Parashat Ki Tetze - Fifth Aliyah
Read the biblical text and try to understand it on your own, before reading the commentary.
Boundaries of property and boundaries of a bond
The aliyah opens with two laws concerning eating from another person’s property. When a person comes into his fellow’s vineyard, the Torah allows him to eat grapes to satiety, but forbids him to put any of them into a vessel and take them with him. So too in his fellow’s standing grain: one may pluck ears by hand, but one may not raise a sickle over the standing grain. That is, there is room for immediate and limited eating, but the permission must not be turned into an orderly taking of someone else’s property.
From here the Torah moves to the laws of divorce. If a man takes a wife and afterward sends her away from his house, the process is carried out by means of a “sefer keritut” (a bill of severance, 24:1) that is placed in her hand. After she has left his house she may become another man’s wife.
If the second marriage also ends, whether by divorce or by the death of the second man, the Torah forbids the first husband to take her back as a wife after she has been married to another. The Torah also ties this prohibition to guarding the land that is given to Israel as an inheritance.
Insights from the aliyah
It is permitted to benefit, it is forbidden to turn a permission into exploitation
In the vineyard and in the standing grain the line is very fine. A person may take for an immediate need, but the moment he begins to gather into a vessel or to use a sickle, he has already crossed the line between limited use and taking over property that is not his.
Satiety is the stopping point
The Torah does not describe taking without limit. The purpose is to satisfy a need, not to create a stock. On the level of the idea, there is a great difference between taking what you need and taking everything you can.
The hand is permitted where the tool is forbidden
In the vineyard the vessel marks accumulation, and in the standing grain the sickle marks actual harvesting. The hand keeps the act at a human and limited size. This creates a powerful picture of restraint within a permission.
A bill of severance creates a clear separation
When a marriage bond ends, the Torah describes an act that makes clear that the previous bond has been cut. Even in emotional and complicated situations there is importance to a clear framework, and not to a vague state in which a person does not know whether the bond has truly ended.
Not every bond that has ended can go back
After the woman has married another man, the first husband cannot simply restore the previous situation. There are transitions in life that change reality deeply, and therefore it is not always possible to return to the starting point as though nothing had happened.
Two different units, and a shared principle of boundaries
At the beginning of the aliyah the subject is boundaries of property, and later on boundaries of the marriage bond. In both places the Torah defines when a person may act and when he must stop. Freedom is not cancelled, but it is given a framework.
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