Portal:Judaism/Weekly Torah portion/Kedoshim
God told Moses to tell the Israelites to be holy, for God is holy. God instructed the Israelites: To revere their mothers and fathers; to keep the Sabbath; not to turn to idols; to eat the sacrifice of well-being in the first two days; not to reap all the way to the edges of a field, but to leave some for the poor and the stranger; not to steal, deceive, swear falsely, or defraud; to pay laborers their wages promptly; not to insult the deaf or impede the blind; to judge fairly; not to deal basely with their countrymen, profit by their blood, or hate them in their hearts; to reprove kinsmen but incur no guilt because of them; not to take vengeance or bear a grudge; to love others as oneself; to observe God’s laws; not to interbreed different species or sow fields with two kinds of seed; not to wear cloth from a mixture of two kinds of material; a man who has carnal relations with a slave woman designated for another man must offer a ram of guilt offering; to regard the fruit of a newly-planted tree as forbidden for three years, set aside for God in the fourth year, and available to use in the fifth year; not to eat anything with its blood; not to practice divination or soothsaying; not to round off the side-growth on their heads or destroy the side-growth of their beards; not to make gashes in their flesh for the dead; not to degrade their daughters or make them harlots; to venerate God’s sanctuary; not to turn to ghosts or inquire of spirits; to rise before the aged and show deference to the old; not to wrong strangers who reside in the land, but to love them as oneself; and not to falsify weights or measures. God then told Moses to instruct the Israelites of the following penalties for transgressions. The following were to be put to death: one who gave a child to Molech; one who insulted his father or mother; a man who committed adultery with a married woman, and the married woman with whom he committed it; a man who lay with his father’s wife, and his father wife with whom he lay; a man who lay with his daughter-in-law, and his daughter-in-law with whom he lay; a man who lay with a male as one lies with a woman, and the male with whom he lay; a man who married a woman and her mother, and the woman and mother whom he married; a man who had carnal relations with a beast, and the beast with whom he had relations; a woman who approached any beast to mate with it, and the beast that she approached; and one who had a ghost or a familiar spirit. The following were to be cut off from their people: one who turned to ghosts or familiar spirits; a man who married his sister, and the sister whom he married; and a man who lay with a woman in her infirmity, and the woman with whom he lay. The following were to die childless: a man who uncovered the nakedness of his aunt, and the aunt whose nakedness he uncovered; and a man who married his brother’s wife, and the brother’s wife whom he married. God then enjoined the Israelites faithfully to observe all God’s laws, lest the Promised Land spew them out. For it was because the land’s former inhabitants did all these things that God dispossessed them. God designated the Israelites as holy to God, for God is holy, and God had set the Israelites apart from other peoples to be God’s.
Hebrew and English Text
Hear the parshah chanted
Commentary from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University (Conservative)
Commentary from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (Conservative)
Commentary by the Union for Reform Judaism (Reform)
Commentaries from Project Genesis (Orthodox)
Commentaries from Chabad.org (Orthodox)
Commentaries from Aish HaTorah (Orthodox)
Commentaries from the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation (Reconstructionist)
Commentaries from My Jewish Learning (trans-denominational)