Next Reading
Torah Reading
Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19
Haftarah
Isaiah 54:1-10
In this Torah portion, Moses delivers specific rules about proper family relationships. He continues with laws involving many aspects of daily living, justice, family responsibility, work and sexuality.
Featured Commentary
The Torah's declaration that parents are not responsible for the sins of their children (and vice versa) is a gem of modern parenting advice.
Moses delivers the rules for mating in wartime and what to do when we realize we’ve fallen out of love.
Miriam's skin condition and the war with Amalek, Amnon and Moab are all examples of memory.
Parashat Ki Teitzei contains numerous examples of how we should structure and categorize our decisions and their consequences.
Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson
The commandment to remove a corpse from the stake on which it is impaled teaches us the importance of respecting the holiness of the body.
The reward of long life for the seemingly simple commandment of shooing away a mother bird before taking her young teaches us that no act is trivial.
How often do we punish individuals before addressing the ills of our social structures?
We need to stop holding children of intermarriage responsible for decisions their parents made.
We are responsible for our actions, our property, and any objects of danger we witness in the world.
The many commandments in Judaism relating to remembering both positive and negative experiences motivate us to work towards redemption.
Tough love from the Torah, and the rabbis' attempts to mitigate it.
Our decisions to ignore or respond to members of our communities who are in danger determine the justice and morality of our society.
Our society is judged on the basis of how we treat our most vulnerable members.
By linking the incident of the female prisoner of war to the hated wife and rebellious child, Rashi encourages us to consider the consequences of treating others as objects.
The laws regarding the purity of the Tabernacle and the purity of military camps remind us to ensure the sanctity of all of our dwelling places.
We aren’t expected to pull ourselves up without help.
Israel, likened to a barren woman, is promised countless children.
Moses enumerates many laws that relate to topics of family relationships, interpersonal ethics, forbidden mixtures, and sexuality.
