Understanding the
Divine Within Us
D’var Torah for
Parashat Ki Teitzei
By Rabbi Boaz D.
Heilman
The titles of this week’s and next week’s portions, Ki Teitzei and Ki Tavo, are often paired to form a linguistic idiom. Appearing frequently both in ancient and
modern Hebrew, the idiom means the everyday business of life, the comings and
goings, the usual—and the exceptional—undertakings of everyday life.
Though no fewer than 74 commandments are listed in Ki Teitzei (Deut. 21:10—25:19), regulating
many aspects of life isn’t the only concern of the portion. This isn’t merely yet
another a legal code. Ki Teitzei isn’t only about law, as
important as that is in itself. The loftier goal of the portion is to make us
think beyond what is right and wrong. It’s
about the three W’s: WHY right is right;
WHAT makes something wrong; and finally WHERE—what is the source of all these
laws.
The 74 commandments of Ki
Teitzei have their own logic; they provide a structure for a good and
productive life. Just following them is
good enough to result in a good life. If enough people keep repeating and
practicing these laws on a daily basis, then we have the basis for a stable and
peaceful society. But being human means
that it isn’t quite so simple. It’s part
of human nature also to rebel, to ask why, to retort in cynicism, to behave
badly. And though the majority of us are
content (at least most of the time) to simply obey the law and go about life
without making waves, there are also enough who prefer to upset the cart, to
cause mischief, mayhem—and sometimes, to bring about chaos and destruction.
That’s why Ki Teitzei
opens with the worst of all possible crimes and times: war.
War makes the illegal legal.
War rewards acts that at other times would be considered wrong. War makes the unthinkable, desirable. War unleashes the worst within us and makes
it praiseworthy.
Regulating these most powerful forces is thus the first
order of business of Ki Teitzei.
For forty years, Moses has been instructing the people to
think “different.” He didn’t free us
from slavery to Pharaoh merely to become slaves to another terrifying master. Moses isn’t interested in automatons,
unthinking creatures of obedience, habit and custom. Moses wants his people to think, to reason, to
ask WHY. To be human—even if it means making wrong choices and sometimes failing—is
to exist on a higher plane than any other animal. To exercise choice means that
we become closer to God. To choose right
is nothing short of the exercise of the Divine spirit that’s embedded within
us.
But Ki Teitzei also
teaches us WHAT it is that makes wrong so wrong. Not to feel another person’s
pain, to be inconsiderate of what they might be feeling or going through, is
wrong. Ki Teitzei would have us put ourselves in another person’s shoes
before we judge him or her. True justice,
Moses teaches us, isn’t only about blindly following the law; it’s just as much
about being compassionate and fair, about listening to another person’s
complaint, about knowing what hurts him or her.
It’s about commiserating with the downtrodden.
The example the Torah uses to teach this lesson is the worst
that we human beings are capable of: the
capture and trafficking of women in war.
Tragically, in war women aren’t only the prize that goes to
the victor. As we see in contemporary
headlines, in some cultures the kidnapping and raping of girls and women is an
act of war in itself. Child
abuse—whether using children as a human shield or training them to be
killers—is an act of “holy” war. The
Torah calls that absolutely wrong, even evil.
As a reminder, Ki Teitzei bids
us to remember Amalek. It was the Amalekites,
you might remember, who attacked the weary Israelites not long after they left
Egypt, targeting the weak, the sick, the hopeless and the forlorn at the rear
of the camp. If it’s a mitzvah, a righteous deed, to help the
helpless, it is evil to kill, abuse and enslave them again.
That is the moral north that Ki Teitzei points to.
Everything else, every other direction we might turn to in the coming
and going of life is based on this ethic, on this eternal lesson.
Our responsibility, however, does not stop with the weak among
us. The portion has us evaluate our
relationships with one another—the more powerful as well as the less so. Its lessons extend to the animals we use to
help us in the cultivation of our fields and crops, to the laborers we employ,
and finally to our families and loved ones.
Knowing why we do as we do, knowing what the right and wrong
might be in any situation—these are the foundation of civilization. Upon these two concepts we build our very
lives and culture.
I was once asked if I thought it important to affix God’s
seal of approval to these concepts.
Isn’t it enough to say that these are at the basis of our very humanity
and then to behave accordingly? Must we
add God to the equation?
The answer is no, it isn’t enough. Because deep within each of us also resides
the ability to choose wrong. To be bad
is as human as to be good. We can’t
merely rely on natural instinct in making right choices. It is as natural, as human and, at times, as
instinctive to seek vengeance, to hate, to give in to lust and greed. What Ki Teitzei teaches us is that making the
right choice is activating the powerful image of God within us. It empowers us
to be more than we would normally choose to be.
In asking us to be the best we can, the Torah strengthens us in our
everyday comings and goings, in all facets of our daily lives.
WHERE do these qualities, in which we take such pride, come
from? Are they merely innate, embedded
within our genes and DNA? Ki Teitzei teaches that they actually come
from another and much more powerful source, one that resonates within us, but
which also reaches far beyond our own mortal and limited spheres of existence. These values, which we call holy, come from
God. They apply to the whole universe as
much as to any single one of us. They
are the image of God within us.
© 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman
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