Parashat Ki Tetze, Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19

This Parasha has been generously sponsored by Lorne Opler in honour of Alan Opler.

What happens when experience clashes with the words of the Torah?

One of my most vivid memories from Hebrew School days is reading the words at the beginning of Deuteronomy chapter 22 regarding caring for animals. It was the attention to the animals' wellbeing that stirred my 12 year-old heart. More than the lost or injured animals, I recall the instructions regarding the mother bird:

If, along the road, 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. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life.

Deuteronomy 22:6-7

Reading the portion as an adult, I saw this was only a small section in a long list of instructions dealing with social welfare. In order for a society to function, people must care for each other. In building a house, we are instructed to make sure there is a parapet, a railing for protection, so people will not fall from the roof. We are guided in caring for the weaker members of society and even in treating our animals. Society is judged by how we treat the weakest among us.

It would be lovely to stop there but reading Ki Tetze as an adult can be troubling. The punishment for a rebellious child, the treatment of a woman captured in war, dealing with the betrothed woman who is raped, the status of an illegitimate child, as well as other examples in this Torah portion – these situations and the ways they are handled often seem like affronts to our modern sensibilities.

Struggling with words of Torah that strike us as unfair has a long history in our tradition. Sometimes we face a more difficult obstacle: What happens when experience clashes with the words of the Torah? One of the most famous examples of such an obstacle is based on the passage in Ki Tetze dealing with the mother bird. (A detailed analysis of this passage may be found in a previous posting.)

The promise of longevity in the story of the mother bird led a leading Talmudic rabbi, Elisha ben Abuyah, to question his beliefs after he watched a young boy sent by his father climb a tree to retrieve some eggs. The child did as he was told, fulfilling the mitzvah to honour your parents, which promises longevity, a mitzvah found in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:12). In addition, the boy shooed away the mother bird, fulfilling the commandment in Ki Tetze that promises the fullness of years: Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life. Yet the child fell out of the tree and died; so much for the promise of long life. How could this innocent, caring lad, fulfilling a commandment, be denied what is promised in our holiest book? Having no answer, Elisha ben Abuyah lost his faith.

We have all experienced situations where reality contradicts our beliefs and tests our faith. The situation may not have been as dramatic as that witnessed by Elisha ben Abuyah, but there are times in life that we know something is unfair or unjust.

The seemingly arbitrary nature of justice is raised in the book of Job. In rabbinic times, the Talmudic sages placed this fundamental question in the mouth of our greatest leader:

Moses said before God: Ruler of the Universe, why is it that there are righteous people who are well off and righteous people who are in adversity, and wicked people who are well off and wicked people who are in adversity?

Berachot 7a

Judaism acknowledges that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. There is much in our tradition about such injustice, although what we most often encounter in response is a reaffirmation of belief in God.

What we find in our texts plays out today as well. Interestingly, it was Elisha ben Abuyah who rejected God, and not the father who had actually suffered the loss. Elisha is the bystander who is outraged with the unfairness of what he has witnessed.

Often, not always – but often enough, in text and in life we find that difficulty strengthens faith. Adversity and tragedy become a new avenue for dialogue with the Divine.

This should not be taken to mean that suffering is created by God. Rather, it is an opportunity to approach God. Suffering is one dimension of life, without which life is incomplete. It is always amazing how individuals bear what outsiders consider unbearable.

In our society we avoid and even hide suffering until a catastrophe comes along ripping away the covers from what we hoped would remain hidden.

What is the proper response to tragedy, pain, and sorrow? It could very well be loss of faith as in the case of Elisha ben Abuyah. Indeed, suffering is the only cause of loss of faith mentioned in the Talmud.

But the more common Jewish response is that suffering calls for a human response.

By utilizing tragedy and suffering as a catalyst for active moral renewal, the Judaic tradition prevents political powerlessness from creating feelings of personal impotence and loss of self esteem. If events in the larger world are unpredictable, if the nation is subject to the violence and whims of foreign rulers, the rabbinic mind does not fall victim to despair, disillusionment, and escapism, but rather focuses on the personal and the communal as the framework to contain its activist dignity.

Rabbi David Hartman, Suffering in Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought, p. 944 (Arthur A. Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr, ed.)

We are God's instruments in this world. The misfortune of others should prompt us to take our outrage, our righteous anger, and channel it into endeavors for compassion, justice, social welfare, and tikkun olam. Both on the communal level as advocated in Ki Tetze, and on the individual level when there is dissonance between reality and sacred teachings it is a call to action.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Michal Shekel