VaYikra - Leviticus 1:1-5:26 -4/4/25

This week we start a new book of the Torah, the book of Leviticus.  It is called that because the central theme of the book is focused on the priestly laws, including details of the investiture of the High Priest, priestly vestments, the various types of sacrifices and how to execute them, laws of ritual and communal purity, and laws of sexual morality.  Also to be found in Leviticus are lists of holiday observances and of acceptable and unacceptable foods, which became the basis of later kashrut laws.

The central idea of all these various laws is that the Israelites were, and by extension Jews today are, a holy people, and so all aspects of their lives should be imbued with holiness. As a holy people, they were tasked with emulating God in their behavior and in the society they would build together in Israel. And so the book of Leviticus, in addition to its emphasis on ritual and sacrifice, includes a section we know as the Holiness Code, which emphasizes not just ritual, but also what we today would consider social justice.

Leviticus 19, the center of the book and arguably the center of the whole Torah, tells us to ‘be holy, for Adonai your God is holy’, and lays out a taxonomy of holiness. Keep the corners of your fields unharvested so the poor can come and glean; have honest weights and measures and be honest in all your business dealings; rise when your elders enter the room; do not curse the deaf nor put a stumbling block before the blind; have honest courts, neither overly favoring the rich nor overly favoring the poor; treat the stranger in your midst the same as the citizen; and love your neighbor as yourself.

-Rabbi Bonnie Margulis