Against Hate Ki Teitse contains more laws than any other parsha in the Torah, and it is possible to be overwhelmed by this embarrass de richesse of detail. One verse, however, stands out by its sheer counter-intuitiveness: Do not despise an Edomite, because he is your brother. Do not despise the Egyptian, because you were a stranger […]
Does Love Conquer All? Our parsha contains more laws than any other. Some of them have generated much study and debate, especially two at the beginning, the law of the captive woman and that of the “stubborn and rebellious son.” There is, however, one law that deserves much more attention than it has generally received, […]
Animal Welfare Ki Teitse is about relationships: between men and women, parents and children, employers and employees, lenders and borrowers. Strikingly, though, it is also about relationships between humans and animals. Descartes thought that animals lacked souls. Therefore you could do with them as you pleased.[1] Judaism does not believe that animals lack souls – “The […]
Social Capital & Fallen Donkeys Many years ago, Elaine and I were being driven to the Catskills, a long-time favorite summer getaway for Jews in New York, and our driver told us the following story. One Friday afternoon, he was making his way to join his family in the Catskills for Shabbat when he saw […]
Two Types of Hate It is by any standards a strange, almost incomprehensible law. Here it is in the form it appears in this week’s parsha: Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey […]
The Limits of Love In a parsha laden with laws, one in particular is full of fascination. Here it is: If a man has two wives, one loved, the other unloved [senuah, literally “hated”], and both the loved and the unloved bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the unloved wife, then when […]
To the Third and Fourth Generations There is, on the face of it, a fundamental contradiction in the Torah. On the one hand we hear, in the passage known as the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, the following words: The Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in loving-kindness and truth … Yet […]
Against Hate Ki Tetzei contains more laws than any other parsha in the Torah, and it is possible to be overwhelmed by this embarrass de richesse of detail. One verse, however, stands out by its sheer counter-intuitiveness: Do not despise an Edomite, because he is your brother. Do not despise the Egyptian, because you were a stranger […]
The Parameters of Justice In Deuteronomy 24, we encounter for the first time the explicit statement of a law of far-reaching significance: Parents shall not be put to death for children, nor children who put to death for parents: a person shall be put to death only for his own crime. (Deut. 24:16) We have […]
Letting Go of Hate Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness… (Martin Luther King) I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once […]
