Benjamin Cohen – Year 8

Ilan Meshel – Year 8

Ki Teitsei

Seventy-four of the Torah’s 613 commandments are in this week’s Parashah, Ki Teitsei. These include laws of the beautiful captive; inheritance rights of the firstborn; the wayward and rebellious child; burial and dignity of the dead; returning a lost object; sending away the mother bird before taking her young; the duty to erect a safety fence around the roof of one’s home, and the various forms of kil’ayim (forbidden plant and animal hybrids).

In the case where one encounters two individuals, one of them loading an animal and the other one unloading the animal, it is a greater mitsvah to help with the unloading first in order to relieve the animal of its burden. There is an exception: If an individual dislikes the person who is loading the animal, he is obligated to help that man first in order to eliminate his hatred in his heart and he may actually come to like his fellow man. In life, if one dislikes another, they should try to do something good for that person, in turn, getting to like the person.

The parashah concludes with the command to remember the evil which Amalek committed against the Israelites in attacking them when leaving their enslavement in Mitsrayim. Centuries after this incident, another Amalekite, Haman, tried to wipe out all the Jews, as we learn in the Purim story.

Seeing as it has been such a long time since the Torah told us to “remember the evil” that Amalek brought upon us, we can ask the question – “Is it still valid today? How long do we hold a grudge and/or act upon it?”