Until today

Ki Tavo

Deut. 26:1-29:8

Précis: The parasha contains numerous religious mandates regarding the formation of a civil and moral community (including tithes of first fruits and tithes to support the Levites). The People are promised that if they follow God’s instructions, they will be transformed into a “holy people.” They are further instructed that they have a choice in their own destiny: there are blessings and curses (the “Admonition”), and they must to choose between the two, and take the consequences. The parasha ends with Moses reminding the People about all that God had done for them in bringing them from Egypt, providing sustenance, defeating their foes, and giving them the Land.

Deut. 29:1-5 “Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: You have seen all that Adonai did before your very eyes in the land of Egypt…the wondrous feats that you saw with your own eyes, those prodigious signs and marvels. Yet until today Adonai has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear. I led you through the wilderness forty years; the clothes on your back did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet….”

             An entire generation has witnessed God’s blessings and miracles, but fails to appreciate the source. The implication: God will protect us, just as he protected our ungrateful ancestors, despite their inability to learn from the past.

            These days, it seems that not learning from the past is not the real problem: we seem unable to learn from what happened yesterday, or earlier today! The text tells us that our ancestors were not able to appreciate God’s support because “until this day” God had not endowed them with the kind of self-awareness needed to appreciate His gifts or to learn from the past. But we have inherited this awareness. Our own sin is our failure to utilize it.

            As we approach the Yamim Noraim, perhaps we should add this to our confessional: for the sin we have committed by failing to learn from our errors.

The Lash?

Ki Tetze

Deut. 21:10 - 25:19

Précis:  The parasha might be subtitled “entering society” because it describes the creation of a just and moral social network. It begins with the phrase “when you go forth” (ki tetze) to battle. This parasha, according to Maimonides, contains 72 mitzvot (commandments). Although they seem unrelated, they all deal with the morals and values that God wanted to be deeply implanted in the Israelites' society. They cover a wide variety of topics, from family life, human kindness, respect for property and animals, the safety of others, sexual relationships, escaped slaves, financial loans and charging interest, keeping promises, and remembering to blot out the name of one of Israel's greatest enemies. This assortment of commands included requirements that there be sex-distinct clothing; that mother birds not be separated from their eggs; that roof-tops have parapets; that seeds not be mixed in a field, and that “tzitzit” (fringes) be worn on garments.

Deut. 25:1–3“When there is a dispute between persons and they go to law, and a decision is rendered declaring the one in the right and the other in the wrong, if the guilty one is to be flogged, the magistrate shall have the person lie down and supervise the giving of the lashes, by count, as warranted by the offense. The guilty one may be given up to forty lashes, but not more, lest being flogged further, to excess, your brother be degraded before your eyes.”

               

                In these verses, we come face to face with corporal punishment, a practice which we reject in modern society. It may be that this “institution” was adopted because there were no prisons in ancient Israel, and some penalty short of death was required for relatively “minor” offenses.  Prison did exist in some other societies (as we know by Joseph’s imprisonment in Egypt). Here, we find concern for the criminal facing the lash. The lashes come only as a result of a sentence by a properly constituted court; they are limited in number; the offender had to be of sufficiently good health to survive the ordeal. Finally, the offender is referred to as one’s “brother” to indicate his essential humanity.

            In practice, lashes never exceed 39, to avoid the possibility of transgressing the numerical limit. Once punished, the offender returns to the community, in effect having paid his “debt to society.”

            In recent years, we have debated the impact of punishments which seem to exceed the limits of what the U.S. Constitution labels “cruel and unusual.” Those who rely on so-called “original intent” see no issue, inasmuch as criminals in the late 18^th century were often hung or received corporal punishment. (Aside: you might observe that this writer does not agree with the concept of “original intent,” but that’s for another d’var.) Those with a broader interpretation of our Constitution discuss the continuing validity of capital punishment; another argument concerns the question of whether prolonged solitary confinement should be barred.

            From a Jewish perspective, we should recall that the cited punishment was seen as a kind of retribution, but, at the same time, the offender was always encouraged to repent (“do t’shuvah). Jewish tradition reminds us also that a court that sentences someone to the death penalty more than once in 70 years is considered a “murderous court.”

            In our examination of criminal justice issues today, the ability of offenders to repent and “do t’shuvah” should certainly be part of the calculus in which we engage when we consider how our criminal justice system operates.