Parashat Ki Teitzei 5784

The first piece of Talmud I ever learned in the original was at Yeshivat Hadar on the Upper West Side. Twenty four years old with patchy Hebrew, I gingerly walked into the Bet Midrash and took a seat, daunted by the thick dictionaries, the seemingly solid, impenetrable blocks of Hebrew and aramaic on a single amud of Talmud. But, with a good hevruta, I was able to decode the first three words: בן סורר ומורה, the wayward and defiant son. 

This week’s Torah portion contains seventy four of the Torah’s 613 commandments, many of them bein adam l’chaveiro, about human relationships and the way we treat one another (no mistake that it is always read during Elul). An infamous commandment that emerges this week is, “If a man has a wayward and defiant son, who does not heed his father or mother and does not obey them even after they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the public place of his community.” There he is stoned to death by the men of the town. 

The Talmud’s entire chapter devoted to this case is often taught as an introduction to Talmud in the liberal world, because it shows the way the Talmud thinks. The perek opens with:

בן סורר ומורה מאימתי נעשה בן סורר ומורה 

The wayward and defiant son, from when is he made a wayward and defiant son? 

The Talmud narrows the timeframe considerably, and a Midrash said one can not be deemed a ben sorer u’moreh if outside a specific three month period. The Talmud continues to narrow the case: a son not a daughter, not a minor (since he would be exempt from mitzvot) but not an adult (because he wouldn’t be called a “son” but rather a “man”). His parents, who “take a hold of him” in the Torah text, need to be the same height and have the same voice, since the verse refers to them speaking in unison. Then the Talmud goes on to explain the words “wayward” and “defiant” which clearly mean consuming a certain amount of stolen meat and wine, maybe even from a festive meal. And maybe the meat has to be raw, showing how savage and addicted he is. Pages and pages of dissecting each word, narrowing the case so severely that even the Talmud admits:

בן סורר ומורה לא היה ולא עתיד להיות

This case never was and never will be in the future.

ולמה נכתב

So, why is it written both here and in the Torah?

דרוש וקבל שכר

So that you may expound upon it and receive reward.

This is where people usually stop reading, and it’s where we stopped when I was at Hadar in 2011. The discussions in shiur revolved around the Talmudic thinking modeled in this perek–how the rabbis see something unjust in the Torah and instead of simply erasing it, they engage with it, wrestle with it for pages and pages, often using the Torah against itself to make a point. The takeaway, when concluding the text here, is that perhaps we can use the same type of halachic reasoning when faced with other injustices in the Torah–not erasing them, but rather engaging with them and allowing our progressive values to interface with the text. 

When I learned this text a second time with my teacher, Rabbi Benay Lappe, she had us continue one more line. Eight words that change the whole game:

 אמר ר' יונתן אני ראיתיו וישבתי על קברו

Rabbi Yonatan says: This is not so, as I saw one. I was once in a place where a stubborn and rebellious son was condemned to death, and I even sat on his grave after he was executed.

[Before I go on to share Benay’s chop on this piece, I want to just ask you: why do you think both of these opinions are recorded in the Talmud? Why do the Rabbis think it is important to both share that it never happened/will happen, and that R’ Yonatan sat on his grave?*]

So Benay concludes her teaching of this text by adding that Rabbi Yonatan was a Kohen, which means that according to Torah law, he could only be present at the grave of one of seven immediate family members. Perhaps his own son, or his own brother. This fact transforms his statement to a cry, a scream. Begging to be heard, begging to be seen, Rabbi Yonatan is saying–do not look away from the violence that this text has caused. I saw it. I lived it. 

I think the stama kept this piece from R’ Yonatan in to remind us that as we continue to work to grow into better people, and God willing create a better world, to not look away from the pain that has been caused. As we move deeper into the month of Elul, and as we work on repairing our relationships ben adam l’chaveiro, may we have the expansiveness to embrace the dual responsibility our text points to: to look towards the future we want to build–one based on compassion, flexibility, and wholeness–while at the same time not ignoring the pain, of the past and present, in our lives and in the world.

Shabbat shalom