Aspiring To Holiness: Ki Teitze
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
September 13, 2019
Years ago, someone asked me if I thought it was important to add God’s name—God’s signature as it were—to the moral laws from the Bible that we preach and (hopefully) practice. Why is it important to say that these laws come from God? Why can’t we just rely on our good senses? Don’t we all—or at least most of us—have a pretty good idea of the difference between right and wrong, between good and bad?
DNA research has demonstrated that the sense of right and wrong is in fact deeply embedded within us. Our survival as members of a social pack—the human race and the particular community to which we belong—depends not only on our physical strength, but also on our being fair and just with one another. Without these basic traits, society is in danger of disintegration, and our chances of survival diminish considerably. Human evolution has thus incorporated these qualities into our genome, inserting a built-in moral code into every single cell of our physical being.
That there is truth in this discovery is almost self-evident. Even young children show empathy and consideration, long even before they are taught to think for themselves, before they learn to share and say please, may I, and thank you. And no one can deny the love that shines from a baby’s face and eyes even before they can form the words “Mama” and “Dada.” A video that went viral on the internet just the other day shows two boys, no more than toddlers actually, seeing each other on the street and running towards one another with arms spread wide for a warm hug. If you’ve seen the video, you know of course, that the most moving thing about these two boys is that one of them is white and the other, black.
What a lesson these two boys can teach the rest of us, so-called “grownups!” Not a bit of racism or fear in their open feelings—in their obvious affection—for each other!
One of the most meaningful songs from the 1949 Rogers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific is “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught.” Racism, the song teaches us, is “not born in you! It happens after you’re born….” As controversial as this message was when the show first opened, its bitter lesson is tragically still true today.
Xenophobia—fear of strangers—is a learned trait. It’s a lesson we imbibe from early on, through stories, fables, jokes and even through religious training. We observe others and mimic their behavior, then pass it on to the next generation.
Faith and trust are established by subtle signals that we learn to recognize through eye contact, body language, even by the clothes we wear. The same is true for mistrust and fear. We don’t even take the time to analyze what elicits these responses within us; we just react. We avoid eye contact; we cross to the other side of street; we dodge accidental meetings.
Not everything we learn is taught to us in school. We learn from the way our parents hold on tightly to our hand, or conversely, when they let us run free. Without our noticing it, we are bombarded by messages from the media; from the news we read; from the shows we watch; and even from the ads and commercials that fill open spaces and empty moments in our lives.
Sadly, we don’t remain the innocent, free and trusting children that we remember from years ago. As we grow and age, many aspects of our humanity are transformed. This is true not only for our bodies, but also our emotions. The needs with which each of us is born, turn into obsessions. Cravings become addictions. Emotions become passions. In time, if left unchecked, these features acquire ever-greater power over us and begin to control our behavior. How else explain the conduct we hear about every day—the insatiable hunger for power, the greed and lust that turn some of us into virtual monsters?
Of course, there are laws that forbid such behavior, but all too often we learn how to disregard these, how to hide what has become a second, hidden, nature behind a civilized and even respectable façade. Additionally, laws change. As civilizations rise and fall, as cultures and governments change, so do many of our customs. In many times and places, activities that today are considered shameful, and even vile, were once deemed acceptable and proper.
That’s why the Torah’s laws are ascribed to a source that is immutable and above change. Through the eons, customs come and go; but the moral code established by the Torah can only evolve, never to suffer the fate of other ancient codes, never to be relegated to history books and museums.
There is a purpose to the Torah’s laws—they are not arbitrary or random. Meant to control our appetites and desires, they enable us to be in charge rather than become slaves to our passions and appetites.
The laws in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitze (“When you go out,” Deuteronomy 21:10—25:19) are meant to regulate “ordinary” life, not our relationships with God, but rather with the world around us. Among others, this portion contains laws that pertain to conflict and war, to family relationships, and to business dealings. While some of these laws seem primitive and obsolete, that is because the society for which they were meant was so very different from our own. And yet the intent behind these commandments is the same as laws which regulate our daily behavior today. Human passions were the same then as they are today. Envy and jealousy, love and lust, frustration, the tendency to take more than is fairly ours—these have not changed over the eons. Back in the dawn of humanity they led to despicable behavior just as they still do today.
Embedded within our DNA, our passions and emotions can turn into insatiable masters that govern who we are and what we do. Controlling them so that they do not—that is the purpose of the timeless laws of Ki Teitze.
The fresh innocence of childhood, the simplicity of young friendship, the blush of first love—these fade as we grow. Yet we do not have to resort to the base instincts that are also part of who we are. The Torah urges us to rise above these, to reach towards a goal that is more than animal—towards a state of being that we call holiness, towards God.
And that was my answer was to the person who had asked me his question so long ago. It’s important to attach God’s name to the commandments because they come from a higher source than any human being, and because they train us to rise above the lowest common denominator to which so many of us fall, and aspire to holiness instead.
© 2019 by Boaz D. Heilman
