Rabbi Anderson's Divrei Torah

Shabbat shalom! As I mentioned earlier, Ki Teitzei is kind of a potpourri parsha – lots of different mitzvot, some of which follow logically from others, and some of which really really don’t. In Chapter 23, there’s a whole section about people who “shall [not] be admitted to the congregation of the Lord,” lo yavo… bi-kahal Hashem. First there are men with damaged genitalia, then there are mamzerim, a complicated category of people excluded by their parents’ illicit unions, then there are other people excluded by their ancestry: Ammonites and Moabites are forbidden, just like mamzerim, “even in the tenth generation” – by which the Torah means “forever” – because their ancestors not only refused the Israelites food and water on their journey, but also because hired Balaam to curse the Israelites. No matter how far removed an Ammonite or Moabite is from the kings who originally fought the Israelite wanderers, the Torah insists that they cannot enter the congregation of the Lord – or, in later language, they cannot join the Jewish people. Of course, the rabbinic tradition – written down centuries and even millennia after the Ammonites and Moabites ceased to exist as peoples – softened this message. First, they taught that the original ban only applied to men, so that they could reconcile it with Book of Ruth and the genealogy of King David; then, they attested that King Sennacherib of Assyria came and mixed up all the peoples of the Near East after his conquest, so that in their time, even people living in the locations of ancient Ammon and Moab could become Jews if they wished.[1] In halakhic theory, an Ammonite and a Moabite are forever prohibited from joining the Jewish people; in halakhic practice, nobody today qualifies as an Ammonite or a Moabite. Still, we are reading the Torah, not the Talmud, and it’s pretty clear that the text of Ki Tetzei holds a grudge.

It's all the more striking because the next lines of the Torah tell us lo tita’ev, “you shall not abhor,” two other nationalities: the Edomites and the Egyptians, whose children in the third generation are permitted to join the Jewish people. These groups also have a complicated history with Israel. The Egyptians, of course, enslaved the Israelites for generations and then pursued them into the Red Sea; they make the Ammonites and Moabites look pretty good! Meanwhile, the Edomites rejected Moses’ polite request back in Numbers 20 (14-21) to allow the Israelites passage through their land, and mustered their own soldiers, forcing an Israelite detour around Edom in order to avoid an unwanted battle. But the Torah tells us not to abhor an Edomite ki achicha hu, “for he is your kinsman,” and not to abhor an Egyptian “for you were a stranger in his land.” Unlike the shared responsibility of Ammon and Moab, the Edomites and Egyptians are permitted for very different reasons. The Egyptians actually did have a history of helping the Israelites, back in the days of Joseph; they provided food, water, and land for Jacob’s family of migrants, and something about that memory of aid – and its corresponding gratitude – seems to outweigh the more recent memories of enslavement and persecution. The Edomites, on the other hand, had never helped the Israelites; instead, they have an acknowledged tie of kinship – a closer kinship tie than the Ammonites and Moabites, who are descended from Abraham’s nephew Lot – and that means Edom and Israel are going to special pains not to antagonize each other. Even in the account in Numbers 20, Moses tells the Edomites that he speaks for “your brother Israel” (20:14), he offers to pay for any water they or their livestock may drink on the way through Edom, and when the Edomites reject his offer, the Israelites “turn away from them” (20:21) instead of attacking – as they attacked Ammon and Moab.

As early as the eleventh century, Rashi tries to explain the seeming discrepancy in the Torah’s logic here. “You shall not abhor an Edomite completely,” he editorializes, mikol va-kol, “although it would be fitting for you to abhor him because he went out against you with the sword.” Similarly, “you shall not abhor an Egyptian completely, even though they cast your male children into the river.”[2] These aren’t very satisfactory explanations, but Rashi closes them off with “therefore” – that is, these half-hearted justifications are why, in the next verse, the Edomites and Egyptians can only enter the congregation of the Lord after the third generation. Rashi clearly sees Israelite grievances against the Edomites and Egyptians as justified, but the Torah is presenting mitigating factors that make their ban less absolute than the ban against the Ammonites and Moabites.

But more modern commentators use these verses as a jumping-off point to explore questions about forgiveness. The nineteenth-century Netziv, writing about the parsha from the Russian Pale of Settlement under a series of anti-Jewish restrictions, nevertheless suggests that these verses are leading the Israelites in the direction of greater holiness. “The Holy One of Blessing wanted to train the souls of Israel toward elevation,” he writes, “by drawing closer to their relations.”[3] God is trying to bring the Israelites together with the Edomites, not for the Edomites’ sake, but for the sake of Israelite spiritual growth. Similarly, the Netziv continues, “an elevated soul pays back the good that is done and is not ungrateful,” which is why the Israelites must let in the third-generation Egyptians.[4] Thus, the Netziv concludes, “the Holy One of Blessing trained us with this commandment” – that is, the commandment not to abhor the Egyptians [and Edomites].[5] For the Netziv, the Torah is actually working to prevent the Israelites from holding permanent grudges, and to enable them to continue on a trajectory of spiritual growth.

Spiritual growth is precisely the point of the month of Elul, which we spend in various kinds of preparation for the holidays ahead. I suspect most of you have read or heard something about asking forgiveness from anyone you feel you have wronged in the past year, and perhaps something else about doing your best to forgive those who have wronged you. These are worthwhile traditions, and if they speak to you, that’s wonderful. But they also have limits:  practically speaking, not everyone will be willing to forgive you, and you may have very good reasons not to forgive someone who does not deserve it. Judaism doesn’t require infinite forgiveness; it’s fine not to forgive the Nazis, or the Squirrel Hill synagogue shooter, or even that really sadistic teacher we all had at some point in grade school. Go right ahead. This is actually the parsha that ends with the commandment to remember Amalek. But the Netziv’s reading of this Torah passage suggests that there should also be limits to past grudges – not because you need to forgive, but because you need to let go. It’s better for you.

Rabbi Shai Held, the President and Dean of the Hadar Institute in New York, draws another lesson from these verses. He points out that both Egypt and Edom had complicated pasts with Israel: Abraham received Egyptian slaves from Pharaoh as an apology for nearly marrying Sarah long before the Israelites were enslaved, and Jacob withheld needed food from his brother Esau – Edom – until Esau agreed to give up his birthright. Perhaps the cruelties of the Egyptians and Edomites later in the Torah are part of a longer chain reaction of trauma and suffering. But that doesn’t mean it has to go on forever. As Held writes, “Israel is prohibited from nurturing grievances against the Edomites… but even more fundamentally, it is forbidden from becoming hard-hearted as a result of its often harrowing past. The people's encounter with Edom on its way to the land of promise is intended as a warning and an awakening: when you are settled in your land, people who are hungry and exhausted may come looking for help. Treat them not as you yourselves were treated, but as you would have wanted to be treated. It would be all too easy for the past to teach you brutality; let it teach you kindness instead.”[6]

As we move toward the Days of Judgment and Atonement – that is to say, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur – I want to invite you all to take these Torah verses as a challenge. Perhaps each of us can elevate our souls by letting go – not forgetting – but letting go of the parts of the past that hold us back from acting as our best selves in the present. This is not a communal imperative; I don’t think it’s fair to speak for anyone else when I say that I am willing to stop holding a justified grudge, or when I say that I am going to simply stop thinking about someone who hasn’t done anything to earn that forgiveness. This it is an individual invitation to what the Netziv would describe as spiritual elevation, what other Jewish traditions  describe as spiritual accounting, heshbon ha-nefesh, and what I’m sure someone has already rebranded as spiritual self-care. Think about your own life, your own past, and even your family’s past – after all, the Torah is very interested in family here. There’s probably something not so great back there. Maybe it’s something someone else did to you; maybe it’s something you did to someone else; maybe it’s something someone did to someone else generations before your birth, just like the Ammonites and Moabites, the Edomites and the Egyptians. And then let that unkind past teach you kindness; let it teach you to welcome and include anyone who wants to join your community – whether that community is a synagogue, a club, a school system, or a country. Let it teach you to offer hospitality to people who need it, and let it teach you to offer compassion to them – and to yourself.