Parashat Ki Tetze - Sixth Aliyah
Read the biblical text and try to understand it on your own, before reading the commentary.
A home, a livelihood and the dignity of a debtor
The aliyah opens with the law of a man who has taken a new wife. For one year he does not go out with the army and no duty is placed upon him that would take him away from his home. He stays at his home and gladdens his wife. The Torah gives a special place to the beginning of married life, and lets the couple build the bond before the husband is called to heavy public tasks.
From here the Torah moves to guarding a person’s means of living. It is forbidden to take a handmill or an upper millstone as a pledge, because they serve to prepare food. Taking such a basic tool is described as harming life itself, because it damages a person’s ability to sustain himself.
After that comes the severe law of one who steals a person from among his brothers in Israel, exploits him and sells him. The Torah treats this act with extreme severity and demands that the evil be burned out from the midst of Israel.
From here the aliyah moves to the plague of leprosy. The Torah warns to take great care and to act exactly according to the instruction of the priests, the Levites, and it recalls what God did to Miriam on the way when Israel came out of Egypt. The context connects the appearance of the plague with the need for precise discipline and for treating the situation seriously.
At the end of the aliyah the Torah returns to matters of lending and pledges. When a person lends to his fellow, he may not enter the borrower’s house to choose the pledge himself. He must stand outside, and it is the borrower who brings the pledge out to him. If the borrower is poor and needs the pledge for his use at night, it must be returned to him in time so that he can use it. So even inside a system of debt, the Torah protects the dignity and the basic needs of the poor.
Insights from the aliyah
Building a home sometimes comes before public service
The first year of marriage receives a special priority. On the level of the idea, the Torah recognises that a family is not built by itself. A new bond needs time, presence and investment before external responsibility is loaded onto it.
Not everything can be turned into collateral
A handmill and an upper millstone are property, but they are also a means of living. The Torah draws a boundary between legitimate collection of a debt and harm to a person’s ability to sustain himself. Economic power is not a licence to take away a person’s foundation.
Stealing a person is a denial of his selfhood
Kidnapping is especially severe because the person himself becomes an object in someone else’s hand. What is stolen from him is not only property, but freedom, dignity and control over his own life.
Complex situations call for discipline, not improvisation
In the laws of leprosy the Torah directs a person to the priests, the Levites, and to the instructions given to them. The idea that emerges is that when one touches a sensitive and complex field, it is not right to act on feeling alone. There is a system, there are signs, and there is an order that must be respected.
A debtor too remains a person with a private space
The lender is not entitled to enter the borrower’s house and rummage among his possessions. The debt itself does not erase the boundaries of the home or the dignity of the person. This is a strong reminder that economic standing does not cancel privacy.
Returning the pledge to the poor turns collecting a debt into an act of kindness
The debt remains a debt, but the manner of collection changes according to the person’s condition. If the pledge is needed by him for sleep or for a basic need, it is returned in time. The Torah does not cancel the lender’s right, but it demands of him that he also see the distress in front of him.
The whole aliyah deals with restrained power
A husband, a lender, one who holds a pledge, one who has another person in his hand, and the system that handles leprosy, all of them are given limits. The connecting line is that responsibility and power are measured not only by what one is permitted to do, but also by what one chooses not to do, so as not to harm another person.
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