This Torah reading is packed with distinctive mitzvot, from the requirement to send away a mother bird before removing the eggs from her nest to the responsibility to keep our property safe from preventable accidents.
Here is one more: When you make a loan of any sort to your compatriot, you must not enter the house to seize the pledge. You must remain outside, while the party to whom you made the loan brings the pledge out to you. And if they are needy, you shall not go to sleep in their pledge; you must return the pledge at sundown, that they may sleep in their cloth and bless you; and it will be to your merit before the Eternal your God (Deut. 24:10-14).
Of course, this was not “one more” but rather several more instructions – yet we can see that they add up to one thing that is deeply vital to the society the Torah envisions: complete respect for the humanity of a person who has found themself in need of borrowing. The teaching that a lender must not presume to enter someone’s home without permission just because that person is in their debt is ever-current. It is made all the more powerful by the statement that showing this kind of respect earns us merit in the eyes of the One who knows that we are all borrowers, if in different ways.
Wishing you Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller
Ki Teitzei (Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19) Torah Reading Aug. 22, 2026
August 19, 2026 by Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller • D'var Torah, Julie Saxe-Taller
This Torah reading is packed with distinctive mitzvot, from the requirement to send away a mother bird before removing the eggs from her nest to the responsibility to keep our property safe from preventable accidents.
Here is one more: When you make a loan of any sort to your compatriot, you must not enter the house to seize the pledge. You must remain outside, while the party to whom you made the loan brings the pledge out to you. And if they are needy, you shall not go to sleep in their pledge; you must return the pledge at sundown, that they may sleep in their cloth and bless you; and it will be to your merit before the Eternal your God (Deut. 24:10-14).
Of course, this was not “one more” but rather several more instructions – yet we can see that they add up to one thing that is deeply vital to the society the Torah envisions: complete respect for the humanity of a person who has found themself in need of borrowing. The teaching that a lender must not presume to enter someone’s home without permission just because that person is in their debt is ever-current. It is made all the more powerful by the statement that showing this kind of respect earns us merit in the eyes of the One who knows that we are all borrowers, if in different ways.
Wishing you Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller