By Dan Weiss

Parashat Kedoshim is a very interesting portion of Torah. I always come back to chapters 19 and 20 of Leviticus to get an equal dose of righteous inspiration and horrifying reality. Luckily I know where to go if I want one or the other. Chapter 19 is filled with laws that try to give rights to workers (Thou shalt not oppress thy neighbour, nor rob him; the wages of a hired servant shall not abide with thee all night until the morning. Leviticus 19:13), humanize the other (And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not do him wrong. The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. Leviticus 19:33-34), and help build healthy relationships to the people around you (Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart; thou shalt surely rebuke thy neighbour, and not bear sin because of him. Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD. Leviticus 19:17-18)*. Of course, it isn’t all great inspiring justice stuff, but it is they are the dominant themes in the chapter. In contrast, chapter 20 is almost exclusively dealing with things that if you do them, you will be cut off from the Jewish people and/or bring the death penalty. Most of them have to do with "impure sexual relations", such as: men having penetrative anal sex with another man (Leviticus 20:13), men kanoodling with a woman on her period (Leviticus 20:18), or men or women sleeping with animals (Leviticus 20:15-16). (Talk about heterosexual patriarchy, amirite?). They are both given with the stated meaning of striving toward holiness, one right after the other, but they seem to be coming from different worlds. One, concerned with justice in the public realm and the other, concerned with the policing of one’s private relations. One could spend a long time explaining, giving reasons, and justifying

the second chapter, just as one could expound, praise, and take inspiration from the first. Or one could spend time talking about how the justice seeking measures don’t apply anymore for this reason or that reason, just as one could ignore, protest, or reject the second. But what does it mean to have both within our sacred text?

When thinking about this question, I turn to Rav Soloveitchik. He has this idea that Judaism is a dialectic with no synthesis (see his essay Majesty and Humility). That Jewish life is filled with contradictory and opposing ideas where “the conflict [between them] is final, almost absolute. Only G-d knows how to reconcile [them]; we do not.” We are left to live in the tension and struggle between them. We cannot just throw one out to cure our cognitive dissonance, nor can we just say they are both coming from the same place and there is nothing wrong with either of them. We must accept that they are both part of our tradition, both worthy of study, and both worthy of criticism. And part of living within the tension of conflicting ideas is that your relation between the ideas is always dynamic, in motion. The way you relate to a text is different every time you read it, and that is why we start reading the Torah over every year. Your values may not change, but the way you prioritize those values could change and that affects how you make decisions and relate to the world around you. The life of a Jew is a life of inner struggle. It is easier to live a life of harmony, but it is more rewarding to live within the tension.