Hebrew scholar and Jewish academic Irene Lancaster reflects on Leviticus, holiness and loving your neighbour.
If you think of the Book of Leviticus, joy may not be the first adjective that springs to mind! Laws, injunctions, severity, do’s and dont’s, everything in fact that most ‘sensible’ people have discarded.
However, Rabbi Nathan Cardozo of Herzliah, Israel, has just written a new book on Leviticus which manages to stay true to Levitical teachings, while also engaging modernity head on. Rabbi Cardozo is the founder and dean of the David Cardozo Academy and the Bet Midrash of Avraham Avinu in Jerusalem. A sought-after lecturer on the international stage for both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences, he is the author of 13 books and numerous articles in both English and Hebrew.
I first encountered Rabbi Cardozo over 40 years ago while studying at a religious Jewish seminary in Jerusalem. He taught Jewish thought at this seminary and was also a graduate of the famous Gateshead Yeshiva.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks called him ‘one of the most thoughtful voices in contemporary Judaism’ and in March former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Rowan Williams of Oystermouth, cited him as the way forward for both religions when he gave his guest talk at the Annual Jonathan Sacks Memorial Lecture.
Another advantage is that Rabbi Cardozo is Dutch and therefore offers special insights from Dutch culture to many of his interpretations. He wrote this book during the recent ongoing war faced by Israel from Iran and her proxies. In fact, the building where he lives, opened in 1979 by Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, and named after her, has been hit by rockets. Much of the book was therefore written from a bunker.
So all this is the context for the book, entitled simply The Book of Leviticus, published by Kasva Press.
The Torah readings on May 10 are the joint ones of Aharei Mot and Kedoshim, which together cover Leviticus 16-20.
This article looks at two famous passages from Leviticus 19 through Rabbi Cardozo’s perspective. In the first passage G-d instructs Moses: ‘Speak to the entire congregation of the children of Israel and say to them: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your G-d am holy’’’ (Leviticus 19:2).
The question is therefore: is holiness inherent or conditional? In other words, the question we Jewish people ask ourselves is: are we born into a state of holiness, or is holiness achieved through spiritual practice and actions?
This question has been debated long and hard in the Jewish world, especially as diaspora Jews have been minorities among religions which themselves lay claim to holiness.
The greatest Jewish thinker of all, Maimonides (1135/8-1204), regarded right living as the key to holiness and did not believe that Jews should hide behind the claim of ‘holiness’. What is needed is hard spiritual work and steadfast commitment. This approach is endorsed by former Dean of Students at Haifa University, Israel, Professor Menachem Kellner, a leading voice in the observant Jewish world.
According to Rabbi Cardozo, this is why, whenever the two Torah portions are read together, as is the case this year, the parallel Haftorah reading from the prophets is Amos 9 (7-15). Addressing the Jewish people, Amos asks: ‘Are you not like the children of the Ethiopians to Me … Have I not brought Israel up from Land of Egypt and the Philistines from Caphtor, the Arameans from Kir (Amos 9:7)?’
In other words, the story of the Exodus from Egypt, which we just read at Pesach, is actually not necessarily unique to the Jewish people. Amos reminds us that the Levitical injunction to be holy, as G-d is holy, does not mean that we can rest on our laurels. For Amos continues (Amos 9:9-10): ‘For I will give the order and shake the House of Israel through all the nations, as one shakes sand in a sieve and not a pebble falls to the ground …’
According to Rabbi Cardozo, the establishment of the State of Israel might indeed signal the beginning of the Redemption, but we can’t take anything for granted, but have to continue working on ourselves.
The second passage is found in Leviticus 19:18 and is probably the most famous injunction in the entire Torah, as it has been taken up by the Christian world and therefore popularized. This injunction is: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord.’
Recently there was a public spat on this very subject between US Vice President JD Vance from a very poor, unprivileged background and wealthy, privileged Old Etonian podcaster, Rory Stewart. Rory opted for ‘universal love’ as being the solution to all the world’s problems while Vance, who is actually running the world on a practical, day-to-day level, strongly disagreed.
Rabbi Akiva, for whom this injunction is ‘the greatest principle of the Torah’ states that if two people are dehydrated in the desert with one flask between them, the owner of the flask should drink first and only then try to save his colleague. Sharing equally simply results in the death of both.
This practical advice is actually adopted by the world’s airlines, for whom in an emergency you have to save yourself first, and this is your priority. For Rabbi Akiva, self-preservation is the first law of nature: ‘Only through self-love can one love another.’
If you want to treat your neighbour with as much love as you feel for yourself, Rabbi Akiva deemed it more fitting to put it in another way: ‘What is hateful to you, refrain from doing to your fellow.’
The greatest Jewish thinkers are always practical and down to earth, as many of them, like Rambam (Maimonides) also practised medicine. Therefore they do not tend to hold elitist views which can lead to chaos or much worse.
To conclude this first article on Rabbi Cardozo’s book, these two essential Levitical precepts to be holy as G-d is, and to love your neighbour as yourself as a form of imitatio Dei, have often been misconstrued.
The majority Jewish view on holiness, especially as interpreted in the preeminent Jewish centres of Israel and the USA, is that holiness is not intrinsic, but needs hard spiritual work. And as for loving your neighbour as yourself, this love grows outward from you to family, group, nation and then the wider world.
So, Jews are not ‘holier than thou’, nor do they love only their own people. Jews are practical and stick to what they know about human nature.
Rabbi Cardozo has given us much food for thought in his commentary on Parshat Kedoshim (Leviticus 19-20). I hope to follow up shortly on another passage in Leviticus from Rabbi Cardozo’s splendid book.
