Two Minute Torah Podcast

Ki Teitzei 5771 by Avi Small

Hi. My name is Avi Small and I am an incoming first year at Northwestern University. Welcome to KOACH's Two Minute Torah, a project of the Department of Youth and Young Adult Activities of The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

We all know the classic story of the brothers Cain and Abel. Cain kills his brother in a fit of jealousy, "inventing" murder as it were, and is summarily punished by God. Famously, when God asks Cain to account for his brother, Cain answers "HaShomer Achi Anochi?" or, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Cain never gets an answer to his question.

This week's Parasha, Ki Teitzeh deals with related issues of communal responsibility and attempts to give a nuanced answer to Cain's question. Who is responsible for whom? Who is allowed to be a part of our community? Who must lend to their fellows in a time of need? Must the whole community account for the sins of one family's son? Are we truly our brothers' and our sisters' keepers?

This Parasha's answer to this question is "well, sort of." Nowhere is this ambivalence more noticeable than in Chapter 22, Verse 8. Here we read the law which states the following: if a person builds a house for himself, he must install a railing on top of the roof so that if someone else falls off the roof, it will not be the homeowner's fault.

At first glance, this looks to be a lovely statement on our shared communal bonds and the ways in which we all must stick together and look out for our brothers and sisters. But there is a more sinister subtext. The grammar of this verse – the use of the imperfect aspect and the word "ki" – suggests that whoever would have fallen off the roof would have done so no matter what, and the railing must be built simply for the homeowner to avoid culpability in the inevitable event of a tragic fall. When looked at in this light, the verse seems to be an amoral way to hedge one's bets to avoid accusations of criminal negligence.

Instead this law I think is a commentary on the limited but crucial power of the individual. We all have an obligation to build the railings around our roofs, to make sure that those in our community have a built-in network of support on which they can rely in their times of need. But we also must understand the inevitability that there will be always be those who fall over the railing, who slip between the cracks even when our communities give them the support we think they need. When someone falls off of our roof, this Mitzvah gives us room not to think of it as a personal failure.

But that's not really enough. We should never be content to sit back and watch someone fall off of our roof and think to ourselves "well, at least I built a railing!" We must always be building our railings higher, looking to find new ways to protect the people we invite onto our roofs. Only that way can we truly become our brothers' keepers. Shabbat Shalom.