D

o you know how many 
commandments there 
are in the Torah? If you 
answered 613, you are correct. 
What do those many laws 
entail? Rabbi Hillel answered, 
“That which is hateful to you, do 
not do to your fellow. That is the 
whole Torah; the rest is the expla-
nation; go and learn.
” 
This week’
s portion, contains 72 
commandments, the largest num-
ber in any portion. There are laws 
about the treatment of captives 
and rights of inheritance. There 
are rules regarding defiant children 
and returning lost items. There are 
commandments about clothing, 
adultery, loans, rights of a stranger 
and more.
It seems so disjointed, like a 
long list of all the things God and 
Moses are rushing to impart to the 
Israelites before they finally enter 

the Promised Land. Yet, 
there is a common thread. 
As Hillel declared, we must 
be kind and thoughtful of 
our peers. Deuteronomy 22:1 
teaches us that “We are 
responsible for one anoth-
er, tied together.
”
How appropriate 
that this portion, which 
reminds us of our obliga-
tions to our friends, family, 
neighbors and God, also 
contains the command-
ment instructing us to wear tzitzit, 
the fringes hanging from the 
corners of our tallit (Deuteronomy 
22:12). They represent our respon-
sibilities to one another and to 
God, tying us all together, requir-
ing that we not ignore one another.
In a world turned upside down, 
we need these reminders now 
more than ever. We are making 

different decisions about 
work and school and socially 
distant play dates. We have 
different levels of comfort 
when it comes to seeing fam-
ily or walking into a store. 
And yet, we are knotted 
together, all intertwined. If we 
are lost, we need a friend to 
lift us up. If we are struggling, 
we need a neighbor to give 
a smile. 
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 
once said, “One of the great 
liabilities in life is that all too many 
people find themselves living amid 
a great period of social change and 
yet they fail to develop the new 
attitudes, the new mental respons-
es, that the new situation demands. 
They end up sleeping through a 
revolution.
” 
Every time I wear my tallit, I 
play with the fringes, wrapping 

them around my fingers, remem-
bering how I am tied to those who 
came before me and those will 
come after. I think about the way 
we are commanded to follow God’
s 
laws, to teach them to our chil-
dren. I think about how we are so 
entwined with and responsible for 
each other.
Each knot and each string is a 
reminder to wave hello, to pick 
up the phone, to offer a smile, to 
donate some groceries, to be a little 
kinder, a little more patient. The 
next time you wrap yourself in a 
tallit and fiddle with the tzitzit, 
consider the lessons we have 
learned from the past, but perhaps 
more importantly, the lessons we 
hope to pass on to our future. 

Rabbi Arianna Gordon is the director of 
education and lifelong learning at Temple 
Israel in West Bloomfield.

Parshat 

Ki Tetze: 

Deuteronomy 

21:10-25:19; 

Isaiah 

54:1-10

Rabbi Arianna 
Gordon

32 | AUGUST 27 • 2020 

Spirit
torah portion
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