APRIL 28 • 2022 | 39

It is more complex and subtle. It contains 
not one perspective but three. There is the 
prophetic understanding of morality, the 
wisdom point of view and the priestly per-
spective.

PROPHETIC PERSPECTIVE
Prophetic morality looks at the quality of 
relationships within a society, between us 
and God and between us and our fellow 
humans. Here are some of the key texts 
that define this morality. God says about 
Abraham, “For I have chosen him, so that 
he will direct his children and his house-
hold after him to keep the way of the Lord 
by doing what is right [tzedakah] and just 
[mishpat].” God tells Hosea, “I will betroth 
you to Me in righteousness [tzedek] and 
justice [mishpat], in kindness [chesed] 
and compassion [rachamim].” He tells 
Jeremiah, “I am the Lord, who exercises 
kindness [chesed], justice [mishpat] and 
righteousness [tzedakah] on Earth, for in 
these I delight, declares the Lord.” Those 
are the key prophetic words: righteous-
ness, justice, kindness and compassion 
— not love.
When the Prophets talk about love, 
it is about God’s love for Israel and the 
love we should show for God. With only 
three exceptions, they do not speak about 
love in a moral context, that is, vis-à-vis 
our relationships with one another. The 
exceptions are Amos’ remark, “Hate evil, 
love good; maintain justice in the courts” 
(Amos 5:15); Micah’s famous statement, 
“
Act justly, love mercy and walk humbly 
with your God” (Mic. 6:8) and Zechariah’s, 
“Therefore love truth and peace” (Zech. 
8:19). Note that all three are about loving 
abstractions — good, mercy and truth. 
They are not about people.
The prophetic voice is about how peo-
ple conduct themselves in society. Are 
they faithful to God and to one another? 
Are they acting honestly, justly and with 
due concern for the vulnerable in soci-
ety? Do the political and religious leaders 
have integrity? Does society have the high 
morale that comes from people feeling 
that it treats its citizens well and calls 
forth the best in them? A moral society 
will succeed; an immoral or amoral one 
will fail. That is the key prophetic insight. 
The Prophets did not make the demand 
that people love one another. That was 
beyond their remit. Society requires jus-
tice, not love.

THE WISDOM POINT OF VIEW
The wisdom voice in Torah and Tanach 
looks at character and consequence. If you 
live virtuously, then by and large things will 
go well for you. A good example is Psalm 
1. The person occupied with Torah will 
be “like a tree planted by streams of water, 
which yields its fruit in season and whose 
leaf does not wither — whatever they do 
prospers.
” That is the wisdom voice. Those 
who do well, fare well. They find happiness 
(ashrei). Good people love God, family, 
friends and virtue. But the wisdom literature 
does not speak of loving your neighbor or 
the stranger.

THE PRIESTLY PERSPECTIVE
The moral vision of the Priest that makes 
him different from the Prophet and Sage 
lies in the key word kadosh, “holy.
” Someone 
or something that is holy is set apart, dis-
tinctive, different. The Priests were set apart 
from the rest of the nation. They had no 
share in the land. They did not work as 
laborers in the field. Their sphere was the 
Tabernacle or Temple. They lived at the 
epicenter of the Divine Presence. As God’s 
ministers, they had to keep themselves pure 
and avoid any form of defilement. They 
were holy.
Until now, holiness has been seen as a 
special attribute of the Priest. But there 
was a hint at the Giving of the Torah that 
it concerned not just the children of Aaron 
but the people as a whole: “You shall be to 
Me a Kingdom of Priests and a holy nation” 
(Ex. 19:6). Our chapter now spells this out 
for the first time. “The Lord said to Moses, 
‘Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and 
say to them: Be holy because I, the Lord 
your God, am holy’” (Lev. 19:1-2). This tells 
us that the ethic of holiness applies not just 
to Priests but to the entire nation. We, too, 
must be distinctive, set apart, held to a high-
er standard.
What in practice does this mean? A deci-
sive clue is provided by another key word 
used throughout Tanach in relation to the 
Kohen, namely the verb b-d-l: to divide, set 
apart, separate, distinguish. That is what 
a Priest does. His task is “to distinguish 
between the sacred and the secular” (Lev. 
10:10), and “to distinguish between the 
unclean and the clean” (Lev. 11:47). This is 
what God does for His people: “You shall 
be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy, and 
I have distinguished you [va-avdil] from 
other peoples to be Mine.
” (Lev. 20:26).

There is one other place in which b-d-l 
is a key word, namely the story of creation 
in Genesis 1, where it occurs five times. God 
separates light and dark, day and night, 
upper and lower waters. For three days, God 
demarcates different domains, then for the 
next three days He places in each its appro-
priate objects or life-forms. God fashions 
order out of the tohu va-vohu of chaos. As 
His last act of creation, He makes man after 
His “image and likeness.
” This was clearly 
an act of love. “Beloved is man,
” said Rabbi 
Akiva, “because he was created in [God’s] 
image.
”
Genesis 1 defines the priestly moral imag-
ination. Unlike the Prophet, the Priest is not 
looking at society. He is not, like the wisdom 
figure, looking for happiness. He is looking 
at creation as the work of God. He knows 
that everything has its place: sacred and pro-
fane, permitted and forbidden. It is his task 
to make these distinctions and teach them 
to others. He knows that different life forms 
have their own niche in the environment. 
That is why the ethic of holiness includes 
rules like: Don’t mate with different kinds 
of animals, don’t plant a field with different 
kinds of seed and don’t wear clothing woven 
of two kinds of material.
Above all, the ethic of holiness tells us that 
every human being is made in the image 
and likeness of God. God made each of us 
in love. Therefore, if we seek to imitate God 
— “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, 
am holy” — we, too, must love humanity, 
and not in the abstract but in the concrete 
form of the neighbor and the stranger. The 
ethic of holiness is based on the vision of 
creation as God’s work of love. This vision 
sees all human beings — ourselves, our 
neighbor and the stranger — as in the image 
of God, and that is why we are to love our 
neighbor and the stranger as ourself.
I believe that there is something unique 
and contemporary about the ethic of holi-
ness. It tells us that morality and ecology are 
closely related. They are both about creation: 
about the world as God’s work and humani-
ty as God’s image. The integrity of humanity 
and the natural environment go together. 
The natural universe and humanity were 
both created by God, and we are charged to 
protect the first and love the second. 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks served as the 

chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of 

the Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teachings have 

been made available to all at rabbisacks.org.

