Ki Teitzei
SERMON Parashat Ki Teitzei September 13, 2024
Rabbi David Edleson Temple Sinai South Burlington, Vermont
This week’s Torah portion has what is among the most important commandments in the entire Torah. We know that the Torah is deeply concerned with communal stability, good relations, and health. It deals with real world issues. There are elaborate lengthy passages describing how to deal with public health outbreaks, and about how people should handle disputes, but this one might contribute more than any of them to the overall wellbeing of the Israelites as they wandered through the desert:
וְיָד֙ תִּהְיֶ֣ה לְךָ֔ מִח֖וּץ לַֽמַּחֲנֶ֑ה וְיָצָ֥אתָ שָּׁ֖מָּה חֽוּץ׃
וְיָתֵ֛ד תִּהְיֶ֥ה לְךָ֖ עַל־אֲזֵנֶ֑ךָ וְהָיָה֙ בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ֣ ח֔וּץ וְחָפַרְתָּ֣ה בָ֔הּ וְשַׁבְתָּ֖ וְכִסִּ֥יתָ אֶת־צֵאָתֶֽךָ׃
Further, there shall be an area for you outside the camp, where you may relieve yourself. With your gear you shall have a shovel, and when you have squatted you shall dig a hole with it and cover up your excrement.
Wise words. Holy words.
Pursue Justice. Love your neighbor as yourself. Go over there and cover it up.
If you were in the desert with the Israelites, which of those would you rank most highly?
This week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitzei is somewhat ragtag collection of laws like the one I just read.
Last week’s Bar Mitzvah, Noah Westman, in describing laws that seem brutal or outdated listed two from this portion: the prohibition against wear wool-linen blends, and the commandment to stone your child if they are rebellious and harmful in the community.
It also has the clear commandment against turning an escaped slave back over to their owner.
And this commandment: You shall not abuse a needy and destitute laborer, whether a fellow Israelite or a stranger in one of the communities of your land.
And this one: When you reap the harvest in your field and overlook a sheaf in the field, do not turn back to get it; it shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow—in order that your God יהוה may bless you in all your undertakings.
If you’re like me, I always resonate with the lofty idealistic laws in the Torah. We want our religious moral literature to aim for the highest vision of how humans might one day live together. We are always citing those idealistic beautiful passages from the Torah, or from Isaiah.
We want to be pointed toward an ideal, where our sense of right and wrong is fully realized, where justice prevails, and each person sits under their vine or fig tree and no one is made afraid.
But the Torah is so much more complex than that, as is Isaiah. They are full of laws and requirements that are far from what we would call idealistic, far from what see think of as just, or even decent, such as the hope of seeing one’s enemy’s utterly destroyed.
The Torah is trying to take a group of people out of slavery, and in the place of a King or a Pharaoh, place a system of law that is full of compromises, and middle ground mean to make it possible for people with competing ideals and visions can at least live in a stable society. The Torah recognizes that having a stable society with a fair court system, protections for the vulnerable, and the ability to defend itself against attacks as the most important ideals. In the midst of empires rising and falling, civils wars, invasions and worse, Jewish tradition places as high a value on finding middle ground, and having laws that keep society from descending into revolution, chaos and war.
Sometimes our passionate sense of justice, our fierce sense of right can do more harm than we think possible, particularly when our sense of right starts to make us see those who disagree with us as evil, or less than human.
This was a key theme the other night at the “Roots” event at Ira Allen Chapel. Roots is an organization of Israeli settlers and Palestinian residents of the West Bank that has at its core a very simple idea: the need for Israelis and Palestinians to simply meet, talk, listen and see each other as human beings with a story that directly challenges and contradicts the story the other side lives by.
By listening to one another, eating together, people start to realize the other side is just a human, and has a narrative that is powerful and contains truth. It seems a small start, and it certainly won’t lead to a resolution of this conflict anytime soon. Indeed, their work has been made almost impossible by the events of October 7. But making spaces for people who disagree to simply listen to another without interrupting and arguing - just listen - is a very powerful act of justice, more powerful I think than shouting slogans, waving flags, or calling for revolutions.
There was another piece I found powerful at this event. There was absolutely no sense that because you had listened caringly and closely to what someone on the other side said, that you would start to agree with them, that you would exchange your values and beliefs for theirs. It was much simpler, yet more challenging than that - to listen fully and then be together acknowledging how profound different your views, narratives and beliefs are.
One of the main conclusions of the Roots programs has been simple but radical. The neither the Israeli Jews or the Palestinians are going to go away in the foreseeable future, and that both have a strong connection to that land, so in the face of this, the challenge isn’t who is right, but how can we live here together with less suffering?
And isn’t that the most profound question there is? How can we live here together with less suffering? The profound thing here is that instead of yelling at those who have a different view and seeing them as the enemy to be defeated, to argue over right and wrong, this approach is that we first make sure we see one another as human beings with whom we have to find a way to live together however imperfectly.
If we want to live in justice, and each under our vines and figs trees with none making us afraid, then we must start with that most basic of Jewish prayers:
Shema.
And then we must go dig a hole.
Shabbat Shalom
