Torah and mitzvot -- nothing else will do! Ki Teitze 5785

Here is another piece left for us by Rabbi Wein ztz'l and which we are privileged to share.

Ki Teitzei contains the second most numerous count of mitzvot in the Torah, topped only by parashat Kedoshim in Chumash Vayikra. The commentators to the Torah discuss why these mitzvot that first appear in Ki Teitzei, all of which are ultimately derived from the granting of the Torah at Mount Sinai almost 40 years earlier, find their place in the Torah here in Moshe’s final oration to the Jewish people. Their approach to the issue differs.

Some say that since many of these mitzvot are related to war, settling the land, domesticated human life and the like, they reflect the impending life-altering change for the Jewish people as they shift from a miraculous existence in the desert to a more natural and normal lifestyle.  Soon they would be in their own land, facing all the changes and problems that such a radical shift of circumstances implies. Others merely say that this is an example of the Talmudic dictum that the Torah is not bound in its teachings and text to any narrative timeline; there is no chronological order to the Torah. Even though these mitzvot appear in writing here for the first time, they were essentially already taught to the Jewish people in the desert long before by Moshe. Other explanations can be found; all are valid and they are not mutually exclusive. 

If I may be bold enough to add my insight to this matter, I would say this: the Jewish people are about to become a nation and to establish their own government in the Land of Israel. They will have to fight many battles, bloody and painful, to establish their right to the Land of Israel and to establish their sovereignty over the territory that it encompasses. They will need an army, a civil government, a judicial system, an economy and labor force and all the other trappings that accompany nation building and establishing a territorial entity and effective government.

In the face of these demands they might think that they can discard the spiritual yoke of the mitzvot imposed upon them at Sinai. It would be easy to say that mitzvot were all very well in the Sinai desert, where no other demands were made on our time, energy and commitment. But with more pressing business at hand, perhaps the punctilious observance of mitzvot was no longer required. 

Moshe comes in this parsha, in the midst of his valedictory oration to the Jewish people, to remind them that mitzvot and Torah are the only effective guarantee of Jewish success and survival, even while they are engaged in building and defending Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. Moshe in effect says to them: “Here are some more mitzvot—and they will help you succeed in building the land and preserving your sovereignty over it.” Moshe’s message is as germane to our time as it was to the first Jews who arrived en masse to settle in the Land of Israel thirty-three centuries ago.