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Parshat Ki Tetze
2006
Owning Up to It
This week’s parsha, Ki Tetze, is notable for the fact that it contains the most commandments of any of the weekly portions: 72 according to the count of Maimonides. And the commandments deal entirely with laws governing relationships between people so that human society will be orderly, healthy and infused with dignity for all members of that society. The enormous range of commandments that appear here deal with all aspects of life including: paying your workers on time; building a parapet around your roof so that no one falls off, giving a groom a year of reprieve from army service after his wedding; ensuring that a husband does not defame his wife and divorce her unfairly, and many, many more.
What connects all these, and other, diverse commandments? What patterns or underlying themes can we identify that might shed light on the portion as a whole?
One of the themes that appears here in a variety of different forms is that of ownership. What does it mean that a person owns some thing or, in Biblical law, some one? How does that ownership express itself, and what are its limits? In this portion the Torah offers us an extremely nuanced and varied picture of different forms of ownership. Let’s take a look at just two of them.
“You shall not see the ox of your brother or his lamb cast off [i.e., lost] and hide yourself from them; you shall surely return them to your brother. If your brother is not near you and you do not know him, then you shall bring it inside your house, and it shall remain with you until your brother’s inquiring about it, then you shall return it to him.” (Deuteronomy 22:1-2)
In this case a person loses his animal and it is found by someone else. It appears that ownership has now passed to the finder of the animal, according to the logical principle that if something is in your possession, you own it. But no, not in this case. Rather, the Torah is making the point that ownership doesn’t depend totally on physical possession of a thing. In fact, later midrashim (interpretive commentaries) even bring cases where people who cared for the lost or abandoned possessions of others for years on end were still required to return them when the owner returned, even after investing and profiting from the thing that actually still doesn’t belong to them
In another example in the portion, we learn, “When you come into the vineyard of your fellow, you may eat grapes as is your desire, your fill, but you may not put into your vessel.”
Why is a person allowed to eat the grapes from someone else’s land? Well, according to the Talmud the verse is referring to a worker who is working in that vineyard, and is allowed to eat some of the grapes during the normal course of his work. It appears, according to this interpretation, that the worker does have some rights over the grapes. By working with them he is allowed to assert a form of ownership over them, and to feel more entitled to them than a stranger who might wander into the vineyard but, at the same time, the Torah limits this sense of ownership and reminds him that he can only eat the grapes in the vineyard itself, and is not allowed to collect the grapes in a basket to take home.
This parsha offers us a cumulative picture of a society where, on one hand, we find many forms of ownership which imply control and power over the things we own, with the resulting ability to create and shape our lives and the situations that surround us, and, on the other hand, a heavy responsibility to the things we own. At the same time as human beings most imitate God when they own and control other things, the Torah comes to limit our ownership, emphasizing that the power we may feel when owning something is only temporary or partial.
In the context of Jewish life on campus the ownership we deal with is not the ownership of an object, but the multiple ways in which Jewish students own their Jewish identities and experiences. We strive to create environments in which students are encouraged to take ownership over their own Jewish lives and feel responsible for their own Jewish experiences. Some students need help in finding something in Jewish life that they want to own. Others benefit from limiting their own sense of ownership in order to make space for others to be welcome. We hope that they all learn from those around them, their peers and their Hillel professionals, in order to build a sophisticated sense of ownership that is tempered by mutual responsibility and care for others. We hope that Jewish life on all campuses will reflect healthy relationships, at all levels, and that the lessons that this week’s parsha offers us will encourage us to fully own our own Jewish experiences, at the same time as we recognize that there is always more to learn.
Prepared by Clare Goldwater, associate vice president for Jewish Life at Hillel's Charles and Lynn Schusterman International Center
Learn More
Additional commentaries and text studies on Ki Tetze at MyJewishLearning.com.
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