Torah Portion of the Week

Ki Teitzei כי תצא

Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19

Parshat Ki Teitzei ('When you go out') contains more commandments than any other parsha — 74 of the Torah's 613 mitzvot. It opens with the law of the beautiful captive in wartime and cascades through a vast range of civil, criminal, domestic, and ethical legislation: the rights of the firstborn of an unloved wife, the wayward and rebellious son, the obligation to bury the executed, returning lost property, the prohibition of cross-dressing, sending away the mother bird before taking eggs (shiluach ha-ken), building a parapet on a new roof, prohibitions against mixed plantings, mixed fabrics, and mixed teams of animals, the laws of marital fidelity and sexual offenses, exclusions from the assembly, camp hygiene, the escaped slave, prohibition of interest on loans to fellow Israelites, honoring vows, the laborer's right to eat from the field, divorce and remarriage restrictions, the newlywed's exemption from military service, kidnapping, treatment of debtors, prompt payment of wages, individual accountability for sin, justice for the stranger and orphan, the forgotten sheaf and gleanings for the poor, judicial flogging, the levirate marriage (yibum), honest weights and measures, and finally the command to remember Amalek's attack and blot out its memory.