I have just consulted with various rabbinic sources (i.e., the shul newsletter) to find out what time Ahuva will be lighting candles. Imagine my surprise and delight to discover that this week’s parsha was not just Achrei Mot, but also Kedoshim.  Who knew?

I was immediately reminded of my earlier years, when I was in graduate school, taking a course in Medieval Literature (which was only exceeded by the course in Linguistics for mind-numbing vapidity and boredom).  The professor, some woman named Lillian something who appears in my memory cells as the spitting image of Ruth Bader Ginsburg but probably looked nothing like her, noticing that I was wearing a yarmulka and absenting myself from class on Jewish holidays, suggested that I make use of my knowledge of Jewish lore on my term paper.

Since I was always interested in sin, both theoretical and practical, I finally came up with the idea of contrasting the ways in which certain “Deadly Sins” were treated and portrayed in Christian and Jewish medieval traditions.  On the Christian side, with its tendency towards celibacy and asceticism, examples abounded.  Dante pictured the deadly sins in graphic, almost prurient, detail.  Chaucer’s stories were full of them and people doing them, which is undoubtedly why Chaucer was so popular for a few hundred years, before education went out of fashion.  Many of the Church writings occupied themselves with the sins of the flesh.

I was doing just fine with Christianity.

But the Jews were presenting a problem. My people did not seem to be overly concerned about eating and drinking.  Maybe it was because medieval Jews didn’t have much to eat or drink.  Maybe because there was little in the sources to discourage it.  Procreation is the first commandment.  Who was going to make a case for celibacy?  Eating to satiety is  encouraged, as long as one gives thanks afterward.  Wine is a part of just about every religious ceremony (and not just the priest gets to drink it).  To be sure, my research disclosed occasional tendencies toward asceticism in Jewish medieval writings, but they seemed more influenced by Christian sources than Jewish sources.

Consider the Ramban (no stranger to Christian doctrine–debating it almost cost him his life).  He notes that there is no prohibition against gluttony (one of the Christian Seven Deadly Sins).  Even the ben sorer umoreh, who is accused of eating and drinking to excess, is punished not for that, but for the “actual” crimes of murder and theft he will commit in the future.  And, of course, we are told that punishment for such a crime never occurred.

Before Ramban came to Israel (where he was probably delighted to find something called the Ramban synagogue), he lived in Christian Spain in the 13th century.  He famously participated in the debate with Pablo Christiani (the “as a Jew” of his time) before James I of Aragon, winning the debate and thereby antagonizing enough people that he was confronted with the alternatives of fleeing or dying.  No fool he, he chose escape.  Anyway, while he could not discover any specific prohibition, nothing in his nature or environment led him to the view that Judaism could possibly permit gluttony.

So he came up with a novel concept, or a “naval” concept (bad pun explained in next sentence).  He reads the exhortation in this week’s parsha, “קדשים תהיו כי קדוש אני”–You shall be holy because I am holy– as a prohibition against being a “נבל ברשות התורה.”  It is such a great phrase, “a wretch [or knave, lowlife, ne’er do well, scoundrel, villain, reprobate, scapegrace, louse, cheat, swine, cur, miscreant,] by license of the Torah.”  The Ramban could not find anything explicit in the Torah to prohibit gluttony, or other overindulgences or reprehensible behavior not specifically enumerated, so he takes the positive commandment to be holy, and expands it to include a prohibition against anyone who indulges in permissible activities to excess. He takes a mitzvat aseh–a positive command–and converts it into a mitzvat lo taaseh–a prohibition.  The way to perform the imperative to be holy is to avoid all behavior that is unseemly or disgusting.

My paper expounded at great length on this attempt to introduce a measure of asceticism into a religion that eschewed it.  To be candid, the paper wasn’t that great (I got an A-, higher than I deserved, because Lillian probably felt bad about giving me such a crappy topic).  But the immersion in the Ramban’s concept became part of my central belief and value system.  Yes, one must observe the Torah.  Of course.  But one must observe it in a way that reflects well on yourself, on the Jewish people, and on God.

By the way, the Rambam (Maimonides) dilutes the mitzvah, from my perspective, almost to meaninglessness, holding that it is an overarching, inclusive mitzvah that encompasses all of the commandments, both positive and negative.  If so, and it adds nothing, who needs it?

Another thought:  All of the mitzvos (commands) of the Torah may be framed in one or more of four ways–as a command (always), as a request (sometimes), as a blessing (rarely), and as a promise (also rarely).  It seems to me that קדשים תהיו –the charge to be holy and separate–is the paradigmatic example of a mitzvah that combines all four.  God commands us to be holy, because He is holy.  God requests us to be holy, because He is holy.  God blesses us that we may be holy, because He is holy.  And God promises us that we will be holy, because he is holy.

This all flows from Rashi’s translation “prushim tehiyu”– you must separate yourself from external temptations and bind yourself to the divine.

To be kadosh, one must combine prishut and dveikut, separation from the profane and attachment to the divine.

Now you know what it is.  Go do it!  Shabbat Shalom.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)