In Parshat Kedoshim, meaning “holy,” God tells the Israelites through Moses, “You shall be holy, for I, Hashem your God, am holy.” ¹ God then gives a long list of commandments—about 50 in this Torah portion—to teach the Jews how to be holy. These include many we all know well: prohibitions against idolatry, adultery, and swearing falsely, as well as the famous “You shall love your fellow as yourself.” ²

But other mitzvot given here, unfortunately, tend to go under the radar. One great example is Leviticus 19:35-36:

You shall not falsify measures of length, weight, or capacity. You shall have an honest balance, honest weights, an honest eiphah, and an honest hin ³. I Hashem am your God who freed you from the land of Egypt.

In short, the Torah is telling us to be honest in business, or, as Rambam (Maimonides) put it, “not to commit fraud.” ⁴

Some people might have a mistaken idea that religious practice is fundamentally about personal theology and ritual, that Judaism is something to be done in private, and perhaps publicly limited to the synagogue, but not out in the general world. During the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment movement around the 19th century, the poet Judah Leib Gordon argued in his work “Awake My People” that in order to gain acceptance in European secular society, Jews should leave their religious commitments at home. “This land of Eden is now open to you,” he wrote. ⁵

His poem went on:

To the treasury of the state bring your wealth

Bear your share of its riches and bounty

Be a man in the streets and a Jew at home

A brother to your countryman and a servant to your king. ⁶

Torah study should lead us to believe that this idea is incorrect. Our parshah forces us to ask, “Where does it matter to be a Jew?” Actually, we learn, it matters to be a Jew in the workplace as much as anywhere else—maybe it matters there most of all.

Think about how, as Jews, we’re particularly embarrassed and upset when a fellow Jew, such as Bernie Madoff, makes headlines for being unethical in business. The Talmud, it turns out, is in agreement with this sentiment. Tractate Yoma teaches: 

What are the circumstances that cause a chillul Hashem (desecration of God’s name)? Rav said: For example, in the case of someone like me, since I am an important public figure, if I take meat from a butcher and do not give him money immediately, people are likely to think that I did not mean to pay at all. They would consider me a thief and learn from my behavior that one is permitted to steal. ⁷

So the quintessential chillul Hashem in the Talmud is the mere perception of injustice in the marketplace perpetrated by a Jew. 

That same page of Talmud goes on to place business ethics on the same level as Torah scholarship in terms of how one should love God: 

Abaye said: As it was taught in a baraita that it is stated: “And you shall love the Lord your God,” ⁸ which means that you shall make the name of Heaven beloved. How should one do so? One should do so in that he should read Torah, and learn Mishnah, and serve Torah scholars, and he should be pleasant with people in his business transactions. ⁹

The Talmud then takes it a step further, saying: 

But one who reads Torah, and learns Mishnah, and serves Torah scholars, but his business practices are not done faithfully, and he does not speak pleasantly with other people, what do people say about him? Woe to so-and-so who studied Torah, woe to his father who taught him Torah, woe to his teacher who taught him Torah. ¹⁰

Someone who does pious things but is not honest in business, our tradition clearly teaches, has entirely missed the point.

Additionally, in Tractate Shabbat it is taught that the first question we will be asked at the gates of heaven, before we are asked about Torah study and other virtues, is “Did you conduct business faithfully?” ¹¹

Even before we get to the Talmud, we simply need to look at the poignant words of Isaiah. In exhorting us for our emphasis on ritual while ignoring mitzvot bein adam lachaveiro (interpersonal relationships), Isaiah writes:

“What need have I of all your sacrifices?” says God. “I am sated with burnt offerings of rams, and suet of fatlings, and blood of bulls… When you come to appear before Me,“What need have I of all your sacrifices?” says God. “I am sated with burnt offerings of rams, and suet of fatlings, and blood of bulls… When you come to appear before Me, who asked that of you, to trample My courts?… Learn to do good, devote yourselves to justice [and] aid the wronged; uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow. ¹²

The Medieval commentator Abraham Ibn Ezra found an even richer meaning to the commandment to be honest in business, by taking note ¹³ of both the mitzvah that immediately precedes it, “The strangers who reside with you shall be to you as your citizens; you shall love each one as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” ¹⁴ and the mitzvah that immediately follows it, “I am Hashem your God who freed you from the land of Egypt, ¹⁵” and he observed that these mitzvot are bound together by Judaism’s understanding of the need to pursue justice for the stranger. 

To the Ibn Ezra, it is precisely because of our experience as strangers that we must love each stranger as ourselves and we must be honest in business.  

Believing in the Exodus, then, is not simply an affirmation of a historical fact. It is a theological commitment to emulating a God of justice. That’s why we learn of just weights and measures right after we are commanded to love the stranger; both realms ought to remind us of the God who freed us from Egypt.

Today, as in ancient times, the “stranger” is the most vulnerable to the perversion of justice, especially with regard to their financial security. We must take seriously God’s instructions for being holy people, which, as we are taught in this parshah, are inextricably tied to fairness in business and love and justice for every individual.

Sources

1. Leviticus 19:2
2.  Leviticus 19:18
3.  Eiphah and hin are both measurements of volume.
4.  Mishneh Torah, Negative Mitzvot 271
5. Translation from Michael Stanislawski, “For Whom Do I Toil?: Judah Leib Gordon and the Crisis of Russian Jewry” (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 49-50. https://library.osu.edu/projects/hebrew-lexicon/01205-files/01205204.pdf
6.  ibid.
7.  Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 86a
8.  Deuteronomy 6:5
9.  Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 86a
10.  ibid.
11.  Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a
12.  Isaiah 1:11-17. Other prophets, chief among them Amos, similarly address our emphasis on ritual while ignoring basic care and concern for the other.
13.  Ibn Ezra on Leviticus 19:36:4
14.  Leviticus 19:34
15.  Leviticus 19:36