Re'eh

Blessings and Curses

11:26 Moses continued, “God has instructed me to command you to stage a formal ceremony upon your entrance into the Promised Land in order to formalize the covenant between you and Him. After you cross the Jordan River, proceed to the vicinity of Shechem and station yourselves on the adjacent mountains Gerizim and Eival. The Levites, standing in the intervening valley, will then pronounce specific blessings and curses upon the rest of you. See, I set before you today the formula of the blessing and the curse that they will pronounce.1

27 The blessing will be intended to motivate you to heed the commandments of God, your God, that I am commanding you today;

28 and similarly, the curse will follow if you will not heed the commandments of God, your God, but instead turn away from the path that I am commanding you today—the Torah—by following other deities whom you did not know, for serving idols will eventually lead you to transgress all the Torah’s commandments.2

29 Thus, when God, your God, will bring you into the land that you are entering in order to possess, you must position those receiving the blessing upon Mount Gerizim and those receiving the curse upon Mount Eival.3

30 Aren’t these mountains on the other side of the Jordan River, further on from the river in the direction of the sunset, i.e. westward, in the land of the Canaanites who dwell in the plain beyond Gilgal, next to the Plains of Moreh at Shechem4 ?

31 For you are crossing the Jordan River in order to enter and take possession of the land that God, your God, is giving you; the miraculous way you will cross the river will assure you that you will indeed take possession of the land and settle it, no matter how impossible a feat it may presently seem.

32 Motivated by these blessings and curses, you must safeguard your ability to fulfill all the rules and ordinances that I am setting before you today by constantly studying the Torah’s instructions regarding how to perform them.

Eradicating Idolatry

12:1 Besides the commandments that apply wherever you may live, the following are the specific rules and ordinances that you must first safeguard by studying how to properly perform them, and then perform, in the land that God, God of your forefathers, is giving you to possess all the days that you live on the earth.

2 Whenever you come across a place in which the resident nations served idols, you must utterly eradicate their deities from all the places where the nations whom you will dispossess worshipped them, whether they had set up these idols upon the lofty mountains, upon the hills, or under every lush tree.

3 Specifically, you must demolish their multi-stoned altars, upon which they only offered up sacrifices to their deities; smash their one-stoned pedestals, which were originally set up solely as monuments to their deities but which have since come to be worshipped as idols;5 burn their deified trees with fire; and cut down the sculpted images of their deities.6 Moreover, you must destroy the aura surrounding the name of these idols from that place by referring to them by derogatory nicknames indicating that they are the exact opposite of what their worshippers represented them to be.7

4 You must not do so to God, your God. On the contrary, you must treat His Name with respect, not even erasing it from any inscribed tablet or written document. Likewise, you must not destroy His altar, neither directly—by dismantling it, nor indirectly—by imitating the behavior of idolatrous nations, thereby forfeiting the merit of the Tabernacle or Temple’s presence and causing it to be destroyed by invading foreign armies.

Centralized Worship

5 Furthermore, rather than having multiple sites of worship as the idolaters do,8 you must direct your attention solely to the place that God, your God, will select, from among all your tribes, to which to attach His Name. You must seek His Presence and come only there to offer up your sacrifices.

6 This directive will apply first to the interim, semi-permanent site for the Tabernacle that God will establish before He commands you to construct the permanent Temple. You must bring there—to this interim site—your obligatory ascent-offerings; your obligatory peace-offerings; your tithes, both the tithe of animals9 and the second tithe of produce, in order to eat them there;10 the first fruits11 elevated by your hand;12 the objects of your sacrificial vows and of your sacrificial dedications;13 and the firstborn of your cattle and flock,14 so that they can be offered up there.

7 You must eat the portions of the sacrifices and tithes designated for your consumption there, before God, your God, and you must rejoice in the success of all your endeavors—you and your households—by offering up voluntary peace-offerings in accord with how God, your God, has blessed you.

8 This restriction will not apply to the periods in which the Tabernacle is located at a temporary site (as opposed to the interim or permanent site). Thus, from the time you cross the Jordan River until the interim site is established, you will be permitted to set up private altars. Nonetheless, you must not act with regard to these private altars in the same way we do here today with the Tabernacle’s altar, sacrificing both voluntary and obligatory offerings on them. Rather, you may only offer up on them those sacrifices that every person deems appropriate on his own, i.e., voluntary offerings. You will still have to offer up your obligatory offerings in the Tabernacle, even though it is located at a temporary site.

9 You will be allowed to set up and use private altars because you will not yet have come either to the first, interim resting place of the Tabernacle nor to the final, permanent inheritance that God, your God, is giving you for the purpose of establishing His Temple.15 Once either of these structures is standing, however, the use of private altars will be forbidden. Once the interim sanctuary ceases to function, however, you will again be permitted to offer up voluntary sacrifices on private altars—until the permanent sanctuary is established.

10 You may establish a permanent Temple only after you cross the Jordan River, after you settle in the land that God, your God, is giving you as an inheritance, after He will grant you respite from all your surrounding enemies, and after you dwell in the land securely.

Second Reading 11 All the restrictions regarding where you may offer up sacrifices that apply to the first, interim location of the Tabernacle will also apply to the final, permanent place on which God, your God, will choose to rest His Name. There, once again, you must bring all that I am commanding you: your obligatory ascent-offerings; your obligatory peace-offerings; your tithes, both the tithe of animals and the second tithe of produce, in order to eat them there; the first fruits elevated by your hand; and the choice objects of your sacrificial vows—for your offerings should always be of the best you have—that you vow to offer up to God.

12 You must rejoice before God, your God by eating there—i.e., in the city surrounding the Temple16—the portions of the sacrifices and tithes designated for your consumption—you, your sons, your daughters, your bondmen, and your bondwomen, as well as the Levite who is within your cities. Invite the Levite to share your food, for he has no portion in the spoils of war or any land-inheritance17 with you on which to raise crops.

13 The obligation to offer up voluntary sacrifices only in the Temple, which is couched above as an active commandment,18 is also subject to a restrictive commandment: Take heed not to offer up your ascent-offerings at any site you see,

14 but only in the place that God will choose, which, although located in territory belonging to only one of your tribes,19 will be purchased with funds collected from all the tribes, thereby rendering it collective property of the entire nation. There must you offer up your ascent-offerings, and there must you do all that I am commanding you concerning such sacrifices. The only exception to this restriction is when a genuine, proven prophet instructs you to offer up a sacrifice elsewhere on an ad hoc basis.20

15 However, if an animal that had been designated to be offered up as a sacrifice becomes blemished in such a way that permanently disqualifies it from being used as a sacrifice,21 you may redeem it by buying it back from the Temple treasury, and then as much as you desire, you may slaughter and eat its meat in any of your cities outside the Temple city, as long as you take care to eat meat according to your means, i.e., not beyond the blessing of wealth that God, your God gave you.

The meat of such an animal is no longer subject to the restrictions of ritual purity imposed upon eating sacrificial meat: both ritually impure people and ritually pure people may eat thereof together—just as they may eat the meat of species of animals that are not offered up as sacrifices, such as gazelle and deer, together—even if doing so renders the meat of this animal ritually defiled.22 Nonetheless, this blemished, formerly consecrated animal does not revert to the status of a non-consecrated animal to the extent that it becomes subject to the requirement to give its shoulder, cheeks, and stomach to a priest, even if it belongs to a species that is usually subject to this requirement;23 in this respect, it is just like gazelle and deer, which are exempt from this requirement. Furthermore, the fleece and milk of such an animal remain consecrated; you may neither shear it nor milk it for your private use.

16 However, even though you are thus permitted to eat meat that until now had been forbidden to you because it was allocated for the altar, do not assume that its blood—which was also forbidden for consumption24—has likewise now become permitted. No, you must not consume the blood; you must spill it on the ground when you slaughter the animal. However, even though I have compared these animals, in certain respects, to wild animals—gazelle and deer—you are nevertheless not required to cover their blood after you slaughter them, as you are with respect to the blood of wild animals when you slaughter them.25 In this respect, the blood of these formerly consecrated animals is like water, unlike the blood of gazelle and deer.

17 The obligation to perform the other rites mentioned above only in the Temple,26 which is couched there as an active commandment, is also subject to a restrictive commandment: You may not consume within your other cities the second tithe of your grain, wine, or oil; or (if you are a priest) the firstborn of your cattle or flocks; or any of the objects of your sacrificial vows that you may vow; or the objects of your dedications;27 or the first fruits elevated by your hand—even if for some reason you are not able to bring them (or their value, in the case of the second tithe) to the Temple city—despite the previously stated obligation to eat these consecrated foods.28

Furthermore, you may not eat the second tithe if it has become ritually defiled, for, as will be mentioned presently,29 God expressly forbids this.30

18 However, you do not have to eat the portions of these sacrifices and tithes that are designated for your consumption only within the Temple precincts; rather, you, your son, your daughter, your bondman, your bondwoman, and the Levite from your cities whom you have invited to be your guest may all eat these portions and tithes anywhere considered ‘before God, your God,’ i.e., within the place—the city—that God, your God, will choose as the location of His Temple. You must rejoice before God, your God, in all your endeavors by eating these portions of the sacrifices and tithes together with your family and guests. If you do not have enough produce to give the Levites as the first tithe,31 then give them the tithe for the poor;32 if you do not have enough of this tithe, either, then invite them to be your guests and share in your portion of the sacrifices you offer up.

19 The obligation to care for Levites, couched above33 as an active commandment, is also subject to a restrictive commandment: Take heed not to forsake the Levite all your days that you dwell upon your land. Outside of the Land of Israel, however, you are not required to care for impoverished Levites beyond your obligation to care for the poor in general,34 for Levites are permitted to own land outside of the Land of Israel and are therefore not uniquely disadvantaged in this respect.

20 Presently, you are only allowed to eat meat if you offer up the animal as a peace-offering, portions of which are designated for your consumption; slaughtering animals for non-sacrificial purposes is forbidden. This restriction poses you no inconvenience right now, since we are all encamped closely around the Tabernacle, and in any case you are not presently preoccupied with earning a living. When, however, you enter the land and God, your God, expands your boundary, as He has spoken concerning you,35 and you say, ‘I will eat meat’ because you desire to eat meat, you may eat meat, provided that you can afford it.36 As long as it is within your means, you may eat meat according to your every desire, i.e., without having to first consecrate the animal as a sacrifice.

21 If the place to which God, your God, chooses to attach His Name will be distant from you, therefore making it inconvenient to journey to the Temple to offer up peace-offerings in order to eat meat, as you do now, you may slaughter of your cattle and flocks that God has given you, provided that you do so in accordance with the method of ritual slaughtering that I commanded you to use when I gave the Torah at Mount Sinai, and you may thus eat meat even in your outlying cities according to your every desire.

22 But, just as was stated with regard to consecrated animals that became permanently blemished,37 the meat of this animal is not subject to the restrictions of purity imposed upon eating sacrificial meat: you may eat it just as gazelle and deer—species of animals that are not offered up as sacrifices—are eaten: both ritually impure people and ritually pure people may eat it together—even if thereby the meat becomes ritually defiled. Nonetheless, when you eat cattle or sheep, you are still forbidden to eat the fats that would have been offered up on the altar if the animal had been sacrificed as a peace-offering, even though these same fats from wild animals (such as gazelle and deer) are permitted for consumption.38

23 However, even though you will be thus permitted to eat meat that is presently forbidden unless it is first consecrated as a sacrifice, do not suppose that blood—which is also forbidden—will also become permitted. Firstly, be resolute not to consume the blood that initially spurts out of the animal as it is slaughtered, for this blood is the physical embodiment of the animal’s life-force; its departure from the animal signals the animal’s death. Similarly, you must not consume this blood, the physical embodiment of the animal’s life-force, together with its flesh by cutting off any of the animal’s flesh before it has been ritually slaughtered and then eating that flesh—even after the animal has been slaughtered. Once it has been slaughtered, however, it is considered legally dead and you may cut off flesh from its carcass, even if the animal still shows signs of life. Nevertheless, you must wait to eat this flesh until the animal has ceased showing any signs of life.39 (In contrast, inasmuch as non-Jews are not required to ritually slaughter animals in order to eat them, they must not cut flesh off animals they kill until the animal has altogether ceased showing signs of life.40)

24 Secondly, you must also not consume the blood that oozes out of the carcass after the initial spurt accompanying slaughtering. Rather, you must spill it onto the ground like water.

25 And furthermore, you must not even consume the blood remaining in the animal’s body after slaughtering if the blood leaves its location in the animal’s body, for example, by cooking. You must therefore either salt the meat on an inclined surface so the blood is drawn out and drains, or roast it so the blood drains. If you eat the meat raw, however, you do not have to remove this type of blood.

Refrain from consuming blood in order that it go well for you and your children after you, when you do what is proper in the eyes of God. And if God promises to reward you for refraining from consuming blood, something to which people are naturally averse, it follows that He will reward you even more generously for observing commandments that require effort and discipline!

Besides His promise of reward, God is exhorting you emphatically and repeatedly not to consume blood for two reasons: Firstly, you were accustomed to consuming blood before the Torah was given, and even though most of those who were alive then have since died, and the rest of you have been observing the prohibition against eating blood for forty years now, He sees that it is still difficult for you. Secondly, people normally have no desire to drink blood; the fact that God nonetheless warns you to stay away from it teaches you how carefully you should avoid forbidden things that people normally are attracted to!41

26 Subject to these restrictions, you will be able to eat meat wherever you live. However, this applies only to non-consecrated meat. You must still take your consecrated animal-offeringsthat you will have, as well as the animals with which you intend to fulfill your vows to sacrifice peace-offerings, and come to the place that God will choose as the interim location of the Tabernacle42—or later, as the site of His permanent Temple43—no matter how far you may live from it.

27 There, you must offer up your ascent-offerings—the meat and the blood—upon the altar of God, your God. The blood of your peace-offerings must be poured upon the altar of God, your God, and afterwards you may eat the flesh.

The obligation to offer up sacrifices only in the Temple applies even to animals consecrated outside of the Land of Israel, to animals that have been designated as substitutes for already-consecrated animals,44 and to the offspring born to animals after they have been consecrated.

28 Besides all that you have been told so far, safeguard all these words that I am commanding you now—i.e., make sure you are doing them properly—by constantly studying the Torah’s instructions regarding how to perform them, and then you will be able to hearken to them, i.e., perform them properly, that it may benefit you and your children after you forever, when—because you know what to do—you in fact do both what is good in the eyes of God, your God, and proper in the eyes of human beings.

Imitating Idolaters

Third Reading 29 When God, your God cuts down the nations inhabiting the land into which you are coming in order to dispossess them, and you have dispossessed them and settled in their land,

30 beware, lest you begin to imitate them. On the contrary, after you see that they have been exterminated from before you, you should understand that God exterminated them because of the depravity of their deeds and you should therefore seek to distinguish yourselves from them, not imitate them. Bewarelest you inquire about their deities, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their deities? I will do likewise.’

31 You must not do this to God, your God, for as you have been told,45 serving an idol in the way it is normally worshipped is forbidden and is punishable by death. For they did to their deities every abomination to God that He hates; they would burn their sons and daughters—and even their parents—in fire to their deities.

13:1 Everything I command you—whether the punishment for not doing it be severe or light—that is what you must be careful to do. I previously warned you not to try to enhance God’s commandments by trying to ‘expand’ their scope.46 In addition, you must neither add to any commandment nor detract from it in a way that seemingly intensifies its effect.47 For example, do not make your head-tefilin with five compartments instead of four,48 even though adding compartments would seemingly serve to increase your awareness of the ideas that tefilin are intended to remind you of.49 Similarly, do not hold additional specimens of the four types of plants you are commanded to hold on Sukot50—even though this would seemingly increase the joy these plants are intended to bring you.51 Another example: do not have the priests bless you with four blessings instead of three,52 even though additional blessings would seem to intensify your experience of God’s blessing.53 By the same token, in each of these cases, do not use fewer items than are prescribed.

False Prophets

2 If there will arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of a dream, and he gives you a sign, i.e., a miracle occurring with regard to something in the sky, or a marvel, i.e., a miracle occurring with regard to something on earth,

3 and the sign or the marvel of which he spoke to you takes place, and he then says, attempting to base his authority on the fact that he was able to perform that miracle, ‘Let us go after other deities, which you have not previously known, and let us worship them,’

4 you must not heed the words of that prophet or that dreamer of a dream. God only allowed him to perform a miracle because God, your God, is testing you to ascertain whether you really love God, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul.

5 So if you really do love God, you should follow only God, your God, rather than listening to false prophets; fear Him, rather than the empty exhortations of a false prophet; keep His commandments that He communicated to you through me, not any spurious commandments a false prophet might bid you keep; heed His voice, which will speak to you through future legitimate prophets, not the voice of false prophets; worship Him in the Temple using the prescribed practices, not in any other location or using any other practices a false prophet might suggest;54 and finally, as the highest expression of your love for Him, cleave to Him by imitating His attributes beyond the requirements of the law, that is, beyond merely keeping His commandments55 or imitating His attributes in general (as mentioned previously56). Specifically: (a) bury the dead (just as God Himself buried Aaron even though there were many others who would have been willing to) even when it is inconvenient for you to do so;57 (b) visit the sick (just as God visited Abraham when he was sick even though there were others who also visited him) even though doing so might dangerously expose you to their illnesses;58 and a fortiori (c) comfort mourners (just as God comforted Isaac59 and Jacob60 even though there were others who also comforted them) which is neither inconvenient nor dangerous.61

6 Returning to the subject of the false prophet: that prophet or that dreamer of a dream must be put to death by the court62 because he spoke deceptively about God, your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage—for this reason alone God has claim to your loyalty—to lead you astray from the way in which God, your God, commanded you to go. So must you eliminate this evil from your midst.

Dealing with Tempters

7 If anyone63—even a close relative such as your brother, whether you have a common father or he is only the son of your mother but not of your father; your son; your daughter; the wife who lies in your embrace; or your father,who is your friend as dear to you as your own soul—incites you, either publicly or in secret, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other deities, which neither you nor your forefathers have known,’

8 from among the deities of any of the peoples around you—whether those nearby or those far off, for just as you know that the deities worshipped near you are false, so may you conclude that those far away from you are also false—and even if they incite you to worship a transnational deity, such as one of the heavenly bodies that traverse the sky from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth;

9 you must not love him, i.e., seek a way to let him live out of love for him, even though you are otherwise commanded to love your fellow;64 you must not hearken to him when he pleads for his life, even though you are otherwise commanded to come to the aid of your enemy;65 you must not pity him, even though you are otherwise prohibited to idly allow your fellow to be killed;66 you must not have mercy upon him by trying to exonerate him; you must not cover up for him by refraining from testifying against him when you have incriminating information that would enable you to do so.

Besides the fact that idolatry is forbidden, you should find this attempted incitement insulting, for even idolaters remain loyal to their national deities, refusing to pursue those of other nations.67 The examples of inciters given above68 do not include the mother or sister, since an adult man, having formed his own opinions about life, is no longer typically influenced by his mother in matters of theology (as he might still be by his brothers or father), nor, having established his own family, is he any longer close enough to his sister to be drawn by this closeness into questionable activities (as he still is to his wife and children).69

10 Returning to how you should treat the tempter: You should not have mercy on him; rather, you must do your best to kill him: if the court acquits him and you then remember some incriminating testimony, have him brought back to court for a retrial. Or, if he has been condemned and you then remember some exonerating testimony, do not have him brought back to court for a retrial; let them kill him.

The tempter is executed by stoning. The normal procedure in stoning is that the witnesses first to try to kill the convict by pushing him from an elevation twice his own height70 and, if this fails, casting a heavy stone onto his chest; only if this, too fails, does the populace kill him by pelting him with stones.71 In this case, however, your hand—that of the person the inciter was attempting to incite, rather than the hand of the witnesses—must be the first to be raised against him to put him to death, since you would have been the victim of his attempted incitement, but if you cannot kill him by yourself, afterwards he must die at the collective hand of all the people.

11 Thus, you must stone him with stones so that he dies, because he sought to lead you astray from God, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

12 All Israel must listen to the case and be afraid to do likewise, so that they no longer commit any evil such as this in your midst.

The Idolatrous City

13 If, when you enter your land, you (i.e., your legal proxy, the Sanhedrin72) hear testimony about people residing in one of your residential cities (but not in the Temple city, for it is in essence a setting for the Temple service, not for residence, even though people may live there73) that God, your God, is giving you, saying,

14 ‘Men who are unfaithful to the Torah’s commandments have gone forth from among you and have led the inhabitants of their city astray, saying, “Let us go and worship other deities, which you have not known,”’

15 you (i.e., the court) must inquire, investigate, and question the witnesses thoroughly about their testimony. If it is indeed true, and the court is convinced that the matter is certain, that this abomination has been committed in your midst,

16 then you (i.e., the agents of the court) must strike down the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it along with all that is in it, and its livestock in the fields surrounding it, with the edge of the sword. If for some reason they cannot kill them by the sword, they should kill them in some other way.

17 You (i.e., the agents of the court) must then gather all its spoil into the midst of its open square and completely burn the city and all its spoil with fire in honor of God, your God and on His behalf. It must be a heap of destruction forever, never to be rebuilt.

18 Nothing that is doomed to destruction may remain in your possession, so that God may turn from His fierce wrath—for God displays anger whenever and wherever idolatry is practiced—and inspire others to treat you with compassion,74 Himself be compassionate with you, and multiply you, as He swore to your forefathers—

19 provided that you hearken to the voice of God, your God, by keeping all His commandments that I am commanding you today, in order that you may do that which is proper in the eyes of God, your God.

The law concerning an idolatrous city only applies if (a) adult males, and not women or minors, incited the public to idolatry; and (b) the inciters were residents of the city they incited,75 for only then can full responsibility devolve on the city in question.

Separating from the Gentiles

Fourth Reading 14:1 As God has said of you before,76 You are the children of God, your God, and should therefore keep yourselves befittingly handsome. As you have already been commanded,77 you must neither cut yourselves anywhere on your body nor make a bald spot—either next to your forehead, which is above the point between your eyes, or anywhere else on your head—as a sign of mourning for the dead, for these are Amorite practices, which you must shun.

You have been taught that on the day a close relative dies, you must observe grieving practices until nightfall.78 Although this is all the Torah requires, I am instituting now the observance of additional mourning practices for a full seven days,79 reminiscent of how Joseph mourned for Jacob for a full week.80

2 For, as you have been told,81 you have inherited from your forefathers the qualities that make you a holy people to God, your God, and beyond this, God has chosen you to be a treasured people for Him out of all the nations upon the earth.82 It therefore does not befit you to imitate non-Jewish customs.

3 Furthermore, your holiness obligates you to refrain from eating foods that are detrimental to this holiness. To begin with, you must not eat anything produced by a forbidden act; you must not eat such entities, just as you must not eat any entity that God has explicitly declared to be an abomination. Nonetheless, performing the forbidden act only disentitles the person who performed it from eating the entity; other people are not prohibited from eating the entity by that person’s actions.83

4 Besides this, you must not eat any animal that God has explicitly forbidden you to eat—which means most species of animals. The following are the minority of land-animals that you may eat: among the domesticated animals: ox and other cattle, lamb and other sheep, and goat-kids and other goats;

5 among the undomesticated animals: deer, gazelle, fallow-deer, ibex, addax, bison, and wild sheep,

6 as well as—as you have been told84—every other land-animal whose feet are not only partially cloven but completely split into at least two85 sub-feet, and that regurgitates its cud. The prohibition against eating animals that render you spiritually defiled, couched elsewhere as a restrictive commandment,86 is also subject to an active commandment:87 You must only eat such animals.88 If there is a fetus inside such an animal, once you ritually slaughter the mother you may eat the fetus without having to slaughter it separately.

7 But you must not eat89—of those animals that regurgitate the cud or have split feet—the cloven one (a now-unknown or extinct animal possessing two backs and two spinal cords), the camel, the hyrax, and the hare, for they regurgitate the cud90 but do not have completely cloven feet—for as you have been told,91 eating them renders you spiritually defiled,

8 and the pig, because it has completely cloven feet but does not regurgitate the cud—for as you know, eating it also renders you spiritually defiled. You must not eat them, because they exhibit only one of the two signs of being permitted. Similarly, you must not eat other animals that exhibit only one of the two signs, and certainly not animals that exhibit neither of the two signs. Nonetheless, you transgress the prohibition against eating such animals only by eating of their flesh, not their bones, sinews, horns, or hooves. If you eat these, you transgress only the active commandment92 to only eat permitted animals.93

Although you are not allowed to spiritually defile yourselves by eating these animals, you are allowed to ritually defile yourselves by touching or carrying their carcasses94—except on the pilgrim festivals, during which you must not touch their carcasses because doing so renders you ritually defiled, and you must remain ritually pure on the festivals in order to be allowed to enter the sanctuary precincts and eat consecrated meat.95

9 Among all creatures that live in the water, you may eat these:96 you may eat all that have both fins and scales.

10 But you must not eat whatever does not have both fins and scales, for eating such creatures renders you spiritually defiled.

11 You may eat every bird that does not impart spiritual defilement—which includes most species.97

12 But these are those from which you must not eat:98 the griffon vulture, the bearded vulture, the osprey,

13 the various other species of vulture,

14 every type of species of crow,

15 the ostrich, the cuckoo, the gull, the various species of sparrow hawk,

16 the screech owl, the barn owl, the bat,

17 the pelican, the magpie, the cormorant,

18 the stork, the various species of heron, the hoopoe, and the ataleif.

19 Every crawling creature that also flies—such as flies, wasps, mosquitoes,99 and forbidden species of grasshopper—renders you spiritually defiled if eaten; they may therefore not be eaten.

20 The prohibition of eating fowl that render you spiritually defiled, couched above as a restrictive commandment,100 is also subject to an active commandment: You must eat only fowl that do not render you spiritually defiled.

21 You must not eat the carcass of any animal that died by any means other than ritual slaughter. You may give such a carcass to the resident alien,101 who is allowed to live in your cities, so that he may eat it,102 or you may sell it to a non-Jew.

Since you are a holy people to God, your God, you should voluntarily undertake to abstain from behavior permitted by the Torah if doing so will help prevent you from transgressing any of the Torah’s prohibitions. If you see any of your fellow Jews practicing such a stringency that you yourself have not undertaken, you should not act leniently in that regard in their presence.

In addition to not eating or deriving any other benefit from any young animal cooked in milk,103 you must not cook a young animal of the goats, sheep, or cows in its mother’s milk or in the milk of any other animal that you are permitted to eat. The very act of cooking milk and meat together is forbidden, for it may lead to eating or deriving other benefit from the mixture. This is an act of cruelty, and it is forbidden to be cruel to animals.104 Nonetheless, you do not transgress this prohibition by cooking permissible wild animals, permissible fowl, or prohibited animals in milk.

Tithes

Fifth Reading 22 By the same token, you should not force God to metaphorically “cook a child in its mother’s milk”—i.e., scorch young, tender kernels of grain with hot weather while they are still developing in their husks, thereby ruining your crop—by neglecting to observe the commandment to tithe your produce,105 thereby forfeiting your right to benefit from it. Rather, you must tithe all the produce of the seed that you sow and that the field yields year by year. Furthermore, you should only tithe the produce of any given year from produce of that year, rather than from produce of a previous or subsequent year. You are not required to tithe the portions of your produce that you have been commanded to abandon for the poor:106 fallen gleanings, the corners of the field,107 and forgotten gleanings.108

23 Your obligation to offer up sacrifices to God only in the centralized Temple109 is reflected in the laws governing the tithes of your produce, as well. After giving the first tithe of your grain, wine, and oil to the Levites, you must then tithe the remainder, and use this second tithe as follows: In the first, second, fourth, and fifth years of every seven-year sabbatical-year cycle,110 you must eat this second tithe of your grain, wine, and oil—as well as the firstborn of your cattle and of your flocks111—‘before God, your God,’ i.e., anywhere within the place—the city112—on which He will choose to rest His Name by situating the Temple there, so that you may learn to revere God, your God, always.

24 If, however, the journey from your home to the Temple city is too long for you, for you are unable to carry your produce that far because the place to which God, your God, will choose to attach His Name is too far from where you live, because you have too much tithe-produce to carry that far—for God, your God, has blessed you with abundant crops—then you may do as follows:

25 You may assess the monetary value of your second-tithe produce and then assign its second-tithe status to money equal to that value. You must bind up the money onto which second-tithe status has been transferred in your hand, and go with it—instead of with the produce—to the place God, your God, will choose. The tithe-produce will revert to its pre-tithing status, and you may eat it anywhere you choose.

26 Once you reach the Temple city, you must purchase with that money whatever your soul desires—cattle, flocks, new wine or old wine, or whatever your soul desires, as long as it derives from the earth, even indirectly (excluding, for example, fish)—and you must eat what you have bought there, ‘before God, your God,’ i.e., anywhere within the city, and you must rejoice, you and your household.

All the aforesaid is in regard to agricultural tithes. You may not, however, redeem your animal tithes; if they are not blemished, you must take them to the Temple city and eat them there.113

27 As for the Levite who resides in your cities, you must not forsake him this year by neglecting to give him your first tithe, for he has neither any portion in the spoils of war nor any land-inheritance114 with you.

28 If, however, you do not manage to give the Levites your first tithes on time, then, after the end of each of the two sub-cycles of three years that together constitute the first six years of the seven-year sabbatical-year cycle—specifically, by the day preceding Passover in the fourth and seventh years of the seven-year cycle115—you must take whatever part of the first tithe of your crop that is left in that year from the preceding three years and place it outside the gates of your property in order to declare it ownerless and make it available for any Levite who might wish to take it.

In addition, should you neglect to bring the second tithe of the first or second years (or its monetary equivalent) to the Temple city, you must take it there and eat it (or whatever you buy with its monetary equivalent) by the day preceding Passover of the fourth year; similarly, should you neglect to take the second tithe of the fourth or fifth years (or its monetary equivalent) to the Temple city, you must take it there and eat it (or whatever you buy with its monetary equivalent) by the day preceding Passover of the seventh year.

29 In the third and sixth years of each sabbatical-year cycle, you must, as usual, give your first tithe to the Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance with you. However, in these years, instead of taking the second tithe with you to the Temple city in order to eat it there, you must instead give it to the poor: the resident alien, the orphan, and the widow who are in your cities. You must give a sufficient amount of both the first tithe and the poor tithe so that their recipients who come to receive it will eat and be satiated, so that God, your God, in reward for your generosity, will bless you in all the work of your hand that you do.