In this week's Parsha we read about the kosher and non-kosher animals. The Torah gives us guidelines for the signs that an animal requires in order to be deemed kosher, mainly that they have split hooves and chew their cud. The Torah goes into further detail and spells out the four animals that exist which have only one of the impure signs. These animals are obviously impure because they don't have both signs for being kosher, but it seems somewhat superfluous that the Torah spells this out. Furthermore when listing each of these four animals it states by each one the pure sign it has and then the impure sign it has and tells us we should not eat them. 

The Kli Yakar wonders why does the Torah need to spell out the pure sign that each of these animals have, isn't it enough to just tell us the impure sign it has? He asks further that when the Torah tells us the pure sign it has it tells the pure sign before telling us the impure sign. This seems a bit counterintuitive.

The Kil Yakar explains that the sign of purity which is stated in the verse isn't a "sign of purity" it is in fact a sign of severe impurity. He explains that as the Midrash tells us about the pig which is the only animal that has split hooves yet does not chew its cud, sticks out its hooves in order to appear "kosher" when in fact inside (the way it digests its food) it is impure. The Kli Yakar explains that the three other animals (which don't have split hooves but do chew their cud) use the one sign of purity to give the impression that they are kosher when they really are not. This is why when the Torah states that they have one pure sign and one impure sign, the presence of the "pure" sign actually makes them "more" impure. They are not only impure but they pretend to be pure. This, Kil Yakar says, is worse than someone who is impure and doesn't try to convince people that he is pure.

When a person eats from one of these specific animals he ingrains in himself this trait of dishonesty pretending to be pure when he is in fact impure. 

May these words be a zechus for a refuah shelaima for Miriam bas Gittel. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Heath