This week’s double-parashah is the hinge point in the book of Vayikra, between the letter of the law, and something bigger, more amorphous and more difficult - we could call it the spirit of the law, or we could call it kedushah, “holiness”.
Up to this point, Vayikra has fulfilled its rabbinic name, Torat Cohanim (Torah of the Priests). But from our verse onwards, the focus switches to bein adam l’chavero – relationships between human beings.
Rashi says that “you shall be holy” means distance from sexual wrongdoing, which may fit with the rest of the parashah. However the Ramban differs, first broadening Rashi’s focus from sexual wrongdoing to all kinds of things that we should distance ourselves from - such as over-indulgence in food and bad speech. The word for distancing ourselves is perushim, which is the Hebrew for Pharisees. This is us – Judaism today has evolved from Pharisaic Judaism.
The Ramban continues: “because the Torah permits sex within marriage and shows us how to have kosher wine and meat, a desirous person could find a place to be addicted to sex with their spouse or to have many wives [this was before the rabbinic enactment against polygamy], or to be among the guzzlers of wine and the gluttons of meat. They will speak as they please about all the vulgarities, the prohibition of which is not mentioned in the Torah. And behold, they would be a naval birshut haTorah”.
This phrase is often translated as “scoundrel with the permission of the Torah”, but colleagues have come up with the following brilliant translations: “pious degenerate”, “Torah twister”, “legally corrupt”, “Torah-sanctioned bandit”, “frum but still a shnook” and my favourite, “lawful but awful”. The late American-Israeli Rabbi Aharon Lichenstein also had a great translation: “glatt kosher hedonist”.
The Torah scholar Aviva Zornberg describes Ramban's comment as “the aspiration to go beyond the letter of the law”. You can keep the Torah to the letter, but beyond this is a grey area, in which you can either be lawful but awful, or you can aspire to something better. “In the end”, Zornberg says, “the sinews of the law do not provide sufficient nurture for the spiritual life”. “Kedoshim tihyu” (19:2) is the call to us Perushim to be even more refined, dignified, thoughtful and… holy, than the law requires.
Rabbi Lorie is rabbinical scholar of Jofa UK
