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.