Parshat Acharei Mot - Kedoshim

This week, since this year is not a leap year, we read two torah portions, Acharei-Mot and Kedoshim.  In the second portion, Kedoshim, God directs the Jewish people to be holy, and the rest of the Parsha is a list of the laws which make us holy.  One verse that I would like to discuss (19:11-12) reads, “You shall not steal, and you shall not deny falsely, and you shall not lie to one another.  And you shall not swear falsely by My Name, thereby desecrating the Name of your God – I am the Lord.”  Rashi, the medieval commentator suggests: “If you have stolen, your end will be to deny falsely; and then your end will be to lie; and then your end will be to swear falsely.”
This idea that one negative action will lead to another negative action is prevalent in Jewish thought and moral literature, not just in reference to the effects of stealing.  The idea being, that once you do something that is wrong, you have become desensitized to the inherent negativity of that act.  Initially, one’s ability to sense the wrongness of the behavior acts as a deterrent, but when that deterrent is no longer effective, the boundaries of acceptable behavior have moved for that person. When we habituate ourselves to negative acts, we no longer see them as being negative.  And, when we are habituated to doing negative acts, the human psyche needs to justify that behavior.  Eventually, we start to see the negative act as something positive, thereby negating the possibility of change.  This verse is teaching us the important impact our actions have on ourselves.  We are defined by what we do, therefore we should be careful that we are comfortable with the statement that our actions make about us.  There is a relevant rabbinic statement from Pirkei Avot (4:2), “A mitzvah leads to another mitzvah, and a sin leads to another sin.”  Nothing that we do happens in a vacuum.  This is true with regard to the way in which our actions affect others as well as ourselves.  
It is for this reason why the verse ends with the words, “I am the Lord.”  This phrase repeats itself throughout this week’s Parsha.  Its purpose in almost every case is to remind us that even when no one else sees what we will do, we still need to be honest with ourselves about our actions and their consequences.  In this case, it is often hard to see where we have convinced ourselves (and sometimes others) that what we are doing is right, simply in order to justify the behavior for our own conscience.  Nevertheless, no matter how many other people we fool with those justifications, when we fool ourselves, we end up the loser.