Also recounted are the judicial procedures and penalties
for adultery, for the rape or seduction of an unmarried
girl, and for a husband who falsely accuses his wife of
infidelity. The following cannot marry a person of
Jewish lineage: a bastard, a male of Moabite or Ammonite
descent, a first- or second-generation Edomite or
Egyptian.Our Parshah also includes laws governing the
purity of the military camp; the prohibition to turn in
an escaped slave; the duty to pay a worker on time and
to allow anyone working for you - man or animal - to
"eat on the job"; the proper treatment of a debtor and
the prohibition against charging interest on a loan; the
laws of divorce (from which are also derived many of the
laws of marriage); the penalty of 39 lashes for
transgression of a Torah prohibition; and the procedures
for yibbum ("levirate marriage") of the wife of a
deceased childless brother or chalitzah ("removing of
the shoe") in the case that the brother-in-law does not
wish to marry her.
Ki Teitzei concludes with the obligation to remember
"what Amalek did to you on the road, on your way out of
Egypt.
FROM THE WORDS OF OUR SAGES
ON THE PARSHAH:
--For a hanged person is a curse to G-d (Deut. 21:23)
It is a degradation of the Divine King in whose image
man is created... This is analogous to a case of two
identical twin brothers. One became king, while the
other was arrested for robbery and hanged. Whoever saw
him, would say, "The king is hanging!" (Talmud,
Sanhedrin 46b)
--When you reap your harvest... and forget a sheaf in
the field, do not go back to fetch it; it shall be for
the stranger, for the fatherless and for the widow
(Deut. 24:19)
Certain opportunities and potentials are so lofty,
that they cannot be accessed by the conscious self; they
can only come about "by mistake." An example of this is
the mitzvah of shikchah, which can only be fulfilled by
forgetting. (The Chassidic Masters)
