This Shabbat we are reding two parashot together. Acharey Mot and Kedoshim.

Parashat Kedoshim starts with the verse “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.”

This powerful verse opens Parashat Kedoshim, one of the most profound and sweeping sections of the Torah. It is both a command and a calling: to live lives of holiness—not in isolation, not through asceticism, but in the everyday details of our behavior, relationships, and work.

But what does it mean to be holy? Is it something reserved for rabbis, scholars, or mystics? Is it only found in the synagogues or Yeshivot? Let me share with you a story from Tunisia that might help answer this.

In a small corner of the Jewish quarter lived a quiet shoemaker named Rab Yitzchak. He wasn’t a rabbi, didn’t give shiurim, didn’t lead services. He simply made and repaired shoes. And yet, the entire town referred to him as “the holy shoemaker.”

One day, a visiting rabbi heard this curious title and decided to find out why. He entered the modest workshop, filled with the smell of leather and polish, and saw Reb Yitzchak hunched over, gently stitching a torn boot. “Shalom aleichem,” said the rabbi. “People here call you a holy man. But you’re a shoemaker. What’s holy about that?”

Rab Yitzchak looked up, smiled, and said: “Rabbi, every shoe I repair, I do with kavanah-concentration. I imagine the person who will wear it. Maybe they’re walking to visit a sick friend, to bring tzedakah, to study Torah, or simply to do their job honestly. So, I fix it as if I’m helping them do a mitzvah—because maybe I am. If God calls us to be holy, then surely holiness must be something we can bring into our everyday work—if we do it with the right heart.”

The rabbi stood silently for a long moment. And then he said, “Now I understand.”

Bringing Holiness Down to Earth

Parashat Kedoshim is sometimes called the “heart of the Torah,” because it brings holiness down to earth: We find in this Parasha so many Mitzvot, for example:

• Leave the corners of your field without harvesting them and leave them for the poor.
• Do not lie.
• Do not insult the deaf or place a stumbling block before the blind.
• Love your neighbor as yourself. And so many others!!

Holiness, the Torah teaches, is not separate from daily life—it is daily life, lived with purpose, care, and compassion.

We don’t need to be mystics to be holy. We just need to repair the world, even one shoe at a time.

So the question Parashat Kedoshim asks each of us is not: “Are you holy?”
But rather: “How are you bringing holiness into what you already do?”

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Refael Cohen