Guided Jewish Kabbalah Meditation
Torah of Awakening:
Parshat Ki Tetzei
Parshah Summary – P’shat
Parshat Ki Tetzei contains seventy-four of the Torah’s 613 mitzvot. Included among them are the inheritance rights of the firstborn, the law of the rebellious son, burial and dignity of the dead, returning a lost object, sending away the mother bird before taking her eggs, 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 laws of having a special place outside the camp for going to the bathroom and covering up one’s waste with earth, the prohibition against turning in an escaped slave, the duty to pay a worker on time and to allow anyone working for you—human or animal— time to eat, the prohibition against charging interest on a loan, the laws of adultery and divorce, and the procedures for yibum (levirate marriage), which is the practice of a man marrying the wife of his deceased childless brother in order to give her children on his brother’s behalf, and halitzah – the ritual of “removing of the shoe” – in the case that the brother-in-law does not wish to marry her. The parshah concludes with the obligation to remember “what Amalek did to you on the road, on your way out of Egypt.”
Torah of Awakening | Jewish Meditation Teaching
כִּ֤י תִבְנֶה֙ בַּ֣יִת חָדָ֔שׁ וְעָשִׂ֥יתָ מַעֲקֶ֖ה לְגַגֶּ֑ךָ וְלֹֽא־תָשִׂ֤ים דָּמִים֙ בְּבֵיתֶ֔ךָ כִּֽי־יִפֹּ֥ל הַנֹּפֵ֖ל מִמֶּֽנּוּ... When you build a new house, make a parapet (ma-akeh) for your roof, and you won’t bring blood upon your house when one falls from it… - Devarim (Deuteronomy) 22:8, Parshat Ki Tetzei
Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev once came upon a wealthy man in the street who was known to be abusive with his money and power. “Oh, I envy you sir!” said Levi Yitzhak. The rasha (evil person) looked proudly at Levi Yitzhak, thinking that the rabbi wished he too could have all that money and power. But then Levi Yitzhak continued, “I envy you, because when you finally return, when you finally do t’shuvah, all your sins will be transformed into magnificent lights, and what a brilliant spectacle that will be! Oh sir, I envy you that brilliance!” This story brings with it a remarkable insight: that there are times when bad can actually become good, when failure becomes success. There is a hint is the parshah:
The fact that the Torah talks about preventing a person from falling off the roof by building a protective barrier implies that, indeed, people must have fallen off rooves; it was probably the failure to anticipate this danger that led to the law of making a מַעֲקֶ֖ה ma-akeh, or parapet. Similarly, when we become aware of our own misdeeds in the past, we too can build some kind of מַעֲקֶ֖ה ma-akeh, some kind of protective fence to prevent the same thing from happening again. There are two main types of misdeeds: mistakes and temporary insanity. A mistake would be: you’re up on the roof and you’re goofing around, not paying attention, or maybe you just miscalculated your footsteps and you fall of the roof, God forbid. Temporary insanity would be: you’re up on the roof with someone, you get into a fight and push them off the roof, God forbid. You didn’t intend to hurt them; you just got angry and lost control. The מַעֲקֶ֖ה ma-akeh prevents both types of scenarios. Whether accidental or by temporary insanity, the parapet prevents a person from falling. There’s a hint in the wording of the פָּסוּק pasuk: “one who falls” is יִפֹּ֥ל הַנֹּפֵ֖ל yipol hanofel –literally, “will fall, the falling.” The repeating of the verb “fall” is an idiom of emphasis, but also hints that the מַעֲקֶ֖ה ma-akeh can prevent both the accidental and the impulsive falling crisis. Similarly, we too can take measures to prevent ourselves from repeating our misdeeds, whether they be accidental or impulsive. To do that, we need to see our lives clearly, to contemplate, and then to create our own “parapets.” This is the transformative part of t’shuvah, the main practice in this month of Elul, leading to the Days of Awe. There is yet a third kind of misdeed, one that is far more difficult to prevent. This is the misdeed of habit, the misdeed that has become part of one’s personality and lifestyle – such as addiction, relationship dysfunction, abuse, and so on. The more emmeshed we become in the negative behavior, the less likely we are to change it. And yet, we absolutely can change it. This is the deepest and most transformative kind of t’shuvah. These three types of misdeeds – accidental, impulsive and intentional, are three main types of “sins” mentioned in the liturgy: חֵטְא het means “missing the mark,” as in shooting an arrow and missing the target. This is the accident. An עֲבֵרָה aveira is crossing over a boundary impulsively; you accept that there is a boundary, but you become possessed by strong feelings and you violate it. Lastly, an עָווֹן avon is a misdeed that is not a mistake and is not impulsive; it has become part of how you operate. The עָווֹן avon cannot be prevented by any kind of מַעֲקֶ֖ה ma-akeh; you can’t “trick yourself” out of this kind of misdeed. For the עָווֹן avon, you actually have to choose differently; you have to fully transform. These three kinds of “sin” are different from each other, but for a person who wants to become free from them, a single ingredient is needed. Whether we are merely setting a boundary to prevent mistakes and impulsivity, or we are seeking to overcome a deeply ingrained behavior, the root of all transformation on any level is the application of intentional awareness, so that we may return ourselves, that is, do תְשׁוּבָה t’shuvah, back into alignment with our highest intentions; this is meditation. Our highest intentions have their root in the one, single intention of simply being aware, right now. This root intention is represented by the sefirah of Keter. Keter means “crown,” hinting that the intention of Presence is above the rest of our experience. Just as a crown rests above the head, the intention to be aware is all-encompassing, beyond different points of view and opinion, because it is simply the awareness of what is and therefore includes everything in our experience, moment to moment. For this reason, Keter also represents Oneness, because from the perspective of pure awareness, there is always only one experience happening now, within the One Reality that we call God. In this sense, returning to Presence is really a return to God, and constitutes the inner dimension of t’shuvah. So, there are really two levels of תְשׁוּבָה t’shuvah: inner and outer. Outer תְשׁוּבָה t’shuvah, which is returning to intentional action is rooted in the inner תְשׁוּבָה t’shuvah of bringing our awareness out from its compulsive preoccupation with thought (which ordinarily reinforces our habitual patterns), and into our actual present moment experience, into our senses, into our bodies. In doing so, acceptance and forgiveness of the past is natural and spontaneous, as the pain we cause ourselves by holding on to the past becomes obvious to ourselves. And not only that, but the more we bring our attention to this moment, the more we can see that we are the awareness of this moment. We are openness, we are free, and we are in no way trapped by the past or by habit. In Presence, the power to choose reveals itself. Whenever I prepare to travel, I am always amazed that I can draw together the clothing, toiletries, books, computer equipment and so on, and pack them all into a single suitcase. It actually seems miraculous to me, that all these disparate items can come together into a single whole. But miraculous as that is, it is nothing compared to the miracle of Presence: that through the simple shift of opening to the immediacy of actual experience, all the disparate chaos comes together in the “suitcase” of the present moment; in Presence, there is no longer “me” and “that” – there is only the fullness of the what is, in all its richness, arising and falling away in the one field of awareness that we are. As it says in the haftara: בְּרֶ֥גַע קָטֹ֖ן עֲזַבְתִּ֑יךְ וּבְרַחֲמִ֥ים גְּדֹלִ֖ים אֲקַבְּצֵֽךְ... For a tiny moment I forsook you, but with a vast compassion I will gather you together… - Isaiah 54:7 When we “gather together” our awareness into the fullness of the present, there is a vastness and a benevolence – a רַחֲמִ֥ים גְּדֹלִ֖ים rakhamim g’dolim – that is our own nature, revealing all past misdeeds for what they really are: tiny moments of forgetfulness arising and disappearing into the vastness of Being…
Read past teachings on Ki Tetzei HERE
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