Repentance and Forgiveness Parsha Shoftim

 

There’s a beautiful Hasidic teaching that says there are five most important mitzvot in the entire Jewish tradition. The first is actually from this week’s portion:

Tamim tihiyeh. Be wholehearted with God. (Deuteronomy 18:13)

Shiviti Adonai. Always place God before you. (Psalms 16:8)

V’ahavta l’reiecha kamocha. Love your neighbor as yourself. (Leviticus 19:18)

B’chol drachecha da’eihu. Wherever you go, recognize God. (Proverbs 3:6)

Hatzneia lechet im Elohecha. Walk humbly with God. (Micah 6:8)

The first letter of each of those teachings — Tov, Shin, Vav, Vet, Heh — spell the Hebrew word, T’shuva, the Jewish concept of Return or Repentance.

This week we begin the month of Elul , the month in which we practice behaviors urging us to return to our holiest selves.

T’shuvah is a step-by-step process of re-engaging with our highest selves, of turning away from negative and destructive tendencies. T’shuvah means embracing that which is good in our nature. T’shuvah is a turning to the virtues of humility, gratitude, generosity, compassion, and loving-kindness.

 The T’shuvah process often begins with a sense of despair, hopelessness, and sadness.  In those moments we feel that we’re forever stuck  and are unable to change the nature, character, or direction of our lives. The story is told of a young Jewish man named Meir, who had strayed from the Jewish faith. He came before Rabbi Israel of Ryzhyn. Rabbi Israel helped him to return to Judaism. A short time later Meir visited with the Rabbi. Rabbi Israel noticed he seemed dejected. “Meir,” my son, “What is troubling you?” asked Rabbi Israel. “If it is your past sins that are bothering you, remember that your repentance made up for everything.” 

Meir replied, “Why should I not be troubled? I keep returning to my old ways over and over. How can I believe that G-d still loves me?” 

Rabbi Israel touched his arm gently and said, “Just as it is our compulsion to sin again and again, so it is G-d’s way and divine compulsion to forgive and pardon again and again.” 

T’shuvah is never easy. It calls for us to be strong of mind, heart, and soul, it calls for us to be willing to suffer failure. We fall, but have the courage to rise and recommit to our struggle -- step-by-step, patiently, one day at a time, one hour at a time, and  one moment at a time. Judaism rejects stagnation, pessimism, and cynicism. Our tradition urges us to overcome those impediments that prevent our personal transformation and the creation of a more hopeful future.

 When successful, T’shuvah enables us to return to our truest selves and overcome the past for the sake of a better future. T’shuvah heals our state of fragmentation and returns us to the person G-d wants us to be. 

 Our parsha for this week contains commandments about our conduct in war. In Deuteronomy 20:19  we read, “When in your war against a city you have to besiege it for a long time to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, for are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city?” 

The 13th-century biblical commentator Ibn Ezra interpreted this verse not as a question, but as a statement: “For the human being is a tree of the field.” Which begs the question, “How is a human being like a tree of the field?” What does Ibn Ezra mean? 

 A gardener removes the excess wood from a tree in order to give the tree space, form and light. This strengthens the flow of nourishment to the central branches and gives the tree balance and beauty.

The process of teshuvah works the same way. T’shuvah is about removing the layers that distract, that entangle and that  confuse us. T’shuvah is about getting rid of those aspects that block out the light of our true Self. T’shuvah is about creating harmony, wholeness and peace within the whole of our being.

Shabbat Shalom

 

 

 

 

The Ox and the Donkey Parsha Ki Tetze

 

There are many reasons we have difficulty relating  to the mitzvot that are given in the Torah. Simply put, most of us grew up in urban areas whereas the mitzvot in the Torah were given to people who lived on farms and worked the land. We city dwellers are quite detached from the source of our food. The farmer gets his eggs from the nest and his milk from the barn. He harvests his wheat, and grinds it into flour from which he makes bread. We buy our milk and eggs from the dairy case and our bread comes packaged on the supermarket shelf. I for one have not had personal experiences with agriculture and therefore find the mitzvot related to agriculture in the Torah often difficult to understand. For example, in this week’s parsha we are told that we are prohibited from yoking together a mule and an ox. Do you know what an “ox” is, and how it differs from a cow, a bull or a steer?  I needed to go to the internet to learn that an ox is any cattle over four years old that is trained to do work. An ox can be a cow or a bull, that is, a female or a male, but most often they are “steer”, which is a castrated bull. Farmers castrate the male cattle to make him less aggressive and more amenable to training. I also learned that the farmer needs to teach the ox how to pull a plow and that oxen work in teams. They are trained by a “teamster” who teaches them to follow five verbal commands.  Did you know oxen can learn to follow basic verbal commands? I surely did not know this.  I also learned that  several teams of oxen are used to pull one plow. And that “oxen” not “oxes” is the plural form of ox.

 

That still leaves open the question -- what is wrong with yoking an ox and a mule together? Why would the Torah prohibit that? Having no personal experience in this area I turned to our Biblical commentators. They offer a number of reasons why the Torah prohibits the yoking together of an ox and a mule. 

 

The anonymous  author of Sefer HaChinuh a   the 13th century book, which systematically discusses the 613 commandments, notes that the ox, an animal that chews its cud and has a cloven hoof, is a kosher animal and the donkey, an animal that does not chew its cud and does not have a split hoof, is not a kosher animal. Therefore, G-d does not want these animals, the “pure” and “the impure” working together. 

 

Sefer Chinuch also points out  that the ox is a stronger animal than the donkey, and better suited to the task of plowing. G-d therefore takes pity on these animals, who both might suffer from being yoked together to pull a plow. The ox, having to share the burden of work with the weaker creature, would have to work harder than were he to be joined by a fellow ox. And the donkey, having to work with his far stronger companion, would exhaust himself trying to keep up. 

 

Sefer Chinuch then delves into more psychological reasons for not plowing with an ox and a mule. The author says that animals prefer their own kind. It is not only “birds of a feather that flock together” but all animals prefer to be with their own species. He goes on to extend this insight to human beings. Two people, he says, who are far apart in their temperaments and opinions should never be appointed to perform a task together. It is simply too difficult to get along, to cooperate, to collaborate,   in completing the job at hand.  Sefer Chinuch writes, “If the Torah was strict about the suffering caused for two different species of animal working together that do not have a thinking mind, the same is certainly true for people, who have a thinking soul with which to understand their Creator."

 

A third reason for this prohibition is the sensitivity we need to show animals. Have you ever noticed that when you see a cow it always seems to be chewing something? The reason is that cows must chew their food twice in order to digest it properly. Cows spend nearly eight hours out of every day chewing their cud. (I did not know that either, having never spent 8 hours around a cow).

 

The farmer would of course feed both animals before they went out to work. But the ox would be chewing all the time, which would lead the donkey to think that the ox got more food than he did, or, alternatively, that the ox was always eating on the job! The donkey would think that this was unfair, that the ox was being treated better than he was, and this would demoralize the donkey.

 

There are 74 commandments in this week’s Torah portion, more than any other week in the year. And there are so many commandments in the Torah as a whole that it can be overwhelming. So it is understandable that we focus on the mitzvot that we can relate to: Love your neighbor as yourself, return a lost object when you find it, pay your worker before the sun sets, help the poor and the needy, for example. We therefore tend to ignore or pass over the mitzvot that we cannot relate to, as the one prohibiting plowing with an ox and a donkey together. It is easy to dismiss them or to think they are irrelevant since tractors have long replaced animals for plowing. Or to think they only apply to farmers and not to us suburbanites. But what we find when we study them is that they do relate to us. This mitzvah teaches us about G-d’s compassion for animals and their feelings. This teaches us that even as we need to be sensitive to the needs and feelings of animals, how much more so do we need to be sensitive and compassionate to the needs and feelings of our fellow human beings. 

Shabbat Shalom