TORAH PORTION: KI TEITZEI
Parashat Ki Teitzei
August 21, 2021, 13 Elul 5781
Torah: Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19; Triennial 23:8-24:13
Haftarah: Isaiah 54:1-10
In this week's Torah Sparks, you'll find a D'var Torah on the Parashah by Ilana Kurshan called "Gamma Rays and the World to Come", Vered Hollander-Goldfarb poses questions titled "Each Man for Himself?" and Bex Stern Rosenblatt writes about "Forgetting the Bad" in the Haftarah.
D'VAR TORAH
Gamma Rays and the World to Come
Ilana Kurshan

Parashat Ki Teitzei contains one of the largest concentrations of mitzvot in the Torah, including the commandment to send away the mother bird before taking its young. The Torah does not give any reason for this commandment, and while we might assume it is a way of showing compassion to animals, the Talmud cautions against this way of thinking. As the rabbis argue (Mishnah Berachot 5:3), we cannot presume to know the reasons for God’s commandments; we must fulfill them because God commands us to do so, and not speculate further. In rabbinic literature, the commandment to send away the mother bird—described in just two verses in our parashah—becomes an occasion for exploring the inscrutability of God’s justice and the seeming arbitrariness of divine retribution. 

The Talmudic rabbis discuss the details of how this commandment must be performed at great length. The Torah teaches, “If, along the way, you chance upon a bird’s nest in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young” (22:6). The rabbis explain that “chance upon” indicates that this commandment does not apply to domesticated birds kept within the house, but only to birds one happens to come across while outside (Hullin 139a). They specify that even if there is only one egg or one fledgling in the nest, it is still necessary to send away the mother bird. Even if the mother is not sitting on the nest but merely hovering over it, it is necessary to send her away as long as her feathers are touching the eggs or fledglings. The rabbis note that in the next biblical verse, when the Torah says “Send the mother away and take the young for yourself,” the term for “send” is written in a doubled form (shaleach te’shalach), which they interpret as signifying that if the mother bird keeps returning to the nest, it is necessary to send her away repeatedly.

Although the Torah does not give a reason for the commandment to send away the mother bird, it does stipulate the reward for doing so: “Send the mother away and take the young for yourself, in order that you may fare well and have a long life” (22:7). It is rare for the Torah to list a reward for performing a commandment; one of the only other instances is with the commandment to honor one’s father and mother “in order that you may have long life and fare well” (Deuteronomy 5:16). The Talmudic rabbis are troubled by all the cases in which people fulfill these commandments and do not receive the promised reward. On the final page of tractate Hullin (141b), they tell of one such incident: “There was once someone whose father said to him: Climb up to the top of the building and bring me fledglings, and he climbed to the top of the building and sent away the mother bird and took the offspring. But as he returned, he fell and died. Where is the length of days for this one?” How to account for the boy’s death while he was simultaneously fulfilling the two commandments for which the Torah promises long life? 

The rabbis explain that although the Torah promises length of days for fulfilling these commandments, that reward refers not to this world, but to the world to come: “There is no mitzvah in the Torah whose reward is specified alongside it which is not dependent on the resurrection of the dead” (Hullin 141b). They explain that “in order that you may have long life” refers to life in the world that is entirely long, and “that you may fare well” refers to the world that is entirely good. In this world divine justice seems completely arbitrary; bad things are forever happening to good people. But that is only because the world we live in is only part of a larger totality. What we see is not all there is, because there is another realm, the world to come, where justice will be served. This notion may not be very comforting to our secular, this-world-oriented sensibilities, and yet to the rabbis it was very clear that our human perspective is only a fraction of what God perceives. 

On account of our limited human perspective, we know less than we often think we know. We may think we know how much a good person suffers, or how easy life is for someone cruel and uncharitable; and yet none of us can presume to fully know what is going on in other people’s houses, behind closed doors. But as with visible light, which comprises only a fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum, so, too, we can see only a fraction of the realm in which God’s retribution is meted out to humanity. The world to come is like the ultraviolet and gamma rays our eyes cannot detect; we can comprehend it, but we cannot apprehend it. 

The Talmud’s discussion of the mitzvah to send away the mother bird concludes with a reference to the most famous (or infamous) ancient Jewish heretic, Elisha ben Abuya, known in the Talmud as Acher, meaning Other. According to one view, Elisha witnessed this incident of a boy plummeting to his death after sending away the mother bird as per his father’s instructions, and in response he became a heretic. The rabbis explain that he did not know that the Torah’s reward refers to the world to come, and thus he lost faith. In the face of so much injustice in our world, it is sometimes hard to remember that what we see is not all there is. We can never fully understand the workings of divine justice, and perhaps it would be presumptuous to try to do so. May an awareness of our own limited perspective instill in us a deep sense of humility in the face of a world so much larger and more complex than any of us can fully make sense of, or even sense. 
QUESTIONS TO PONDER
Each Man for Himself?
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
 
Text: Devarim 24:16
16“Fathers shall not be put to death for children, nor shall children be put to death for fathers; a person shall be put to death for his own offense.”
 
  • What seems to be the setting in which this mitzvah is intended to be practiced?
  • What is the limit that is established here? Why might we have thought otherwise? Are there situations in which holding parents responsible for their children’s actions seems to make sense?
  • Are there situations in which a generation suffers for the deeds of another generation? If so, why is this rule not applicable in those situations?
  • As you learn the commentaries below, consider how each one views the concept and role of family.
 
Commentary: Rashi Devarim 24:16
Fathers shall not be put to death for children– by the testimony of their children. Should you say it means "for the offense of their children", it would be redundant, for it goes on to state "a person shall be put to death for his own offense."
 
  • Rashi (following the midrash) suggests that family members be prohibited from testifying against one another. What might be the reasons for such a prohibition?
  • How does he refute the possibility that the Torah meant that a father will be punished for the deeds of his child?
 
Commentary: Shadal Devarim 24:16
Fathers shall not be put to death for children - It seems to me that the father should not be taken in exchange for the son, nor the son in exchange for the father, should one of them choose to put his life as ransom for his fellow.
 
  • Why might a person choose to take the place of a family member condemned to death? Why do you think that the Torah would not allow such an arrangement if those involved agreed?
  • Why would a legal system allow for the kind of exchange that Shadal envisions?
 
Commentary: Seforno Devarim 24:16
Fathers shall not be put to death for children - even if the crime involved was insurrection against the king. It is the custom of kings to also execute the family members of rebels to ensure that the surviving relatives of such executed rebels would not form an active opposition to the king.
 
  • According to Seforno, what might be the situation in which putting to death family members would be practiced? Why might the king want the family members of a rebel dead as well?
  • In ancient times the king often functioned as the supreme court (II Sam 15:1-6, I Kings 3.) What conflict could rise, based on Seforno’s reading of this mitzvah?
HAFTARAH
Forgetting the Bad
Bex Stern Rosenblatt

We have a peculiar relationship with memory as Jews. We have experienced a lot of really horrible stuff. Some of what we have experienced collectively has been deeply traumatic - whether it’s when Abraham was called to leave his land, his birthplace, the house of his father, or that time that Joseph’s brothers almost killed him, or when the Egyptians murdered all of our baby boys and then our God murdered their firstborns, or when an entire generation of Israelites was condemned to die by wandering in the desert - and that’s just some of what happens in the Torah. Our story progresses with plenty of large-scale death, destruction, and exile as well as many moments of devastating individual loss and heartbreak. 

As a people, we seem to process all of this by journaling. We “write our way out.” Each of these events is not only chronicled but also retold. We turn our trauma into narrative; we make sense of our suffering through story. As we now know from modern science, each time we believe we are accessing a memory, we are partially rewriting that memory. Our emotions and mental state at the moment we access it can fundamentally change what it is we recall. When we retell these historical moments of trauma today, when we read them from the Torah, we are rewriting them. Nowhere is this more evident than in one of the moments of our greatest triumph, the story of the Exodus from Egypt. As we live through what could have been a deeply traumatic time, we are repeatedly commanded to remember it - to tell it to our children and to turn it into a story. We are given the tools to reshape our reality even as our reality is being shaped for the first time. Fundamentally, we are a story-telling people. We remember, reshape, and retell our stories down the generations, both preserving the core of our identity and allowing it to be restructured in our retellings. 

We can see this principle at work in our haftarah in Isaiah 54:4. In Robert Alter’s translation it reads: 

“Do not fear, for you shall not be shamed,
and you shall not be disgraced, for you shall not be dishonored.
For the shame of your youth you shall forget,
and the dishonor of your widowhood you shall no longer recall.”

We, a people who remember, are being called to forget. Indeed, it is only through forgetting that we can heal from the fear, shame, and disgrace we feel. God is helping us rewrite our story. Ibn Ezra posits that “youth” and “widowhood” here are references respectively to the destruction of the First Temple and the Second Temple. Clearly, we do not forget these destructions. We commemorate them through story. Rather, it is the “shame” and the “dishonor” that we forget. We allow ourselves to access these memories without experiencing them as retraumatizing events. We turn our past into our story that helps us live in the present and prepare for the future. Coming out of the first moments of relief from the pandemic and entering back into what could be a more serious stage, this story-telling ability is not a bad skill to put to use. 
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