Scrollers Preview - Parashat Ki Tetzei 2015

Our parasha this week includes a collection of ethical laws regarding individuals, families, and neighbors, and how we are supposed to treat each other. There are also laws on treatment of animals. Dignity is the pervasive theme; although, we may not agree that all of these laws truly preserve human dignity in the ways we would want.

Here are some examples of laws in this parasha:

• What to do when you take a woman captive during war and you want to marry her – let her grieve, then you can marry her. If you don’t want her after a while, you can’t sell her as a slave but must release her.

• What to do with a defiant son – if his parents have put in a good faith effort as changing his ways and he resists, they bring him to the elders, and the community stones him to death.

• Do not ignore your fellow’s stray animal. Return it to him, or if you don’t know to whom it belongs, take care of it until the owner comes to claim it.

• Don’t muzzle an ox who is threshing a field of grain.

• You can take grapes off the vine or ears of corn from a field that you are walking through, but only what you can carry and eat immediately.

• Laws regarding a man who doesn’t like his wife anymore and accuses her of not having been a virgin when they married.

• Laws regarding the rape of an engaged woman if the rape occurs in a town or an open field. Laws regarding the rape of a virgin woman who is not engaged.

• Laws regarding leaving produce in the field for the stranger, widow and orphan.

On this parasha, the medieval commentator Nachmanides explores the question of the purpose of doing the mitzvoth. Does our observance of the commandments serve God in any way that actually benefits the Holy One? Are the commandments meant to bring us some kind of reward? Do the mitzvoth change us? Are they here to cultivate certain qualities in ourselves, or are they only important as a way to show our devotion to God?

Scrollers Preview - Parshat Re'eh 2015

Parashat Re’eh covers a wide-ranging set of laws and rules for the Israelites once they enter the land. First, we are told that the people will pronounce words of blessing and of curses from the top of two mountains when they cross over the Jordan river into the land.

Then we have laws that reflect main principles of Deuteronomy – strict monotheism and the centralization of worship in one location where God will cause God’s name to dwell.

We are told to destroy all sites where idolators used to worship (those idolators whom we have already conquered and dispossessed). According to Deuteronomy, our people up until now have worshiped God at various places. When they enter the Land they are only allowed to worship God at one central location where God will choose to “establish His name.” Because many people will live a significant distance away from this place, the laws about slaughtering for meat are being amended. You no longer have to bring every domestic animal you want to eat to the sanctuary first for slaughter. But you must not eat the blood – pour it out on the ground like water. Because “the blood is the life.”

We are warned to protect ourselves from seduction into worshiping other gods by false prophets, dream-interpreters, and even our own family members. God is testing our loyalty through them. They must be put to death. If a town has turned away from God, we need to kill all the inhabitants and destroy the town.

Along the same theme of setting ourselves apart from other peoples, we then have laws of mourning and of kashrut. We are told not to follow the ways of the other peoples, because we are a consecrated people “am kadosh.”

The next section of laws deals more with how we are to treat the poor in our midst. Every seventh year all debts are remitted. We are commanded to help our needy kinsman by giving and loaning to him readily. Included here are laws of indentured servitude and slavery. A postscript tells us to sacrifice all male firstlings. But if it has a defect, you do not sacrifice it but eat it in your settlement – but remember again to pour out the blood first.

Lastly, we have the laws of the Passover sacrifice, of Shavuot and Sukkot, the three pilgrimage festivals, and we are commanded to rejoice!

One of the questions I have this year is about the opening of the parasha – How are we to discern between blessing and curse? Is it so simple to distinguish between these phenomena in our lives?

I also want to spend some time on the section that deals with the poor in our midst. I’ll bring you a section of Talmud that I studied this summer that riffs on the verse in our parasha which says that we must provide “sufficient for his need,” meaning the need of the poor person. The rabbis discuss at length what “sufficient” actually means, and whether to use an objective or subjective standard for determining this.