Parashat Kiddushim 5772

The “Holiness Code” is a guide for life of quality and meaning.  The list of rules includes some that are lofty (“You shall rise before the aged and show deference to the old; you shall fear your God:  I am the Eternal” [Leviticus 19:32]) and some that are lowly (“You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead, or incise any marks on yourselves:  I am the Eternal” [19:28].)  Some rules are rational and others impenetrable; all point the way to a life lived in holiness.

One rule intrigues me particularly.  “You shall not falsify measures of length, weight, or capacity.  You shall have an honest balance, honest weights, an honest eifah, and an honest hin,” where an eifah is a unit of dry measure, and a hin a unity of wet measure (19:35-36).  Why is this important, and why repeat the injunction—once in the general, and once in the specific?

Could it matter if a fishmonger puts her thumb on the scales from time to time, or a grocer pinches a bit of flour?  The buyer won’t even notice the difference, and the seller will have a meaningful benefit by the end of the day.

But an unscrupulous seller really does steal.  Even though each theft is slight, the loss becomes substantial over the buyer’s lifetime.  (Perhaps this is why the rule is repeated in our passage—because the dishonesty begins as something minor, but is repeated over and over until it becomes great.)  Buyers and sellers are, by necessity, adversaries.  One wants the price low; the other wants it high.  One wants to maximize quality and quantity; the other wants to reduce them.  But if even buyer and seller can agree to function with a framework of fairness, then the foundation has been lain for a just—and therefore holy—society.