Parshat Ki Teitzei
Drew - August 21, 2026
This week's parsha is Ki Teitzei. It contains more "laws" than any other Torah portion. I don't like the word "law" here though because the terms only apply to some people who have entered a special agreement with G-d. Those people are us, the Jews. The contract terms I am going to talk about tonight relate to how we are supposed to behave towards people who aren't part of the contract.
Deuteronomy 23:4-5; 7 (4) No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted into the congregation of GOD; no descendants of such, even in the tenth generation, shall ever be admitted into the congregation of GOD, (5) because they did not meet you with food and water on your journey after you left Egypt, and because they hired Balaam son of Beor, from Pethor of Aram-naharaim, to curse you. … (7) You shall never concern yourself with their welfare or benefit as long as you live.
Initially, this was only applied to the Ammonite and Moabite men, which is important when discussing Ruth and the subsequent genealogy of David.
However, by the second century at the latest, this whole commandment was rendered practically irrelevant. The Talmud records that Rabbi Yehoshua taught that since an Assyrian king hundreds of years before had "scrambled all the nations," reflected in Isaiah with a line on removing the bounds of the nations, we simply presume forevermore that a non-Jew is majority descended of the permissible nations and ergo all people may convert.1
Deuteronomy 23:8-9 (8) You shall not abhor an Edomite, for they are your kin. You shall not abhor an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in their land. (9) Children born to them may be admitted into the congregation of GOD in the third generation.
The Netziv taught that G-d wanted to acclimate Israel to the refinements of the soul, and as a soul becomes more exalted it draws closer to that which it is close to. Therefore, G-d commanded Israel to remember the ties of brotherhood with the Edomites.
We remember being strangers in the land of Egypt, not slaves. We remember the hospitality shown when Jacob went down in a time of famine, not the harm done for generations.
Deuteronomy 24:20 When you beat down the fruit of your olive trees, do not go over them again; that shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.
The commandment likewise applies to vineyards and other fruitbearing trees for reasons explicated elsewhere.
Starting with some Mishnah:
Due to the construction of the term about the olives, that this applies to all Jews in Eretz Yisrael and in the diaspora, and that this then applies to all similar rules around gifts to the poor.2
The poor who may take this gift include non-Jews as well as Jews.3
Further, midrash teaches that the early sages would beat down the fruit rather than hand picking them in order to leave generous amounts on the tree. The verse implies that one should not flatter themselves at the poor's expense, and that one who attempts to leave the remainder to only certain poor, it is as if he is robbing the poor.4
Having recited all of that, what do we have?
We have rabbinic distancing from antiquated beliefs around ethnicity, we have commandments to remember kinship with others, to remember the hospitality of those who even later wronged us most severely, and universal care for the needy wherever we are and whoever may be in need.
But the verses are still there. The idea of treating individuals of specific nations harshly is in the plain text. So the question I am going to pose to you all is: what do we do with this? If every successive generation from Sinai is less in tune with the Torah as it was given, what do we do with the gradual shift of the rabbis away from the plain text's tribalism? If we want to walk away from the text completely for some of its worst parts, how do we instead find the gall to say "actually, we'll do the opposite and say it's the same" as the rabbis before us did? And how do we move from the plain words towards a place of treating everyone with dignity?