This week we read the double Torah portion of Acharei Mot and Kedoshim, which includes the code of holiness, a description of the ethical injunctions that lie at the heart of Jewish practice.  The code itself includes mitzvot that require us to assist the poor, treat the strangers, widows, and orphans among us with generosity and kindness, insist on fair business practices, and obligate us to moral lives.

It’s important that this remarkable section comes in the precise center of the middle book of the Torah, Vayikra, Leviticus.  Kedoshim, the holiness code, is in the middle of the middle of the Torah—that is, it forms the heart of the heart of our most sacred text.  And at that heart is the ethical injunction to love your neighbor as you love yourself. 

The portion builds up to this magnificent religious commitment with a series of ethical injunctions: leave a corner of your field for the poor and the stranger.  Don’t leave a stumbling block before the morally blind.  Care for the widow and the orphan.  Be honest in your business dealings.  Have equal weights and measures.  Be holy, because God is holy—that is, be ethical, because that is the heart of holiness. 

There are virtually no ritual mitzvot in the portion of Kedoshim, no commandments about how or when to worship God at all, which is instructive in and of itself.  Holiness is usually thought to be the result of rites and observances that are highly symbolic in character, the consequence of worship or rituals that make us feel closer to God and affirm that unique quality of our connection to the divine. 

Yet here in holiness code of Kedoshim, the most important affirmation of sanctity in the whole of the Torah—at its very heart, remember—there is no mention of rituals at all.  Holiness is created by ethical conduct.  Morality is holiness.  What a powerful lesson for all of us!

Interestingly, the central statement to love your neighbor follows a commandment to correct your neighbor when he sins—to reproach, and not keep hatred in your heart.  In Jewish terms, true love must be rooted in honesty.  Without that, it is meaningless; with honesty, love is the most profound and holiest emotion of all.  And with honesty, and love, true holiness will emerge.

And with moral and generous conduct holiness can become a part of the very fabric of our world on a daily basis.