At the most fundamental level, Jewish religion is not interested in the world to come, but in the world we inhabit now. The fundamental moral question of Jewish religion is how do we create a society that reflects God’s will for humanity? How we interact with each other each day is the concern of Judaism; morality is meaningless if we do not practice it in our lives.
This week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitze, takes the command of last week, “Justice, justice shall you pursue,” (Deuteronomy 16:20) and shows us how we pursue justice each day. It may seem like a jumble of unrelated laws covering lost property (which must be returned to the owner or held in trust for them), the treatment of women taken prisoner in war (the Hebrew captor must marry them or set them free), wives that are not loved by their husbands (cannot be mistreated and must be divorced and financially compensated), respect for parents, or the obligation to build a guard rail around a roof, shoo a mother bird away from the nest before taking her eggs for food, or leaving some of the harvest for the needy and having honest weights and measures. What all these different laws have in common is legal prohibition against maximizing one’s own interest in favor of treating the more vulnerable members of society fairly. The moral principle underlying this vision is, “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and that your God יהוה redeemed you from there;” (Deuteronomy 24:18). Commenting on this verse, Ramban (14th C. Spain) wrote, “Scripture mentioned the slave for this reason, namely, that you do not pervert the justice due him.” In other words, how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable among us is the measure of society’s morality. This is one reason that throughout history, autocrats and dictators have identified Jews as their enemy. Authoritarians justify the rule of the strong through force. The Jewish people stand on the side of the weak and the vulnerable.
Ki Teitzei, Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19, Parshat Hashavua for Shabbat, August 26, 2023
August 25, 2023 by Dean Kertesz • Drashot
At the most fundamental level, Jewish religion is not interested in the world to come, but in the world we inhabit now. The fundamental moral question of Jewish religion is how do we create a society that reflects God’s will for humanity? How we interact with each other each day is the concern of Judaism; morality is meaningless if we do not practice it in our lives.
This week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitze, takes the command of last week, “Justice, justice shall you pursue,” (Deuteronomy 16:20) and shows us how we pursue justice each day. It may seem like a jumble of unrelated laws covering lost property (which must be returned to the owner or held in trust for them), the treatment of women taken prisoner in war (the Hebrew captor must marry them or set them free), wives that are not loved by their husbands (cannot be mistreated and must be divorced and financially compensated), respect for parents, or the obligation to build a guard rail around a roof, shoo a mother bird away from the nest before taking her eggs for food, or leaving some of the harvest for the needy and having honest weights and measures. What all these different laws have in common is legal prohibition against maximizing one’s own interest in favor of treating the more vulnerable members of society fairly. The moral principle underlying this vision is, “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and that your God יהוה redeemed you from there;” (Deuteronomy 24:18). Commenting on this verse, Ramban (14th C. Spain) wrote, “Scripture mentioned the slave for this reason, namely, that you do not pervert the justice due him.” In other words, how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable among us is the measure of society’s morality. This is one reason that throughout history, autocrats and dictators have identified Jews as their enemy. Authoritarians justify the rule of the strong through force. The Jewish people stand on the side of the weak and the vulnerable.