2014-2015 CYCLE
P204 Parash 49 Ki Tetze (When you go out) D’varim/Deuteronomy 21:10 -25:19
Synopsis
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Seventy-four of the Torah's 613 commandments (mitzvot) are in the Parshah of Ki
Teitzei. These include the laws of the beautiful captive, the inheritance
rights of the first-born, the wayward and rebellious son, burial and
dignity of the dead, the returning of a lost object, sending away the
mother bird before taking her young, the duty to erect a safety fence
around the roof of one's home, and the various forms of kilayim
(forbidden plant and animal hybrids).
Also recounted are the judicial procedures and penalties for
adultery, for the rape or seduction of an unmarried girl, and for a husband who
falsely accuses his wife of infidelity. The following cannot marry
a person of Jewish lineage: a bastard, a male of Moabite or Ammonite
descent, a first- or second-generation Edomite or Egyptian.
Our Parshah also includes laws governing the purity of the military
camp; the prohibition to turn in an escaped slave; the duty to pay a
worker on time and to allow anyone working for you - man or animal - to "eat on
the job"; the proper treatment of a debtor and the prohibition against
charging interest on a loan; the laws of divorce (from which are
also derived many of the laws of marriage); the penalty of 39 lashes for
transgression of a Torah prohibition; and the procedures for yibbum ("levirate
marriage") of the wife of a deceased childless brother or chalitzah ("removing
of the shoe") in the case that the brother-in-law does not wish to marry her.
Ki Teitzei concludes with the obligation to remember "what Amalek
did to you on the road, on your way out of Egypt." |