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Ben Kingsley is one of the great actors of our era. His chameleonic ability to take on almost any persona has given us roles as diverse as Gandhi, the quiet but intense accountant Itzak Stern in Schindler’s List, and the raging, unstable gangster Don Logan in Sexy Beast. But unique among these performances — for my money, at least — was his depiction of former Iranian colonel Massoud Amir Behrani in 2003’s House of Sand and Fog.
The film revolves around Behrani’s honest attempt to lift his family from their plight as newly arrived, struggling Iranian immigrants back toward something of the standing they had known in their homeland. He (legally) purchases a home at a county auction, meant as the centerpiece of that rehabilitation. The only problem was that the foreclosure was the result of a simple $500 shortfall by the owner, which she was working to remedy. Both parties were victims of circumstance, and each had a real case as to the rightness of their cause — but here, adherence to the letter of the law led to disaster for all involved.
In Deuteronomy 6:18 the Torah teaches that it is not sufficient to adhere to the letter of the law alone; we are expected to go above and beyond it. We are told to do ha-yashar ve-ha-tov — the right and the good. Classical commentators read these two words as pointing in two directions: the tov, the “good,” as what is good in the eyes of Heaven, and the yashar, the “right” or “straight,” as what is fair and upright in our dealings with other people. The Torah asks for both.
In the House of Sand and Fog case, the “right” was arguably followed — but not the “good.” Had it registered with him, Behrani might have thought differently about taking an emotionally broken woman’s home over a small missed payment. But in his zeal to rebuild his own family’s life, it never did.
So if the Torah wanted us to carry out these laws in a particular way, why didn’t it just say so? Why not rewrite the statutes to reflect what is actually expected, instead of handing us a watered-down version with a general injunction to do better than what’s outlined?
Ramban, commenting on this verse, draws out why this is even necessary. No code, he explains, can spell out every situation a person will face — every transaction, every quarrel, every neighbor. So having given its specific laws, the Torah adds a general instruction: in everything the law did not name, do what is right and good. It is the tradition’s own acknowledgment that the letter of the law, by itself, can never be enough.
But there is something deeper here than necessity. This is the brilliant, interactive nature of Jewish law. Yes, a minimum expectation is set. At the same time, we are asked to participate in the process rather than blindly follow statutes — to think it through on our own, and to contribute, through our own conduct, to the shape of the law itself. A code that specified everything would ask only for our obedience. A law that deliberately stops short asks for something greater: our judgment, our character, our participation. The gap is not a flaw. It is the invitation.
Behrani never saw the invitation. Everyone in that story stood firmly within their rights, and no one stepped into the space the law had left open — the very space that was the point. The law was satisfied, and that was precisely the tragedy. What was right and good sat there the whole time, unclaimed, on every side.
The code we are given was never meant to be the ceiling. It was meant to be the floor we build on. The good life — the right and good one — is lived in the space above it, in everything the law trusted us to figure out on our own.
