Kedoshim - Leviticus 19:1-20:27

What is Kodesh?

This weeks portion is called Kodeshim because of the sentence near the beginning, "You will be kodeshim because I, your Yahweh-Elohim, am kodesh.

But what does that even mean?

The word kodesh (קודש or the defective קדש) and the plural form, kodeshim (קודשים or the defective קדשים) is normally translated as "holy", and the noun-form kedusha is normally translated as "holiness".

Except that the word "holy" has a lot of baggage that goes along with it, as in this definition from the Merriam-Webster web site:

But this is not what the Torah means by kodesh in that it is not about divinity. The definition from Webster's is based on common usage. which is based on how people view such phrases as "it is holy to God".

Which is why I am using kodesh in this post, because it lacks that same baggage, for the most part.

First of all, kodesh is missing from the entire Book of Genesis, which should strike one as being amazing, given that it is called a "holy book". The first time that kodesh appears in the Torah is in the Book of Exodus when Yahweh tells Moses that the ground that he is stepping on is kodesh.

But what does a ground that is kodesh mean?

If you look at the pattern of how kodesh is used throughout the Tanach, you will get a feel for what it is actually expressing, which may or may not have anything to do with God directly.

Rashi, the 11th century commentator on Leviticus 19:2 on "you will be kedoshim" wrote, 

"You will be separated/removed from arayot (serious sins of sexual immorality) and sin, for wherever you find a restriction of sexual immorality, you find kadosh [near it]."

While this is not 100% true, concerning sexuality, it is true that kodesh is an expression of being removed or separated and is often found next to prohibitions that demand separations.

Kodesh means to make something separate, putting it aside due to its specialness.

For example, when Yahweh is telling Moses that the ground is kodesh, He is saying that this place is special, unique, and is not to be treated like any other place, because it is His place. (At the time, Yahweh was dwelling on "Elohim's Mountain".)

When Yahweh says that He is kodesh, He is saying that He is unique and apart from the Other Gods, and that His people, by virtue of obeying Him and only following Him, they too will be a separate people. Because a worshiping people are defined by their God, and so long as they remain separate from others and bind to Him (which is done by following the rules), they are kodesh.

The effect of this, of course, is tribalism, where a people have this odd view that those who have the right God are kodesh, and the people who serve the wrong God are viewed as not being kodesh because they are worshiping nothing.

But that doesn't seem to be 100% true, at least in Scripture.

Here we see two examples of kadoshim being used. The one in Leviticus (our current verse), is speaking of the followers of Yahweh as being kadoshim because He is kadosh.

And we also see in 2-Kings, the exact same term being used for the worshipers of the Goddess Asherah. They were separate, dwelling in an area of the Temple of Yahweh and making kedusha items for their Goddess, and emulating Her.

The only problem, is that, from the monotheistic view, they were associated and emulating the wrong God, and so the same word is translated as "sodomites" (or other variations) and not "holy". In other words, it is not treated as "holy", but as an expression of sexual immorality. As an aside, this connection with sexual immorality to worshiping the wrong God is peppered throughout Scripture.

So it appears that the translators could not bring themselves to use "holy ones"!

(Note: The idea that kodesh implies a separateness is not unique. It is the view contained in the Sifra, an ancient midrashic anthology that focuses on the book of Leviticus).

According to the Sforno (15th-16th century Italian commentator), kodesh means to act in a way that God expects of you. His expression, "kodesh means to be like God" doesn't mean to kill someone who offends you just because He did, but to be obedient to His word. And it in this obedience to that "true God", one becomes separate from those who worship other (or no) Gods, or even from those who claim to worship the same God, but to whom He has given different demands in His differen "holy" books - books of being separate.

In short, to embrace being kodesh, one also needs to embrace tribalism.

So, to summarize, kadosh, which is translated as "holy", simply means to be put aside or to be made special. As in a religious Jew saying kiddush on a Friday night, making the day special and unique, putting it apart from the normal week, and doing this because Yahwah said that is what he wants.

So when you see "holy", try replacing it with one of the other meanings and see if it makes better sense to you.