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From the Rabbi:
Last week we talked about the process of teshuvah as installing protocols of conscience. Best-case scenario, wow would I like to rule myself? Parshat Ki Teitzei on the other hand isn’t a best-case scenario at all. Quite the contrary, it’s filled with terrible situations in which a person might find themself. Sometimes of our own making, sometimes because of others, and sometimes life is just hard. The Torah gives us prescriptions for how to deal with the most difficult situations life can throw at us. The responsibilities of a battlefield rapist. When a man has two wives, one of which he hates. A child who is a thief, drunkard and glutton. Proper burial of criminals who are executed. A bride suspected of adultery. The child of an adulterous union. Failure to repay a loan. A man who dies childless. Financial care for widows and orphans. And the list goes on and on. Yet at no point does the Torah just say “oh well, you screwed up, you’re out." There’s never something so terrible that the Torah cannot deal with it. There's no escape clause from covenant.
Perhaps the most common (certainly today) and the most familiar example of this dynamic is the mitzvah of divorce. (24:1) “When a man has taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she no longer finds connection in his eyes, because he has found some unseemliness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorce, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.” Divorce is hard, but it shouldn’t be seen as a moral failure nor cause for personal condemnation. There is a mitzvah to do when things have gone wrong. We should not ever judge people in terms of good and bad. Including ourselves. Condemnation is never on the table. Rather we are to compassionately see people who clearly have suffered and are suffering and support them as best we can. Like when we say "Chazak Chazak" when finishing one book of the Torah and starting another, I have had to learn to treat divorce more like a graduation rather than a funeral.
In all of life's difficult situations there is a halachic prescription of how to move forward. It is as if Hashem is saying to us, Don’t worry, no matter how bad it gets, there’s still a way to handle this situation in a Godly manner, “for the Lord thy God walks in the midst of thy camp. (Deut 23:15)" Even in the hardest moments, halacha always gives us a way to “walk with God."
This highlights for us an important aspect of teshuvah, one that comes only after we've installed our conscience: Acceptance of the past and taking steps to rectify the consequences of our actions. Even when we've made choices we now regret, we should not judge ourselves as bad bud rather take practical steps to "purge the evil from within us." Let’s try to see ourselves as God sees us, as responsible gardeners, capable of cleaning up this Earth no matter how big a mess we’ve made of it.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Shlomo
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