy as I am holy actually mean? Ramban’s answer is worth sitting with: a person can keep every single rule in the Torah and still be greedy, coarse and unpleasant to be near. He calls such a person a scoundrel with the Torah’s permission. Kedusha, on his reading, is not another list of forbidden things but what you do inside the space that is already allowed.

Rashi, reading this against chapter eighteen, takes kedoshim tihyu as be separate - specifically, separate from the forbidden relationships just enumerated; wherever you find a fence against immorality, you find holiness. Ramban objects that this is too narrow and offers his famous extension: a person could observe every prohibition, eat and drink and speak within the letter of the law, and still be a naval birshut haTorah, a scoundrel with the Torah’s licence. For him holiness is a general command of restraint and refinement in the permitted. On the closing clause Rashi adds a striking gloss: if you sanctify yourselves, I credit it to you as though you had sanctified Me. Note too that the command is plural throughout - this is holiness as a communal project, not a private ascent.

The first example of being holy is not something that happens in the Mishkan. It is your mum and your dad, and Shabbat - at home, every single week.

Why is the mother named first here, when the Ten Commandments put the father first? Rashi’s answer is that each verse pushes against the one you find harder: a child tends to fear the father and to be more relaxed with the mother, so honour leads with the father and reverence leads with the mother. And Shabbat is placed right beside it deliberately - Rashi points out that if a parent tells you to break Shabbat you do not obey, because you and your parents are answerable to the same One.

The verse uses תִּירָאוּ, reverence, where Shemot 20 uses כַּבֵּד, honour; the Sages distinguish them, honour being active service and reverence being the refusal to displace or contradict a parent. Rashi, drawing on Kiddushin, explains the reversed order - mother before father here, father before mother there - as the Torah correcting the imbalance a child naturally brings to each obligation. The juxtaposition with Shabbat is likewise read as a limit: parental authority is real, but it does not extend to overriding what Hashem has commanded, since both parent and child stand under the same authority, which is exactly what the closing words assert. Note the shift from the singular אִישׁ to plural verbs - each individual is charged, but the charge is laid on the whole assembly at once.

Do not turn towards little statues that people made and call them gods. They cannot do anything at all. There is One who made everything, and He is the One we turn to.

Why does idolatry appear here, straight after parents and Shabbat? Because the list is not ranked by drama - it is a picture of one whole life. The verb is worth noticing: do not even turn towards them. Rashi points out that these things begin as elilim, nothings, and that it is the turning towards them, the attention you keep giving them, that eventually promotes them into gods. That is a fairly exact description of how anything takes over a life.

Rashi reads אֱלִיל as related to אַל, nothing - a thing reckoned as worthless - and traces a sequence: they start out as nothings, but if you turn after them you end up making them into deities, which is why the verse moves from turning to manufacturing. The prohibition is therefore aimed at the attention before it is aimed at the act. On לָכֶם Rashi comments that you may neither make them for others nor have others make them for you, closing the loophole of delegation. Placed immediately after parents and Shabbat, the verse completes a small triad - the authority you were born under, the time you live in and the objects you might be tempted to serve - each sealed by the same declaration, I am Hashem your God.