We are on a roll. This week is our second double parsha (weekly Torah portion) in a row. It is called Acharai-Kedushim, though some call it Acharai mot-Kedushim. The reason for the extra word is because the first word, acharai, means after, and some people feel that is not a distinctive enough word. The second word means death.
The name of the second of our two parshas is called Kedushim which is the plural form of the verb, “To separate or to make holy,” in the present tense. What is interesting is that to say the phrase, “One is holy,” in Hebrew, one would just say the plural of the verb or “Kedushim.” So, if you put the two parshas together, they could be called, “After death, one is holy.” What a strange thing to call our parsha.
What do you think haShem (god) is trying to tell us by this? I have an idea, but before I share it, I need to share with you some ideas in the parsha.
The first of our parshas begins with haShem speaking to Moshe (Moses) after the death of two of Aharon’s sons way back at the dedication of the mishcan (tabernacle). God wants Moshe to tell Aharon that he cannot enter inside the curtain where the ark cover is whenever he wants because that will cause god to appear in a cloud and Aharon will die. The Torah then goes into the service of the Cohen Gadol (high priest) on Yom Kippor, which is the only time that Aharon (or the Cohen Gadol) is allowed to enter this holy place. Since Yom Kippor’s purpose is to atone for the children of Yisrael, it would seem that the only time the Cohen Gadol can enter behind the curtain where the ark is, is to atone for the children of Yisrael. It sounds like the Torah is telling us that we should never go to the holiest of places for our own benefit, but only for the benefit of others.
After the Yom Kippor service, god tells Moshe to tell Aharon, his sons, and all of the children of Yisrael a bunch of laws. The first law is where they can sacrifice animals. Then, it is about not eating blood. After this is a warning not to do as the Egyptians or the people living in Cnaan; rather, only follow haShem’s rules.
Now, understand, the Torah is going into more detail of what and why than I am not sharing. I am not sharing because I want to keep this brief and I don’t think I could do justice to the Torah by giving these details. I suggest reading them for yourselves, and then we can have a nice discussion about them. 🙂
After saying that a person who follows these ways of haShem will live through these rules, the Torah tells us all the people whose skin we are not to reveal, and not to allow our offspring to be passed to Molech.
Interesting that Molech has the same spelling as melech or king. I wonder if we are being told that since we and our children are to be dedicated to haShem and his ways, we should not give our children over to a king. Why do I think this? Because a king is someone/thing other and less than haShem, and so what we would be doing could be seen as an act of a traitor.
Moving on, we learn we are also not to profane haShem’s name. This is followed by some restrictions on who/what we are allowed to have intercourse with, and we are told that this is to prevent the land from vomiting us out of it. The first parsha ends with haShem saying what will happen to those who do these things, and not to become tamae (mixed) in these ways because, “I am haShem your god/powers.”
The second parsha, Kedushim, begins with haShem telling Moshe to tell the whole community of the children of Yisrael to be kodesh (holy/separate) because, “Kodesh am I, haShem your god/powers.” This is followed by lots of ways of acting/being that are frequently punctuated with, “I am haShem your god/powers.” Could this be haShem’s way of keeping power from corrupting us? What I mean is could haShem (whose name implies what was, is, and will be, or eternity) be saying that she is our power and if we want to have access to our power, we need to follow a certain path that will help us respect others, and be honest and humble, in the face of having this eternal power?
At the end of this list of ways of being and doing, we get another list. This second list includes punishments which are mostly death penalties of various forms. At the end of this second list we are again told to follow haShem’s ways so the land will not vomit us out. We are also told not to follow the ways of the current inhabitants of the land because they did act in these ways and that is why they are being sent off the land and the children of Yisrael are getting the land.
The parsha ends with the Torah telling us that haShem is our god/powers who separated (hevdal in Hebrew, not kodesh) us from the other nations and that we should separate (hevdal) between animals that are tahor (pure) and tamae (mixed); we should be kodesh for haShem is kodesh, and that god set us apart (hevdal) from the nations to be haShem’s, and that we should kill anyone who does two types of divination (Ohv and Yid’ohney are their names in Hebrew – I don’t know what they are. If anyone has info on them, I would be happy to hear what you know).
So, this is the double parsha called, “After Death One is Holy,” and I promised you a thought on what haShem might be trying to tell us by combining these two parshas into one and giving them/it such a name.
It all started on a Friday night. My friend Mottle was asked to speak to the congregation and give over a few words of Torah. He started out by asking how many times the word religious appeared in the bible. The answer is zero. It never appears. Moshe is not called religious. Neither is king David or Samson. Not even Aharon, the high priest is called religious. Not even haShem is called religious. What haShem is is kodesh. What Aharon is is kodesh. God doesn’t ask us to be religious; he asks us to be kodesh. This was my jumping off point.
Our parsha says that haShem is kodesh. What does this mean? Kodesh means both being holy and being separate. Something that is mixed in with everything else is ordinary; you can’t distinguish it. However, once you separate it out, you can make it special, sacred, holy. This is kodesh.
Let’s look at it in a different way. Before haShem created the world, there was only haShem. So what did haShem create the world out of? Himself. This means that every rock, every tree, every person regardless of sex or race or religion is made up of a part of god.
But god is more than her creation. There is also a part of god that exists outside of creation; that is separate from creation. This combination of being in and out of creation is also kodesh in an interesting way. By being inside of creation, god is separate from what is beyond creation, and the part that is beyond creation is separate from what is inside creation. Therefore, both the part of god inside creation and the part outside of creation are holy, special, sacred.
Our parsha says that haShem separated us to be kodesh. This means she gave us the ability to be inside the world, and act with all of creation AND also the ability to go beyond this world. If we completely left and went beyond this world, we wouldn’t be kodesh, we would just be outside of this world. This is what happened to Aharon’s sons and this is why the parsha begins with a reference to them. Later in our parsha, the Torah warns us not to do as the other nations because that will drag us completely into this world and we would no longer by kodesh either. In summary, we are kodesh because just like god, part of us is in this world, and part of us is beyond this world and the “separation” is inside of us.
Now that we understand a little bit about kodesh, we need to look at two terms we have become familiar with the last few weeks: Tahor and Tamae. Up to this point we have been defining tahor as pure and tamae as mixed as if they were absolutes. They are not absolute terms; they are relative terms. For example, the ultimate in tahor would be haShem. Compared to him, everything else is tamae. Even the ark of testimony and the altars and the menorah are tamae compared to him. However, compared to us, these items are tahor.
And amongst us, we have relative levels of tahor. For example, a woman who finishes menstruating and goes to the mikvah (bath of living waters) is now considered tahor. Is she though? Compared to her previous state she is. But she is tamae relative to the holy ark.
Why did haShem give us these two confusing terms? Why didn’t he just make things simple: either you are tahor or you are tamae? The reason haShem made the terms slippery and relative is to teach us that holiness and purity are not the same thing, and also to let us know that we need to be in the world. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that living in the world requires our purity level to constantly change. For example, when a family member dies and you have to bury them, this will cause a change in your purity level. Likewise, when a woman gives birth, her purity level changes.
However, these changes do not effect a person’s holiness. Does a woman who gave birth suddenly become less holy? Does somebody burying a deceased family member become less holy? Less tahor perhaps, but certainly not less kodesh.
In a nutshell, purity levels don’t remove us from the bubble called holiness. Its purpose is merely to help us navigate within the sphere of holiness. Within the bubble of holiness, everything is holy. Period. However, different holy things have different levels of purity at different times, and if two holy things of vastly different levels of purity touch, the result can be deadly.
Another way of thinking of it, is to think that your level of purity is, to you, physical matter. Things that are at a different level of purity from you start to become anti-matter compared to you. A certain amount of anti-matter and matter can touch and be contained. But if too much matter and anti-matter touch, the forces cannot be contained and an explosion occurs.
Ok, we have now dealt with kodesh and tahor/tamae. There is one other subject I need to cover before I can explain what the name of our double parsha is about. This third thing is sin (Chet which in Hebrew means to miss the mark). Now, as I said above, tahor and tamae exist in the realm of kodesh. They are neither good nor bad, and you move up and down the scale based on your normal way of living life.
Sin is different. What sin does is take you out of the sphere of kedushah/holiness and puts you completely into the world of creation. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. The other nations, like Egypt, live completely in this world. It is where they are supposed to be, and their customs and laws are designed to keep them there and enhance their ability to function there. This means that they are not kodesh, and what they do are not sins. We, the children of Yisrael, on the other hand, are designated as being kodesh in both senses of the word: separated and holy. Therefore, the ways of the other nations cannot be our ways because they will take us out of the in-this-world/beyond-this-world state of kodesh that haShem wishes us to be in. Therefore, their ways become sins to us because they take us out of the kodesh bubble.
Now, not being perfect beings, we are bound to sin and fall out of the bubble. What then? haShem gives us a way to get back into the bubble. It is called sacrifice (or Korban which in Hebrew means to come close).
Different sins pull us farther out of our kedushah/holy bubble, and hence require bigger sacrifices. For example, sinning deliberately moves us farther from holiness than accidentally sinning, and also has a different sacrifice. If we look back over the last few weeks, we will see this. In previous parshas we learned of animal sacrifices. This week we read about sins that require the sacrifice of death. Why do they require death? Because these sins pull a person so far out of the bubble of holiness, that their body becomes fully enmeshed in this world and cannot find its way back to the place of kodesh. Hence the person is killed and their SOUL is now able to find its way back to kodesh. This is the essence of what our parsha is trying to tell us (remembering that something’s name is its essence) and why it is called, “After death one is holy.”
Now I want to take a moment here to emphasize that kodesh is not higher or better then not kodesh. It is just a different state of being much the same way tahor and tamae are talking about different levels of purity. God chose us to be kodesh, and the rest of the nations to be not kodesh. That is all.
About the Author
Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.