Ki Teitzei

📜 The Story

Parashat Ki Teitzei is a very special parsha because it has more mitzvot in it than any other parsha in the whole Torah, 74 mitzvot in total! Moshe Rabbeinu keeps teaching the Jewish people all the rules Hashem wants them to follow when they live in the Land of Israel.

One beautiful mitzvah in this parsha is shiluach hakan. If someone finds a bird's nest with the mother bird sitting on eggs or with little chicks, the Torah says to send the mother away before taking the eggs or chicks. This teaches us to be kind and gentle, even to animals, and the Torah promises long, good days to those who keep this mitzvah.

The parsha also teaches us about hashavat aveda, returning lost things. If you find something that belongs to someone else, like a lost animal or a lost object, you must try to return it to its owner instead of keeping it. Hashem wants us to care about other people's things just like our own.

We also learn the mitzvah of maakeh, building a safety fence around a flat roof, so that nobody falls and gets hurt. This shows how much the Torah cares about keeping people safe. The parsha repeats the mitzvah of tzitzit too, the special strings tied on the corners of a four cornered garment, to remind us of all of Hashem's mitzvot.

Ki Teitzei also teaches us to treat workers fairly and pay them on time, to leave parts of the harvest, leket, shikcha and peah, for poor people to gather, and to use honest weights and measures in business. The parsha ends with the command to always remember what the nation of Amalek did to the Jewish people when they left Egypt, and never to forget it.