The 19th chapter of Vajikra with which our Parcia begins is one of the supreme statements of the ethics of the Torah.

It's about the right, the good and the holy.

And it contains some of Judaism's greatest moral commands.

You shall love, your neighbor as yourself.

And let the stranger who lives among you be like the native born, love him as yourself for you

were strangers in Egypt. But the chapter is also surpassingly strange. It contains what looks like a

random jumble of commands, many of which have nothing whatsoever to do with ethics and only

the most tenuous connection with holiness.

Don't mate different kinds of animals. Don't plant your field with two kinds of seed. Don't wear

clothing woven of two kinds of material. Don't eat any meat with the blood still in it. Don't practice

divination or sorcery, don't cut the hair

at the sides of your head, or clip the edges of your beard, and so on. What of these to do with

the right, the good and the holy? To understand this, we have to engage in an enormous leap of insight

into the unique moral, social, spiritual vision of the Torah,

so unlike anything we find elsewhere.

The West has had many attempts at defining a moral system.

Some focused on rationality, others on emotions like sympathy and empathy.

For some, the central principle was service to the state.

For others, the principle of duty, for others still, the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

They are all forms of moral simplicity. Judaism insists on the opposite. Mor moral complexity. The moral life isn't easy. Sometimes

duties or loyalties clash. Sometimes reason says one thing, emotion another. More fundamentally,

Judaism identified three distinct moral sensibilities,

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