Ki Teitzei

📜 The Story

Ki Teitzei has more mitzvot (commandments) than any other parsha in the Torah: 74 of them! Moses keeps teaching the Jewish people the rules God wants them to follow when they live in the Land of Israel.

One of them is called shiluach haken, sending away the mother bird. If you find a bird's nest with a mother bird sitting on her eggs or chicks, the Torah says to send the mother away before you take the eggs or chicks. This teaches us to be gentle, even with animals. The Torah promises a long, good life to people who keep this mitzvah.

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

Another mitzvah is the maakeh, a railing around a flat roof, so that nobody falls off and gets hurt. The Torah cares a lot about keeping people safe. The parsha also repeats the mitzvah of tzitzit, the strings tied to the corners of a four-cornered garment.

Ki Teitzei also teaches us to treat workers fairly and pay them on time. Farmers must leave some of the harvest for poor people to gather: the stalks that fall, the bundles they forget, and the corners of the field. Business must be honest, with fair weights and measures. The parsha ends with the command to always remember what the nation of Amalek did to the Jewish people after they left Egypt.