Kedoshim, K'doshim, or Qedoshim (—Hebrew for "holy ones," the 14th word, and the first distinctive word, in the parashah) is the 30th weekly Torah portion (, parashah) in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the seventh in the Book of Leviticus. It constitutes Leviticus 19:1–20:27. The parashah tells of the laws of holiness and ethical behavior, repeats the Ten Commandments, and describes penalties for sexual transgressions. The parashah is made up of 3,229 Hebrew letters, 868 Hebrew words, 64 verses, and 109 lines in a Torah Scroll (, Sefer Torah).
Jews generally read it in late April or May. The lunisolar Hebrew calendar contains up to 55 weeks, the exact number varying between 50 in common years and 54 or 55 in leap years. In leap years (for example, 2024), Parashat Kedoshim is read separately. In common years (for example, 2025 and 2026), Parashat Kedoshim is combined with the previous parashah, Acharei Mot, to help achieve the needed number of weekly readings. Some Conservative congregations substitute readings from part of the parashah, Leviticus 19, for the traditional reading of Leviticus 18 in the Yom Kippur Minchah service.See Jules Harlow, editor, Mahzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism). And in the standard Reform High Holidays prayerbook (, machzor), Leviticus 19:1–4, 9–18, and 32–37 are the Torah readings for the afternoon Yom Kippur service.Chaim Stern, editor, Gates of Repentance: The New Union Prayerbook for the Days of Awe (New York: Central Conference of American Rabbis, revised edition 1996), pages 452–55.
Kodashim is the name of the fifth order in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Babylonian Talmud. The term "kedoshim" is sometimes also used to refer to the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, whom some call "kedoshim" because they fulfilled the mitzvah of Kiddush Hashem.
Readings In traditional Sabbath Torah reading, the parashah is divided into seven readings, or , aliyot.See, e.g., Menachem Davis, editor, The Schottenstein Edition Interlinear Chumash: Vayikra/Leviticus (Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications, 2008), pages 129–46.
First reading—Leviticus 19:1–14 In the first reading, God told Moses to tell the Israelites to be holy, for God is holy.. God then explained (in what scholars call "the Holiness Code") how people can be 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 and burn all of the leftovers on the third day. 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.
Second reading—Leviticus 19:15–22 In the second reading, God instructed the Israelites: 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 I am the Lord.. 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 had sexual relations with a slave woman designated for another man had to offer a ram of guilt offering..
Third reading—Leviticus 19:23–32 In the third reading, God instructed the Israelites: 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 gash 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.
Fourth reading—Leviticus 19:33–37 In the fourth reading, God instructed the Israelites: Not to wrong strangers who reside in the land, but to love them as oneself. Not to falsify weights or measures.
Fifth reading—Leviticus 20:1–7 In the fifth reading, 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.
The following were to be cut off from their people (, karet): One who turned to ghosts or familiar spirits.
Sixth reading—Leviticus 20:8–22 In the sixth reading, God told Moses to instruct the Israelites of the following penalties for transgressions.
The following were to be put to death: 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. One who had a ghost or a familiar spirit.
The following were to be cut off from their people (, karet): A man who married his sister, and the sister whom he married. 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. 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..
Seventh reading—Leviticus 20:23–27 In the seventh reading, God made clear that 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..
Readings according to the triennial cycle Jews who read the Torah according to the triennial cycle of Torah reading read the parashah according to a different schedule.See, e.g., Richard Eisenberg, "A Complete Triennial Cycle for Reading the Torah," in Proceedings of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Movement: 1986–1990 (New York: Rabbinical Assembly, 2001), pages 383–418.
In ancient parallels The parashah has parallels in these ancient sources:
Leviticus chapter 20 Leviticus 20:24, as well as Exodus 3:8 and 17, 13:5, and 33:3, Numbers 13:27 and 14:8, and Deuteronomy 6:3, 11:9, 26:9 and 15, 27:3, and 31:20 describe the Land of Israel as a land flowing “with milk and honey.” Similarly, the Middle Egyptian (early second millennium BCE) tale of Sinuhe Palestine described the Land of Israel or, as the Egyptian tale called it, the land of Yaa: "It was a good land called Yaa. Figs were in it and grapes. It had more wine than water. Abundant was its honey, plentiful its oil. All kind of fruit were on its trees. Barley was there and emmer, and no end of cattle of all kinds."Nathan MacDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), page 6.
In inner-biblical interpretation The parashah has parallels or is discussed in these Biblical sources:For more on inner-Biblical interpretation, see, e.g., Benjamin D. Sommer, "Inner-biblical Interpretation," in Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, editors, The Jewish Study Bible, 2nd edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), pages 1835–41.
Leviticus chapter 19 In Leviticus 19:2, God told Moses to tell the Israelites, “You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy.” Professor David P. Wright of Brandeis University counted more than 850 instances of the three-letter Hebrew root denoting holiness (, kdsh) as a verb, noun, or adjective in the Hebrew Bible (, Tanakh).David P. Wright, "Holiness," in David Noel Freedman, editor, Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), volume 3, page 237. Larry Mitchel counted 430 instances of “holy” (, kodesh) as an adjective or noun, 172 instances of the verb “be holy” or “consecrate” (kadash), 115 instances of “holy” (, kadosh) as an adjective, and 11 instances of the adjective “consecrated” or noun “cult prostitute” (, kadesh).Larry A. Mitchel, A Student's Vocabulary for Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1984), pages 4, 9, 12, 49, 78. Wright noted that the Hebrew Bible describes as “holy” God, lesser divine beings, Priests, the Israelite people, Nazirites, Levites, firstborn people, prophets, the Sanctuary, offerings, Sanctuary furnishings, Priestly clothing, property dedicated to the Priests, anointing oil, incense, certain water, the Land of Israel, Heaven, the Sabbath, Festivals, the Jubilee year, certain wars, and the Covenant.David Wright, "Holiness," in Anchor Bible Dictionary, volume 3, pages 237–44.
Leviticus 19:33–34 admonishes the Israelites not to wrong the stranger, “for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (See also Exodus 22:20; 23:9; Deuteronomy 1:16; 10:17–19; 24:14–15 and 17–22; and 27:19.) Similarly, in Amos 3:1, the 8th century BCE prophet Amos anchored his pronouncements in the covenant community's Exodus history, saying, “Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt.” Amy-Jill Levine suggested that Amos used freedom from slavery as the paradigm and template against which he expressed concerns about the covenant community, casting the community in the role of Pharaoh when they transgressed. See Amy-Jill Levine, "The Prophets and the Fall of the North," in The Old Testament: Part II (Springfield, Virginia: The Teaching Company, 2001).
Professors Tamara Cohn Eskenazi of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Tikva Frymer-Kensky of the University of Chicago Divinity School argued that Ruth enacted the love due to the stranger in Leviticus 19:34 when in Moab, Ruth devoted herself to Naomi, a stranger in Moab. Then Boaz provided her counterpart by making possible the inclusion of Ruth the Moabite in the community at Bethlehem.Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Tikva Frymer-Kensky. The JPS Bible Commentary: Ruth (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2011), page xxiii.
Leviticus chapter 20 Leviticus 20:20 addresses God's role in the creation of children. While Leviticus 12:6–8 required a new mother to bring a burnt-offering and a sin-offering, Leviticus 26:9, Deuteronomy 28:11, and Psalm 127:3–5 make clear that having children is a blessing from God; Genesis 15:2 and 1 Samuel 1:5–11 characterize childlessness as a misfortune; and Leviticus 20:20 and Deuteronomy 28:18 threaten childlessness as a punishment.
Leviticus 20:3 announced the judgment that those who gave their children to Molech profaned God's Name. In Amos 2:7, Amos similarly condemned as profaning God's Name fathers and sons who had sex with the same woman—likely exploiting a household servant woman.Gary V. Smith. Hosea, Amos, Micah: The NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2001. Amos grouped these sinners in the same verse along with those who trample the heads of the poor into the dust and those who make the humble walk a twisted course, thereby suggesting more generally that those who take advantage of people in lower social stations profane God's Name.
In early nonrabbinic interpretation