Ki-Teze: We must stand in the breach and make sure that nobody is left behind

By Rabbi Arik W. Ascherman on September 14, 2005 - י' אלול תשס"ה

Parashat Ki Titze is a collection of mitzvot, many of which demand our sensitivity to those who are at our mercy.  It is all here, economic justice, foreign workers, the sanctity of a home, and even the olive harvest.

We read,

“When you make a loan of any sort of to your neighbor, you must not enter his/her home to seize his/her pledge. You must remain outside, while the man to whom you made the loan brings the pledge out to your.  If s/he is a needy person, you shall not go to sleep in his/her pledge. You must return the pledge at sundown, that s/he may sleep in his/her cloth…”

(Deut. 24:10-13)

The home is essential to a person’s dignity and we do not take from even those who owe us their most basic needs.  It is not even conceivable here that one might foreclose a mortgage and seize the house itself, or demolish it for lack of permit.  Two homes were demolished in Jerusalem on Tuesday, and the world goes on.

“You shall not abuse a needy and destitute laborer, whether a fellow countryperson or a stranger in one of the communities of your land.  You must pay him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets, for he is needy and urgently depends on it.“

(Deut 24:14-15)

The Torah does not even imagine forcing somebody to give up their wages.  Yet, some of those being forced into the Israeli Wisconsin Plan are being ordered to do volunteer work that will force them to give up the part time jobs they have or to accept jobs paying less than minimum wage.

“Parents shall not be put to death for children, nor children be put to death for parents:  a person shall be put to death only for his own crime.” 

(Deut 24: 16)

The country is in an outrage that Israeli organizations would be involved in making fellow Israelis liable for arrest if they step on British soil.  We have all but forgotten the 14 innocent civilians, most of them children, who were murdered when a one-ton bomb was dropped to kill a terrorist and the refusal of our court system to take action.  Activist Sylvia Peterman exchanged letters last year with the well known head of the Council for Child Welfare Dr. Yitzhak Kadman asking why he was not doing anything to prevent making children homeless because their parents built homes without the nearly impossible to get building permits.

“You shall not subvert the rights of the stranger or the fatherless; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pawn.  Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and that the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore do I enjoin you to observe this commandment”

(Deut. 24: 17-18).

Have we entirely forgotten where we come from?

“When you reap the harvest in your field and overlook a sheaf in the field, do not turn back to get it; it shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow-in order that Adonai our God may bless you in all your undertakings.  When you beat down the fruit of your olive trees, do not go over them again, that shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.  When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not pick it over again; that shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow” 

(Deut. 24: 19-21).

The gleanings to be left were not to replace the tithes on behalf of most needy, but to teach us not to free us of the concept that we must hold on to everything that is “ours.”  It is inconceivable in the Torah that, instead of insuring that the most needy have access to other people’s fields, that people would have difficulty accessing their own land because of separation barriers or violent people and security forces unwilling to deal with them.

On Sunday, the Government said all the right things (almost) and made all the necessary promises to the High Court judges in our appeal regarding Palestinian access to their agricultural lands.  On Tuesday, security forces kept the Halaila family and our staff waiting in the sun for an hour or so despite the fact that we were armed with a letter from the legal advisor in the Occupied Territories which had been sent to the security forces as well testifying that the Halaila and Jabur families had the right to access their land.  Their “disputed land” near the settlement of Susya was “disputed” only because settlers had used force to prevent access for two years and now were claiming it was theirs because they were farming it.  Even after the green light was given, it was only for part of the land, while they had to go back and study the maps regarding the remainder.  If we had not been there, things would have been much different.  Last time the Halaila family tried to access their land the ravshatz of the settlement handcuffed them and had them lie on the ground until the police came and arrested them.

This is why, when the warning not to subvert the rights of the stranger is repeated in next weeks portion (Deut. 27: 19), Ibn Ezra tells us that if judges subvert the rights of members of the dominant majority group they will cry out and be heard.  However, nobody hears the cry of the stranger, the orphan or the widow.

This is why the sages expanded the portion’s concluding exhortation not to have differing measures (eifa v’eifa) (Deut. 25:14) to include a prohibition of all double standards. (Ibn Ezra, Rut Raba 1: Kol HaOseh Eleh)  Rashi explains that the recollection of Amalek in the next verse is because a society corrupt from within brings the enemy from without.  (Thanks to RHR member Rabbi Ben Hollander for pointing this out.)

Amalek is singled out from all of our enemies to symbolize that evil, which must rooted out in every generation because he picked on our weakest members who were straggling behind.  (Deut.  25:18).  Our society today is engaging in activities which the Torah does not even conceive of, both towards our fellow citizens and the strangers in our midst.  We must stand in the breach and make sure that nobody is left behind.

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Rabbis for Human Rights recommends that you read these articles in Ki-Teze

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