By Rabbi Eric L. Abbott
This week’s Torah portion is Ki Teitzei: Deuteronomy 21:10 – 25:19
At the end of “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Episode VI)” (spoilers for a 42-year-old cultural phenomenon!), moviegoers watch as the evil emperor and his apprentice Darth Vader confront the hero of the story (and Vader’s son), Luke Skywalker. As the emperor viciously attacks Luke, Vader looks back and forth between the two. Finally, Vader lunges toward the emperor and casts him down a pit, saving both Luke and the entire galaxy. In his life, Vader had done some horrible things and turned his eye on others’ crimes, but at that moment, he embraced the right path. He decided not to simply watch as bad things happened. Rather, Vader chose not to remain indifferent.
Perhaps Darth Vader took a page out of the Torah. In our weekly portion, Ki Teitzei, we find a litany of laws on everything from spousal relations to rebellious children, the burial of criminals to physical hygiene. Included in this list of commandments is an instruction to return your neighbor’s lost livestock or property (Deuteronomy 22:1–3). At the end of the passage, the Torah states clearly, “You must not remain indifferent” (v. 3). In modern terms, if you see that your neighbor’s dog has escaped from the yard, you do not walk by; you bring it back.
Like Darth Vader, the Torah reminds us that we cannot stand idly by as bad things happen; we cannot watch the world (or galaxy) fall apart and say, “This is not my problem.” We must not remain indifferent to the suffering of the world today. Instead, we are to stand up and speak out.
The challenge with this notion, of speaking out and acting, is that it may lead to an “us and them” mentality. How often have we felt or heard others speak this way: “You disagree with my politics? Then you must be an enemy and a traitor.” “Oh, you voted for that candidate? I can never look at you the same way.”
The Torah teaches us to avoid this black and white thinking. In commanding us to return the lost property, this week the Torah tells us to return the animal to our peer, while previously in Exodus, we return it to our enemy. Why use different words? The 13th-century Rabbi Bachya ben Asher explains that when we restore an animal to our enemy, we quench the fires of hatred within ourselves, and the enemy becomes a friend.
Even as we avoid indifference, even as we speak up and act, we cannot fall into the trap of seeing everyone as an enemy. Yes, we fight for what we believe, for the rights of the vulnerable and our democracy. Yet we also make sure that we see others as having been created b’tzelem Elokim, in God’s image.
I have seen this in my own synagogue, Bethesda Jewish Congregation. Not every community member agrees on domestic politics, the events in Israel-Palestine, how we choose new liturgical music, or any other host of issues. Despite these differences — or maybe because of them — we do not remain indifferent to each other or to the world; rather, we come together to create a caring community and to perform social action projects.
Even if we are not saving the entire galaxy, we each can act and speak out for the causes that matter to us and our tradition. As we do, not only will we not remain indifferent, but we may even turn an enemy into a friend.
Rabbi Eric L. Abbott is the spiritual leader of Bethesda Jewish Congregation in Bethesda, Maryland.
