Parashat Ki Teitzei – 5786

Just One Thing After Another

A D’var Torah for Parashat Ki Teitzei
By Rabbi Wendy Love Anderson

Like much of Deuteronomy, Parashat Ki Teitzei has no overarching narrative framework: it presents as a seemingly unconnected string of commandments, with medieval list-makers identifying as many as 74 separate mitzvot in the parashah. Some of these mitzvot seem to stand alone (e.g., the single-verse prohibition in Deut. 22:8 against building a house without a railing around its roof), while others fall into thematic groups (e.g., the subsequent three verses in Deut. 22:9-11, which prohibit sowing vineyards with two kinds of seeds, plowing with two kinds of animals, and wearing garments made of two kinds of threads), but each verse or group of verses ends with an abrupt shift to a new topic – unless we read it through rabbinic eyes. Since rabbinic midrash finds significance in every detail of the Torah, including every transition between verses or subjects, Parashat Ki Teitzei offers fertile ground for exactly the sort of midrashic reading that tries to connect neighboring verses and draw a more general lesson from their juxtaposition.

Probably the most famous midrashic example of this technique (Midrash Tanhuma Ki Teitzei 1 and Devarim Rabbah 6:4) turns the opening passages of Ki Teitzei into a unified story. A man who brings home a beautiful war captive and marries her (Deut. 21:10-14) will soon find himself hating her and seeking to disinherit her children in favor of the children from a beloved wife (Deut. 21:15-17), and as a result the son of the hated wife will become so stubborn and rebellious that his parents must have him executed (Deut. 21:18-21). From here, the midrash explains, we can learn that a transgression leads to another transgression (Avot 4:2). But we can also learn only a little later in the same parashah that a (positive) mitzvah leads to another mitzvah: if you release a mother bird before you take her eggs or young (Deut. 22:6-7), you will be rewarded with good fortune that enables you to build a house with a railing around its roof (Deut. 22:8), plant a vineyard (Deut. 22:9), plow a field (Deut. 22:10), and own nice clothes (Deut. 22:11) to which you will of course apply tzitzit (Deut. 22:12).

Finding a way to link together all these sequential topics feels like a clever literary trick, but this midrash never acknowledges its own carefully chosen topic skips and breaks: there are seven unrelated verses between the sequence of “transgressions” and the sequence of “mitzvot,” and while the Devarim Rabbah version ends with tzitzit, the Tanhuma version tacks on one more verse about taking a wife (Deut. 22:13), then has to hope that none of its readers remember the second half of that verse, in which the husband starts hating his new wife! Perhaps more troubling, though, is the midrash’s implication that we inhabit an inflexible and unforgiving moral universe in which individuals (not to mention their children) are either rewarded or punished in endless sequence, with no possibility of teshuvah or change. Once you’ve made one decision, either positive or negative, that’s it: your fate is sealed. It’s not a great message for the High Holy Days, is it?

A more morally thoughtful application of the same midrashic technique appears in a different midrash later in Tanhuma (Ki Teitzei 8:1) and also in Ruth Rabbah (1:2). Here the focus is on connecting two topics at the end of the parashah, where four verses prohibiting the dishonest use of multiple weights and measures (Deut. 25:13-16) are followed by three verses reminding the Israelites to remember how the Amalekites attacked them and to blot out Amalek’s memory (Deut. 25:17-19). The midrash explains that these events are linked not by individual but by collective decision-making, because widespread dishonesty and cheating generate destructive consequences, just as the Torah’s diatribe against dishonest weights and measures is followed by its reference to the Amalekite attack. Playing on the word middot as both “measures” (in Biblical Hebrew) and “qualities” or “attributes” (in rabbinic Hebrew), the midrash proclaims: “Woe to the generation whose middot are false…. If you see a generation whose middot are false, know that a [hostile] kingdom will attack that generation.”

At first glance, this midrash seems less than satisfying. False measurements have even less to do with Amalek than roof-railings have to do with planting vineyards! But what resonates about the Amalek midrash is its shift in focus from a single individual to an entire generation – including leaders – who have stopped caring about honest transactions. This sentiment reads less as midrash and more as prophetic rebuke: in fact, the midrash cites Micah 6:11: “Shall they be acquitted despite wicked balances?” The sequence at the end of Parashat Ki Teitzei becomes an allusion to the devastating consequences of not a single triggering act, but a broad-ranging societal failure. Injustice empowers Amalek to attack again and again, destroying the weak even when they are not the ones at fault. At the same time, this midrash doesn’t leave its gloomy outcome inevitable: a generation can also collectively decide to improve its middot and change its future into something happier. And isn’t that a more successful High Holy Days message?

During the spiritually reflective month of Elul, we can take this week’s Torah portion as a list – do this, don’t do that – or we can take it as a lesson. A lesson is more useful, especially if that lesson offers us a chance at doing teshuvah, at changing ourselves and the world around us for the better. With assistance from our midrashic tradition, there’s always another Torah connection waiting to be made – but some of them, perhaps, offer better lessons.