The Parshah in a Nutshell
Ki Teitzei in a Nutshell

Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19

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 firstborn, the wayward and rebellious son, burial and dignity of the dead, returning 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 mamzer (someone born from an adulterous or incestuous relationship); 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 against turning 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 thirty-nine 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.”

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Posted: Sep 22, 2011

Mother. bird and her children

it is so interesting to me that today a friend told me, not knowing about this mother bird instruction that she had been very upset during the building of her new home that a workman discovered a robin's nest in a nearby tree. This discovery would have necessitated destruction of the nest given proposed plans. my friend Marlene was distraught but to hold up everything to wait for these eggs to hatch would be costly. A workman had an idea, carefully removed the nest and put it in another tree. The mother bird was initially distraught but found the nest.
It was a mitzva to save these fledgling robins!

Posted By Ruth housman, Marshfield , Ma

Posted: Sep 21, 2011

Mother Bird

When G_d destroyed the world in Noah's day, he left a bit of humanity left to start over. In the instruction about the mother bird, there is the similar thought of leaving someone to start over the family/breed again. No matter how much His people have gone through, they have not been annihilated completely. Sometimes we struggle to see the compassion, but it is there.

Posted By Anonymous, Prescott, AR/US

Posted: Sep 10, 2011

Wasn't Ruth Already A Spiritual Jewess

What comes to my mind is that perhaps HaShem considered Ruth a Jewess already, as she had accepted Him by heartfelt faith (come into Judah by sincere faith in Him), and had formerly been the wife of Naomi's son.

Posted By MIshis Lassie, USA

Posted: Sep 8, 2011

Elul

Why so many mitzvahs in the month of Elul in this Parsha, does these mitzvahs have to do something with forgiveness and compassion?

Posted By Alberto, New York, NY/ USA

Posted: Sep 6, 2011

interesting about the male of Moabite descentt

because Ruth, a Moabite, did become Jewish, married Boaz, and her story has the lineage of the Messiah within it as in The Book of Ruth.

I am thinking we need to update some of these but others do make perfect sense today.

The sending away of the mother bird is about love but it also makes me very sad, to think of her children being taken. I think I would rather, Go Without.

Posted By ruth housman, marshfield hills, ma