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This week's mitzvah is a reminder that we don't own our fields, or what grows there.
Lessons for Today
When you reap your harvest in your field and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to fetch it; it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless and for the widow; that Adonai your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. Deut. 24:19
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You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger - It is evident that these laws are not made for the direct purpose of the actual maintenance of the poor. Even the poor man himself has to leave his gleanings, the forgotten sheaf, and the edge of the field from his own field to other poor people! It is clear that, at once at the harvest, at the moment when a person takes home that which Nature and his own hard-work has yielded to him, and puts the proud and far-reaching words "my own" in his mouth, these laws are to remind every member of the Nation, and to demand an act of recognition from him, of the fact that this "my own" includes for everybody the duty of caring for others who are needy... that in God's holy state the care for the poor and the stranger without property is not a matter which is left to the greater or lesser soft-hearted feelings of sympathy... but is raised to a God-given right to the poor, and a God-ordained duty to the owners of property from God.
Rabbi S.R. Hirsch on Vayikra 19:10, Isaac Levy translation
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"Rob not the destitute because he is destitute" (Prov. 22:22) Our Rabbis stated: To what does the text refer? If he is destitute what does he rob from him? Nothing but the gifts of the poor which he is obliged to give by the Torah - Gleanings, Forgotten Sheaf, the Corner and the Poor Man's Tithe.
Midrash Rabbah 5:2
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One of the challenges of writing these weekly articles is the uneven distribution of the Torah's content. Like the Jewish holiday calendar cycle, when it rains, it pours. Some weeks we've struggled to find something to write about (notably in Leviticus), and then this week there is an embarrassment of riches. In the compilations (there are different versions) of the 613 mitzvot arranged according to each parasha, there are many weeks with none listed (Chayei Sarah, Toldot, Vayetze, and others) while this week's parasha of Ki Tetze has the record of 74 different mitzvot!
Last year I wrote about the mitzvah of the sending away of the mother bird. This mitzvah is unusual in that you cannot plan to fulfill it; it requires 'coming by chance' upon a mother bird hovering over her nest. The only other mitzvah in the whole Torah, also found in this week's parasha, that cannot be performed on purpose is forgetting a sheaf of wheat when harvesting one's field. Obviously, if the only way to fulfill this mitzvah is to forget to do something, how can we ever consciously do it?! A story is told in the Tosefta (a second compilation of Oral Law, similar to the Mishnah, but treated with less authority and more as a supplement) of a man who rejoiced when he realized that he had forgotten a sheaf of wheat. When his son questioned him, he answered: "The Holy One has given all the other precepts in the Torah to be observed consciously. But this one is to be unconsciously observed. Were we to [try to] observe this one of our own deliberate freewill before the Holy One, we would have no opportunity of observing it." The text continues, that if God rewards our unconscious, unintentional performance of commandments, how much more merit is there in our thoughtful, deliberate performance of good deeds?!
The point is, while most of the time, we think about how we act, sometimes action requires no thought at all. Unlike other religions, Judaism generally stresses performance over belief; Judaism's motto is 'Deed, not creed.' There is even a rabbinic dictum that supports this: "Mitzvot do not require kavannah (intent)." Most mitzvot simply require a specific action- although there are some exceptions (such as hearing the shofar). But the best example would be prayer. There is no point to prayer (ie. just reciting the words) without kavannah. But these exceptions aside, here we have an extreme example where we cannot even try to have kavannah because if we even think of trying to do this mitzvah, we fail. Only if we forget to do it, can we perform it. Once we forget the sheaf, it becomes the poor's. If we return and retrieve it (after we have realized that we forgot it in the field), we actually are stealing what is already theirs. The Midrash uses the verse from Proverbs (Do not rob the destitute) as its proof text (for after all, if they are poor, how can we steal from them?).
I love the idea represented by this mitzvah, that sometimes, without deliberate action, and even without thinking, we can be of help to others. The specific mitzvah of 'forgetting' in our parashah is about the inadvertent nature of helping others, the Torah also contains additional rules for leaving uncollected portions of the harvest for the poor (Lev. 19:9,10). Samson Raphael Hirsch, founder of modern Orthodoxy, argues that in general, these mitzvot teach us that we are not to rely on our own sympathy or compassion, but to remember that taking care of the poor is a God given duty, and that the poor have God given rights. After all, it would not be a particularly effective solution to welfare if the poor were only taken care of 'when we forget' to collect all our produce. We can (and in fact, must) intentionally leave some of our field to the poor and the disadvantaged too, in the language of the Torah, the trio of the stranger, the orphan and the widow. Our mitzvah, called, Shikh'chah usually appears in a trio with Leket and Peah. Leket is leaving the gleanings when harvesting (think: the book of Ruth); Peah is leaving the corners of the field. (The word Peah is the same word used to refer to the sidelocks of chasidim, who leave the 'corners' of their beard, 'payyot' or in the Yiddish pronunciation, 'payyes').
Lessons for Today
Unlike in the days of the Torah, we should not think that simply 'forgetting to help' will be of any good. Most of us live far from agricultural communities, so one of our challenges living in urban environments is to reconstruct these biblical commandments of Peah, Shikh'chah and Leket that were tied originally to life on the land. What does it mean to leave the 'corners of our field' when we encounter people on the street of downtown Toronto, or consider the recent devastation caused by hurricane Katrina? Today, in our modern food factories, can we find a way to live with these mitzvot? Couldn't produce, often left behind by harvesting machines and not profitable to be hand picked, be collected and delivered to the poor through food banks? More of an effort must be made to distribute perfectly good food that is routinely thrown away from supermarkets and restaurants. I remember reading a recent story of a store that sprayed rat poison on 'yesterday's bread' in its dumpster to render it inedible to discourage the homeless who were scavenging.
When shopping, many grocery stores allow one to easily add a dollar to one's bill that is directed to communal agencies that help the needy in our community. Or we can buy several items and place them in food bank bins that are often in the front of stores. I like to think of the small change in our pockets as our corners. So each week before Shabbat, we empty our change into our Tzedakah box. This week's mitzvah is a reminder that we don't own our fields, or what grows there. Let's not forget!
Shabbat Shalom
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