The Future Through the Prism of the Past - Devarim Through the Prism of Bereishit

 The Future Through the Prism of the Past

Devarim Through the Prism of Bereishit

 

Rabbi Ari Kahn

 

The first law of the parashah appears almost ordinary until one listens carefully to its language.

 

A man goes out to war, sees a woman among the captives, desires her, and takes her. The Torah then regulates what follows. After a month of mourning she may become his wife. If later he no longer wants her, he must let her go free. He may not sell her. The reason given is brief and severe:

 

         תַּחַת אֲשֶׁר עִנִּיתָהּ  

         because you have abused her  

 (Devarim 21:14)

 

The word innita is not neutral. It names violation. Readers of Bereishit may find themselves hearing another story in the background, one in which a young woman is likewise described as having been innuyah (Bereishit 34:2). The connection is not yet clear. But as the parashah continues, a pattern begins to emerge.

 

Only a few verses later the Torah turns to another domestic arrangement:

 

         כִּי־תִהְיֶיןָ לְאִישׁ שְׁתֵּי נָשִׁים הָאַחַת אֲהוּבָה וְהָאַחַת שְׂנוּאָה  

         If a man has two wives, one loved and one hated 

         (Devarim 21:15)

 

The language is already charged. The Torah does not say “one preferred and one less preferred.” It does not say “one more beloved than the other.” It chooses the stark polarity of ahuvah and senu’ah — loved and hated. These are not soft relative terms. They are absolute.

 

Why does the Torah begin a law of inheritance with emotional language at all? Inheritance is ordinarily a matter of status, birth order, and property. Legal texts usually speak the language of rights, not of feeling. Here the law opens with the inner life of the household. One wife is loved. The other is hated. The legal rule that follows is inseparable from that emotional reality. The man may not allow his private preference to determine the public rights of the firstborn.

 

The Torah could have written the law without any reference to love or hatred. It could have simply stated that the firstborn receives a double portion regardless of the mother’s status. Instead it insists on naming the emotional distortion that threatens the legal order. The household is already divided by feeling. The law refuses to let that division rewrite the rights of the children.

 

There is something familiar here. A distant memory from an earlier book. A complicated situation that quickly deteriorated. A man who never planned it ended up with two wives. That man was Yakov. The first wife felt hated; the second was loved. And with remarkably similar language Yakov displaced his older son — the son of the “hated” wife — and favored the son of the loved wife. That son is Yosef. The Torah will soon make the connection unmistakable.

 

The reason for protecting the firstborn is given in a single phrase:

 

         כִּי־הוּא רֵאשִׁית אֹנוֹ  

         for he is the first of his strength  

         (Devarim 21:17)

 

The phrase is rare. It appears in only one other place in the Torah.

 

When Yakov gathers his sons at the end of his life, he turns first to Reuven:

 

         רְאוּבֵן בְּכֹרִי אַתָּה כֹּחִי וְרֵאשִׁית אוֹנִי  

 Reuben, you are my firstborn, my strength and the first of my vigor  

         (Bereishit 49:3)

 

The same two words. Reshit ono.

 

In Yakov’s mouth the phrase is part of a complex reckoning. Reuven is acknowledged as the firstborn, the beginning of his father’s strength, and then immediately displaced. The privileges that should have followed from that designation are withdrawn. The language that once marked status becomes the language that accompanies loss.

 

In Devarim the same phrase is turned in the opposite direction. It is no longer the preface to displacement. It is the reason displacement is forbidden. The son of the hated wife is the firstborn and therefore may not be pushed aside.

 

The parallel is not merely lexical. The sequence itself is suggestive. In Devarim the Torah first establishes the existence of a loved wife and a hated wife, and only then turns to the status of the firstborn. In Bereishit the same order appears. Yakov loves Rachel more than Leah. Leah is described by the Torah as senu’ah (hated) (Bereishit 29:31). Reuven is her firstborn. And when the time comes to assign the privileges of the firstborn, they pass elsewhere.

 

The Torah in Devarim refuses the very move Yakov made.

 

The son of the hated wife may not be pushed aside. The phrase that once accompanied displacement is now deployed to prevent it. What is being protected is not only the legal status of the firstborn. What is being protected is the integrity of the household against the distortions of favoritism. The law refuses to allow private love and private hatred to rewrite the public order of the family.

 

Yosef will soon make another appearance in this parashah. But already the pattern is beginning to surface. Ki Teitzei is suddenly reminding us of Bereishit, yet not in a nostalgic way. The stories are resurfacing as law. It is almost as if the dysfunctionality of Bereishit is itself inspiring the laws of Devarim.

 

The reminder grows stronger a few chapters later.

 

The Torah turns to a crime that seems, at first, straightforward:

 

         כִּי־יִמָּצֵא אִישׁ גֹּנֵב נֶפֶשׁ מֵאֶחָיו מִבְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְהִתְעַמֶּר־בּוֹ וּמְכָרוֹ  

If a man is found kidnapping one of his brothers from among the children of Israel, and he mistreats him and sells him  

         (Devarim 24:7)

 

The language is careful. The victim is not described merely as a person. He is “one of his brothers.” The crime is framed through the language of fraternity. The punishment is death.

 

The immediate reaction is disbelief. Who would ever kidnap and sell his own brother?

 

The answer is uncomfortable.

 

Yosef’s brothers.

 

A group of brothers seize one of their own, strip him of his garment, cast him into a pit, and ultimately sell him. They justify the act to themselves with a single phrase:

 

         כִּי אָחִינוּ בְשָׂרֵנוּ הוּא  

 for he is our brother, our own flesh  

 (Bereishit 37:27)

 

The irony is devastating. The very category that should have protected Yosef becomes the argument used to spare his life while still selling him. The same category — brother — is now elevated by the law into an absolute prohibition.

 

What is striking is not simply that the narrative and the law share a theme. It is that the law seems to answer the narrative. In Bereishit the brothers treat their brother as property. In Devarim the Torah refuses to allow any such treatment. The story is not being retold. It is being corrected.

 

The same corrective impulse appears elsewhere in the parashah.

 

A man may not take his father’s wife (Devarim 23:1). The prohibition is absolute and without qualification. In the background stands one of the most terse and troubling verses in Bereishit. While Yakov is away, Reuven goes and lies with Bilhah, his father’s concubine (Bereishit 35:22). The Torah records the act in a single line and then falls silent. No motive is given. No immediate consequence is described. Only much later, when Yakov gathers his sons, does the memory return: Reuven is told that he ascended his father’s bed and thereby forfeited the primacy that should have been his (Bereishit 49:4). Rabbinic tradition, uneasy with the plain sense, reads the episode as an assertion of authority rather than a sexual transgression. Yet the language of the narrative remains. A boundary belonging to the father was crossed by the son. In Devarim that boundary is placed beyond negotiation. What once occurred within the family is now forbidden by law.

 

A delayed vow is likewise forbidden. The Torah insists that a person who makes a vow must not postpone its fulfillment (Devarim 23:22). The words are direct: do not be late in paying what you have vowed. In the background stands Yakov at Bet-El. Fleeing from Esav, alone and uncertain, he makes a vow (Bereishit 28:20–22). If God will be with him, protect him on the way, give him bread to eat and clothing to wear, and return him in peace to his father’s house, then the Lord will be his God, the stone he has set up will become a house of God, and he will give a tenth of all he receives. The conditions are eventually met. Children are born. Flocks multiply. Wealth accumulates. Years pass. The vow remains unfulfilled. Only when God appears and explicitly commands him to return to Bet-El and complete what he promised does Yakov act (Bereishit 35:1–3). The law in Devarim refuses to leave such delay possible. What was once corrected by divine intervention is now required of every individual from the outset.

 

Even the rare phrase “the mother with the children” reappears. The Torah forbids taking the mother bird together with her young (Devarim 22:6–7). The formulation is distinctive and almost unexpected in a legal context. In Bereishit the same unusual pairing surfaces in a moment of acute fear. Yakov, preparing for his encounter with Esav, divides his camp and prays. He is afraid that his brother will come and strike him, “the mother with the children” (Bereishit 32:12). The phrase captures the totality of the threatened destruction — not only the parent but the entire dependent family. In Devarim the same language is turned into an ethic of restraint. What was once a cry of terror within the family becomes a permanent prohibition against eradicating the source together with what depends upon it.

 

The concern with brothers does not end with the prohibition against kidnapping or the protection of the firstborn.

 

Later in the parashah the Torah turns to a different obligation between brothers. When a man dies without children, his brother is required to marry the widow and raise up offspring in the name of the deceased (Devarim 25:5–10). The central concern is continuity: the dead brother’s name must not be erased from Israel.

 

The language recalls an earlier family tragedy.

 

After the death of Er, Yehudah tells Onan:

 

וְהָקֵם זֶרַע לְאָחִיךָ  

Raise up offspring for your brother 

(Bereishit 38:8)

 

Onan is willing to take Tamar, but he deliberately prevents the continuation of his brother’s line. The act is described with unusual moral clarity: he knew the seed would not be his, and he spilled it on the ground (Bereishit 38:9). What is refused in that moment is precisely the responsibility the Torah will later require.

 

The law of yibbum transforms that refusal into obligation. A brother may no longer evade responsibility for his brother’s continuity. What failed in Bereishit becomes required in Devarim.

 

The great problem of Bereishit is failed brotherhood. Cain and Hevel. Yishmael and Yitzchak. Yakov and Esav. Yosef and his brothers. Again and again the first book of the Torah returns to the question of what one brother owes another, and again and again the answer is failure.

 

One by one the episodes surface. Not as nostalgia. Not as literary allusion for its own sake. They become the raw material from which the laws are formed.

Seen against the repeated failures of Bereishit, the various laws that insist on brotherhood begin to feel almost cathartic. What was once left unresolved in the family stories is now given legal force.

 

Achikha — your brother — becomes one of the most insistent words in the parashah. Return your brother’s lost animal. Help him raise the fallen beast. Do not ignore him. Do not kidnap him. Do not take interest from him. Perform yibbum for him so that his name is not erased. (see Devarim 22:1–4; 23:20; 24:7; 25:5–10).

 

What does a brother owe a brother?

 

Bereishit asks the question in the most painful ways. Ki Teitzei answers it. The failures that dominate the first book of the Torah become the legal curriculum of this parashah. The loved and the hated, the displaced firstborn, the sold brother, the delayed vow, the sharp dealing that hardens into generational hatred — all of it is turned into obligation.

 

The stories are not being repeated. They are being legislated.

 

That claim, once it settles, raises a further question.

 

Is this phenomenon unique to Ki Teitzei? The density of parallels in this one parashah is striking. Nowhere else in Devarim does the Torah seem so saturated with the unfinished business of Bereishit. The obvious conclusion would be that Ki Teitzei is exceptional — a concentrated meditation on the failures of the covenantal family and their conversion into law.

 

The argument thus far has focused on Ki Teitzei because the evidence is concentrated and difficult to miss. But once these connections become visible, they begin appearing elsewhere as well.

 

The question is no longer whether Ki Teitzei is rereading Bereishit.

The question is whether Ki Teitzei is part of a larger pattern running through the final chapters of Devarim.

 

Looking backward, the language of inheritance itself begins to demand attention.

 

At the end of Ekev the Torah says:

 

כִּי אַתֶּם עֹבְרִים אֶת־הַיַּרְדֵּן לָבֹא לָרֶשֶׁת אֶת־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר ה' אֱלֹהֵיכֶם נֹתֵן לָכֶם וִירִשְׁתֶּם אֹתָהּ וִישַׁבְתֶּם־בָּהּ  

For you are about to cross the Jordan to enter and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you; you shall inherit it and settle in it.  

         (Devarim 11:31)

 

The next verse, the opening of Re’eh, shifts the language slightly but decisively:

 

         אֵלֶּה הַחֻקִּים וְהַמִּשְׁפָּטִים אֲשֶׁר תִּשְׁמְרוּן לַעֲשׂוֹת בָּאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר נָתַן ה' אֱלֹהֵי אֲבֹתֶיךָ לְךָ לְרִשְׁתָּהּ  

These are the statutes and the judgments that you shall carefully observe in the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to inherit.  

         (Devarim 12:1)

 

The difference is quiet and exact. First “the Lord your God.” Then “the Lord, the God of your fathers.” The land is no longer described only as a gift from the God of the present generation. It is an inheritance that traces back to the fathers — and, above all, to Avraham.

 

What is the first law that follows this shift in language? The destruction of the pagan altars, the sacred pillars, the Asherim, and the images of the gods of the land (Devarim 12:2–3). The sequence is deliberate. The original claim to the land is bound to the iconoclastic Avraham. To inherit what was promised to him, his descendants must reenact the foundational act of his spiritual life: the rejection of idolatry. The land is given, but it is earned by clearing it of the rival claims that Avraham himself refused.

 

Yet there is a further layer.

 

Just before revealing the impending judgment of Sedom, God explains why Avraham was chosen:

 

 כִּי יְדַעְתִּיו לְמַעַן אֲשֶׁר יְצַוֶּה אֶת־בָּנָיו וְאֶת־בֵּיתוֹ אַחֲרָיו וְשָׁמְרוּ דֶּרֶךְ ה' לַעֲשׂוֹת צְדָקָה וּמִשְׁפָּט  

 For I have known him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice.            

(Bereishit 18:19)

 

The contrast is sharp. Sedom represents a civilization defined by social corruption. Avraham is chosen because he will teach the opposite: tzedakah u-mishpat. That internal divine comment echoes forward into the laws of Devarim. The society that Avraham’s descendants are commanded to create is one of justice — and more justice. Tzedek tzedek tirdof -Greatly pursue justice (Devarim 16:20). The personal virtue for which the father was chosen becomes the public structure his children must build.

 

Looking still further into Re’eh, one phrase begins to demand attention.

 

In Re’eh the Torah returns again and again to a single formulation:

 

 הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר יִבְחַר ה׳

         the place that the Lord will choose 

         (Devarim 12:5, 12:11, 12:14, 12:18, 12:21, 12:26, and repeatedly thereafter)

 

The repetition is insistent. The phrase appears with a frequency that cannot be accidental. The Torah could have spoken of a sanctuary. It could have spoken of a Temple, or a house, or a dwelling place for the divine name. Instead it keeps returning to something more austere and less defined: “the place.”

 

Why this language? Why not name the institution? Why leave the destination so carefully unspecified?

 

We know where the story will end. One day the place will be identified with Jerusalem, with Har HaMoriah, with the Temple itself. Yet Devarim consistently refuses to speak in those terms. Instead, it insists on a more primitive and elusive formulation: ha-makom.

 

The choice is significant. Before Israel can arrive at the place, it must learn how to seek it.

 

The insistence on an as-yet-unidentified place creates a particular kind of religious posture. Israel is not being directed to a building that already exists. It is being directed to search, to wait, to recognize. The place will be chosen. Until then, the people must live with the unfinished quality of the command.

 

There is, however, an earlier story behind this language. That same place had already been sought, found, and consecrated.

 

When Avraham is commanded to offer his son, he is sent to the land of Moriah, but the mountain itself is not identified. The Ramban (Bereishit 23:2) notes that Avraham seems to have reached the region quickly; what remained was the search for the precise location. The destination had to be found, not merely reached. For three days the narrative slows. The destination remains open. Only after the prolonged movement does he lift his eyes and see:

 

         וַיַּרְא אֶת־הַמָּקוֹם מֵרָחֹק  

 He saw the place from afar.  

         (Bereishit 22:4)

 

The chapter returns repeatedly to ha-makom (Bereishit 22:3, 22:4, 22:9, 22:14). The word accumulates until it becomes impossible to ignore. The place is not simply a geographical point. It is something discovered through obedience, patience, and seeking.

 

In Devarim that movement receives a name:

 

         לְשִׁכְנוֹ תִדְרְשׁוּ וּבָאתָ שָׁמָּה  

 You shall seek His dwelling place and come there.  

 (Devarim 12:5)

 

The verse turns the literary observation into a textual claim. Re’eh itself explicitly commands seeking. The movement is not imposed on the text; it is the text.

 

As in Ki Teitzei, the Torah in Re’eh never needs to name the earlier story. Avraham is not mentioned. Moriah is not mentioned. The Akeidah is not retold. The repeated word is enough. The reader who knows Bereishit hears the echo. The reader who does not yet know it is nevertheless being trained in the same posture: the willingness to move toward a place that has not yet been fully revealed.

 

Centuries later the same pattern reappears, and again the site is not handed over at once.

 

David seeks the place where God’s presence will permanently dwell (II Shmuel 24:18–25; I Divrei HaYamim 21:18–26). The search is not abstract. After the plague that follows the census, the prophet Gad directs him to the threshing floor of Aravnah the Jebusite. David goes up. He sees the angel. He buys the site. Only then does the location of the future Temple become clear. The place is not assigned in advance. It is discovered through crisis, obedience, and the willingness to recognize what has been shown.

 

Avraham searches for the mountain. David searches for the Temple site. Re’eh commands Israel to seek “the place.” In each case the destination is withheld long enough for the search itself to become part of the religious experience. Holiness is not simply received. It is found.

 

The language of Re’eh is therefore doing more than designating a future sanctuary. It is cultivating a particular way of standing before the divine: attentive, unfinished, still in motion toward a place that will be shown.

 

Just as Ki Teitzei transformed the failures of Bereishit into law, Re’eh seems to transform one of Bereishit’s defining spiritual journeys into a national religious ideal. Before Israel can arrive at the place, it must learn from the first person who searched for it.

 

The movement is therefore sequential and cumulative.

 

First the land is claimed through the rejection of idols — the inheritance of Avraham the iconoclast.  

Then the people are trained to seek the place — the inheritance of Avraham the seeker.  

Then they are commanded to institutionalize righteousness and justice — the inheritance of Avraham the teacher of tzedakah u-mishpat.

 

Only after these inheritances does Ki Teitzei turn to the failures of the family that followed him, transforming those failures into obligation.

 

Before Israel can inherit the Land, it must first inherit the man to whom the Land was promised — and learn from the family that became a people.

 

One naturally wonders how far back this process extends.

 

The answer may be further than Avraham himself.

 

Ki Tavo opens with the mitzvah of bikkurim (Devarim 26:1–11). The Israelite farmer enters the Land, gathers the first fruits of his field, places them in a basket, and carries them to the place that the Lord will choose. He does not merely send the fruit. He goes up. The bringing of the first fruits is a pilgrimage to the very place whose search has been commanded since Re’eh.

 

There, before the priest, he recites not a declaration of gratitude alone, but a declaration of memory. The words reach back through the entire covenantal story: the wandering Aramean, the descent into Egypt, the affliction, the cry, the dramatic rescue, and at last the entrance into the land flowing with milk and honey (Devarim 26:5–9). The individual harvest is placed inside the collective history. Possession is transformed into gratitude. The fruit is no longer treated as something seized, but as something received.

 

At first glance there is nothing unusual about this. The ritual celebrates gratitude for the Land and acknowledgment of God as its source.

 

Yet one detail stands out.

 

The command revolves around the first fruit.

 

The phrase invites a question: where did we last encounter the fruit of the Land in such a foundational setting?

 

The answer takes us back beyond Avraham, beyond Yakov, all the way to the beginning.

 

In the opening chapters of the Torah a human being stands before a tree whose fruit is desirable. She takes from it and eats (Bereishit 3:6). The act is decisive. What follows is exile from the place that had been given, and a lasting estrangement between humanity and the ground from which it was formed. The first relationship to the fruit of the land is one of taking.

 

Ki Tavo reverses the direction.

 

The farmer does not take. He brings. He does not grasp. He acknowledges. He does not remain in the field with what he has harvested. He carries the first of it up to the place and places it within a story larger than himself. The movement is no longer toward the self. It is toward God, toward memory, and toward the recognition that the land and its produce are received rather than seized.

 

The contrast extends beyond the act itself. The story of Eden culminates in expulsion from sacred space. The ritual of bikkurim is performed upon entering and settling the Land. What began with exile concludes with return.

 

When the same declaration is later read at the Seder table, Jewish memory expands it still further. The Haggadah begins the telling not with the Aramean, but earlier: “Our ancestors were idolaters, and now HaMakom has brought us near to His service.”

 

The choice of name is striking. The Haggadah does not say “the Holy One” or “God.” It says HaMakom — the Place. The very term that Devarim has been repeating throughout Re’eh now becomes the divine name that frames the entire story of redemption. The rejection of idolatry, the foundational act associated with Avraham, is restored to the beginning of the narrative, and it is HaMakom who draws the people near.

 

The pilgrimage with the first fruits therefore gathers the entire arc that Devarim has been tracing: the iconoclasm, the search for the place, the demand for justice, the repair of the family, and finally the reversed relationship to the fruit of the Land itself.

 

Seen in this light, Ki Tavo carries the movement of Devarim’s final chapters to its furthest point. Re’eh recalls Avraham’s rejection of idolatry and his search for holiness. Shoftim recalls Avraham’s vision of justice. Ki Teitzei recalls the trials and failures of the covenantal family. Ki Tavo reaches back even further, to humanity’s first relationship with God’s world, and then gathers the whole story into a single act of pilgrimage and declaration.

 

Before Israel enters the Land, Moshe takes them back through the stories that made them who they are. Avraham’s search, Avraham’s faith, Avraham’s justice, the struggles of the covenantal family, and finally humanity’s earliest encounter with God’s world all become part of the preparation for national life.

 

The stories are not being repeated. They are being legislated. The future is viewed through the prism of the past.

Bidirectional Ethics in Parashat Ki Teitzei

 Bidirectional Ethics in Parashat Ki Teitzei

Rabbi Ari Kahn

 

The opening of Parashat Ki Teitzei is morally difficult. A man goes out to war, sees a woman among the captives, and the Torah records his desire:

 

         וְרָאִיתָ בַּשִּׁבְיָה אֵשֶׁת יְפַת־תֹּאַר וְחָשַׁקְתָּ בָהּ וְלָקַחְתָּ לְךָ לְאִשָּׁה  

 

And you see among the captives a woman of beautiful form, and you desire her, and you would take her for yourself as a wife. (Devarim 21:11)

 

Rashi explains that the Torah is speaking here against the yetzer hara. Had the relationship been forbidden outright, the man would have taken her in prohibition. The Torah therefore makes room for a concession that would otherwise have no place in its legal system.

 

The difficulty is not incidental. Later in the same passage the Torah itself describes the woman’s experience with the language of affliction:

 

וְהָיָה אִם־לֹא חָפַצְתָּ בָּהּ וְשִׁלַּחְתָּהּ לְנַפְשָׁהּ וּמָכֹר לֹא־תִמְכְּרֶנָּה בַּכֶּסֶף לֹא־תִתְעַמֵּר בָּהּ תַּחַת אֲשֶׁר עִנִּיתָהּ      

 

And it shall be, if you do not desire her, that you shall send her away for yourself; you shall not sell her for money, you shall not mistreat her, because you have afflicted her. (Devarim 21:14)

 

She is not treated as property. Once the process is complete she becomes a wife, with the legal standing the Torah grants a wife. That elevation is itself a form of restraint built into the concession. Yet the starting point remains difficult.

 

What Rashi develops from the sequence is less a legal justification than a theory of moral psychology. Immediately after the laws of the captive woman comes the case of the man with two wives, one loved and one hated. Rashi reads the juxtaposition as causal:

 

ולקחת לך לאשה – לא דברה תורה אלא כנגד יצר הרע... אבל אם נשאה סופו להיות שונאה... וסופו להוליד ממנה בן סורר ומורה, לכך נסמכו פרשיות הללו  

 

“And you would take her for yourself as a wife” – the Torah spoke only against the evil inclination... but if he marries her, in the end he will hate her... and in the end he will beget from her a stubborn and rebellious son; therefore these sections were juxtaposed. (Rashi, Devarim 21:11)

 

The repeated use of the word sofo (in the end or eventually) marks the logic with precision. The Torah has already seen where the trajectory ends and intervenes while there is still time. The same pressure appears in the laws of the ben sorer umoreh itself. The young man has not yet committed capital crimes, yet the Torah judges him according to his end:

 

 בן סורר ומורה נהרג על שם סופו... אמרה תורה ימות זכאי ואל ימות חייב  

 

The stubborn and rebellious son is put to death on account of his end... the Torah said, Let him die while still innocent, and let him not die guilty. (Rashi, Devarim 21:18)

 

Here the Torah confronts the yetzer not with abstract prohibition alone, but with the concrete future generated by present desire. An act is never only what it is at the moment it occurs; it already contains the direction in which it is moving.

 

The law of the mamzer introduces a different, and more troubling, form of intergenerational consequence. Here the future generation does not represent a predicted danger; it bears a status produced by the prior generation’s transgression. The two cases belong in the same discussion of how present action reaches beyond itself, yet they are not simply parallel forms of preventive judgment.

 

The same forward-looking perspective appears in the positive sequence that begins with the commandment of sending away the mother bird. Rashi reads the commandments that follow as progressive opportunities:

 

כי תבנה בית חדש – אם קיימת מצות שלוח הקן סופך לבנות בית חדש ותקיים מצות מעקה, שמצוה גוררת מצוה  

 

“When you build a new house” – if you have fulfilled the commandment of sending away the mother bird, you will in the end build a new house and fulfill the commandment of the railing, for one commandment leads to another. (Rashi, Devarim 22:8)

 

The repeated sofo does more than describe what will happen. It changes the way the Torah asks us to read the present.

 

A different claim appears a few verses later, in the laws concerning the hanged body. The Torah requires that the body not remain overnight, for a hanged person is a curse of God. Rashi cites the baraita:

 

משל לשני אחים תאומים... אחד נעשה מלך ואחד יצא לליסטיות ונתלה, כל הרואה אותו אומר המלך תלוי  

 

It is comparable to two twin brothers... one became king and the other turned to banditry and was hanged; whoever sees him says, “The king is hanging.” (Rashi, Devarim 21:23, citing Sanhedrin 46b)

 

Even the criminal still bears the divine image. Leaving him suspended is a desecration of the King. Radak’s formulation can be read as pressing the point further: violence against another human being is not only destruction of God’s handiwork but also a deformation of the perpetrator’s own humanity. The Alter of Slabodka draws the ethical conclusion. Contemplation of human greatness and the holiness of the divine image should itself generate reverence and moral elevation. When the dignity of the human being is fully internalized, certain acts become unthinkable.

 

This recognition of tzelem Elokim does not stand apart as another direction. It supplies the center from which both memory and anticipation become obligatory. Without an internalized sense of human dignity, the past remains mere history and the future remains mere calculation. The tzelem anchors both in the present.

 

The text then turns explicitly to memory. Again and again the text commands zachor. Remember what God did to Miriam. Remember what Amalek did on the way. Most insistently:

 

 וְזָכַרְתָּ כִּי־עֶבֶד הָיִיתָ בְּמִצְרַיִם וַיִּפְדְּךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ מִשָּׁם עַל־כֵּן אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ לַעֲשׂוֹת אֶת־הַדָּבָר הַזֶּה  

 

And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this thing. (Devarim 24:18; see also 24:22)

 

These memories are attached directly to the laws that protect the stranger, the orphan, and the widow, and to the agricultural gifts that must be left for them. The past is not nostalgia. It is the ground of obligation. Those who have known powerlessness are forbidden to reproduce it.

 

The memory of Egypt, however, is more than a recollection of suffering. The Torah repeatedly invokes Egypt not merely as an experience of victimhood, but as a warning about the kind of society Israel must never become. Egypt appears as organized domination by political power. Bereishit already links the lush image of the Jordan plain to the land of Egypt in Lot’s gaze:

 

 וַיִּשָּׂא־לוֹט אֶת־עֵינָיו וַיַּרְא אֶת־כָּל־כִּכַּר הַיַּרְדֵּן כִּי כֻלָּהּ מַשְׁקֶה... כְּגַן־יְהוָה כְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם  

 

And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw all the plain of the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere... like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt. (Bereishit 13:10)

 

Ezekiel later supplies the moral profile of Sodom:

 

הִנֵּה־זֶה הָיָה עֲוֹן סְדֹם אֲחוֹתֵךְ גָּאוֹן שִׂבְעַת־לֶחֶם וְשַׁלְוַת הַשְׁקֵט הָיָה לָהּ וְלִבְנוֹתֶיהָ וְיַד־עָנִי וְאֶבְיוֹן לֹא הֶחֱזִיקָה  

 

Behold, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: pride, excess of bread, and careless ease were hers and her daughters’, and she did not strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. (Yechezkel 16:49)

 

Sodom appears as social indifference and the hoarding of abundance. Egypt and Sodom are different expressions of the same deeper failure: power that forgets vulnerability and transforms abundance into oppression. Israel’s obligation is not to reproduce either structure.

 

The chapter’s use of to’eva places commercial dishonesty and forbidden marital reversal within the same vocabulary of moral disorder:

 

 כִּי תוֹעֲבַת יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ כָּל־עֹשֵׂה אֵלֶּה כֹּל עֹשֵׂה עָוֶל  

 

For all who do these things, all who act dishonestly, are an abomination to the Lord your God. (Devarim 25:16)

 

לֹא־יוּכַל בַּעְלָהּ הָרִאשׁוֹן אֲשֶׁר־שִׁלְּחָהּ לָשׁוּב לְקַחְתָּהּ לִהְיוֹת לוֹ לְאִשָּׁה אַחֲרֵי אֲשֶׁר הֻטַּמָּאָה כִּי־תוֹעֵבָה הִוא לִפְנֵי ה׳  

 

Her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. (Devarim 24:4)

 

The same word is used for both. The Torah does not treat dishonest commerce as a separate moral universe. The merchant’s scale and the integrity of family life are described with the same vocabulary.

 

Lot’s story offers an intertextual parallel. He separates from Avraham, chooses the Egypt-like plain, and settles in Sodom. He enters a city that cannot tolerate the ethical treatment of the stranger. Within a short time the situation turns to sexual violence; after the destruction it descends into incest. Bereishit narrates Lot’s choice at the level of appearance—fertility, abundance, and promise. The wider biblical canon supplies the retrospective moral diagnosis. His choice of the Egypt-like plain places him on a trajectory whose moral destination is Sodom.

 

The language of sofo that dominates the opening of the parasha provides the key. Lot sees the Jordan plain at its beginning; the Torah sees it at its end. He sees abundance. The Torah sees Sodom.

 

Memory of Egyptian humiliation teaches Israel to recognize the danger. The Torah then seeks to interrupt that danger before it becomes a settled way of life. The dignity of the tzelem holds both directions in the present, transforming memory into obligation and foresight into restraint.

 

The Torah in this parasha moves in two directions at once. It turns Israel backward toward the memory of Egypt and forward toward the consequences of present action. The tzelem holds those directions together in the present. Both are directed especially toward the economic and social spaces where cruelty becomes ordinary, diffuse, and difficult to see. When memory remains alive, yesterday’s humiliation becomes a refusal to reproduce humiliation in others. When memory fades, the victim’s identity can simply be inverted, and the old cruelty returns under a new name. Ki Teitzei therefore seeks to ensure that yesterday’s victims do not become tomorrow’s Sodom.

Bribes and Blessings - Parashat Ekev

 Bribes and Blessings

Rabbi Ari Kahn

 

Parashat Eikev[1] contains one of the Torah’s most concentrated descriptions of what it means to live in covenant with God. Moshe addresses the people and says:

 

“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you? Only this: to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul; to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and His statutes… for your good.” (Devarim 10:12–13)

 

The elements are familiar: fear of Heaven, walking in God’s ways, love, service, and the observance of mitzvot. What is perhaps less obvious is the Torah’s framing. All of this is presented as “for your good.” The verse does not read like a list of demands imposed from above, but as a description of the way a people lives when it dwells in the presence of God.

 

Immediately afterward, the Torah turns from Israel’s obligations to the nature of the One who stands on the other side of the covenant:

 

“For the Lord your God is the God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God, who shows no favor and takes no bribe. He upholds the cause of the orphan and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing.” (Devarim 10:17–18)

 

The description is carefully composed. God is first portrayed in majestic, almost cosmic terms: “God of gods and Lord of lords, great, mighty, and awesome.” Then the verse turns to His justice: “who shows no favor and takes no bribe.” Only afterward does it speak of His care for the orphan, the widow, and the stranger.

 

At first glance, these might seem like three separate statements: an assertion of God’s transcendence, a declaration of His incorruptible judgment, and a note about His compassion. But their proximity suggests otherwise. The Torah is inviting us to hear them together. The God whose authority spans heaven and earth is precisely the God whose justice cannot be bent and whose care reaches those without power. Only when justice is immune to bribery can the orphan, widow, and stranger stand before the court with confidence.

 

It is here that the phrase “He takes no bribe” becomes central. The Torah is not addressing an abstract legal concern. It is telling us something about the conditions under which genuine compassion is possible. A judge who can be swayed by gifts cannot reliably protect the vulnerable. The refusal to take bribes is itself part of the defense of those who have no influence.

 

Yet the verse does more than warn us of the dangers of human corruption. It also raises a theological question. What does it mean to speak of “bribery” in relation to God?

 

Rashi’s comment brings the difficulty into sharper focus. On the words “He takes no bribe,” he writes simply: “to appease Him with money.” (Rashi to Devarim 10:17). It is a straightforward reading of the verse. But the Ra’em, Rabbi Eliyahu Mizrachi, immediately asks the obvious question: what “money” could one possibly give to the Master of the Universe? Everything already belongs to Him.

 

The question is not merely technical. It touches a deep human tendency. People sometimes imagine that generosity can function as a kind of spiritual leverage. Donations, support for institutions, and various acts of giving may be invested with hopes that they will purchase protection, favor, or forgiveness. If that were so, the vulnerable would have reason to fear, for those with greater means would have disproportionate access to divine leniency.

 

The Torah’s insistence that God “takes no bribe” thus carries two implications. It tells us that divine judgment cannot be bought, and it reminds us that human attempts to use generosity as a substitute for responsibility are fundamentally misguided. No gift, however noble, can cause God to ignore what is real.

 

But if money cannot be the true “bribe,” what, then, is the Torah prohibiting?

Here the commentaries open a different path. Rabbeinu Bachya, Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, Rabbi David HaLevi Segal in Divrei David, and Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin in Ha’amek Davar all move, in their own language, toward a shared idea. The bribe is not currency. It is the attempt to use something good in order to erase something wrong.

Rabbeinu Bachya imagines the inner calculation that a person might make: I have certainly sinned, but look at the Torah I have studied, the charity I have given, the mitzvot I have performed. Surely the merits will outweigh the failures. He then dismantles this logic. God does not say, “He performed a thousand mitzvot and committed one transgression; let one mitzvah be deducted and the matter be settled.” Each mitzvah receives its reward; each aveirah receives its reckoning. They do not cancel each other out. (Rabbeinu Bachya to Devarim 10:17).

 

Sforno sharpens the point. The problem is not that mitzvot lack value. It is that their value lies elsewhere. A mitzvah does not erase an aveirah because the two belong to different moral categories. A good deed remains good; a transgression remains harmful. One does not undo the other. (Sforno to Devarim 10:17).

 

At this stage, the picture of “bribery” begins to change. We are no longer speaking of an envelope of money slipped under the table, but of a pattern in which a person attempts to use a mitzvah as a shield against accountability. Instead of facing the wrongdoing and repairing it, one offers a different good deed and hopes that it will suffice.

 

Yet Sforno immediately adds an equally important qualification. The Torah does not trap a person forever within his failures. It does not deny the possibility of forgiveness. What it denies is the attempt to reach forgiveness without teshuvah. Charity cannot substitute for teshuvah. Torah study cannot substitute for teshuvah. Additional mitzvot cannot substitute for teshuvah. The answer to wrongdoing is not compensation but transformation. As Sforno writes, escape from punishment comes only through complete repentance.

 

The Torah’s rejection of bribery is therefore not a rejection of mercy. It is a rejection of shortcuts. A “bribe” is any attempt to offer something good in order to avoid dealing with something wrong. It is not the extra mitzvah that stands alongside teshuvah and deepens one’s relationship with God. It is the mitzvah that is offered in place of teshuvah, as if the two could be exchanged. In this sense, “He takes no bribe” is not only a statement about the incorruptibility of divine judgment. It is also a statement about the integrity of divine compassion. The God who protects the orphan, widow, and stranger protects them because His justice cannot be diverted by those who seek to buy their way out of truth.

 

At this point we might think that the picture is complete. God’s justice cannot be bribed. Mitzvot do not cancel aveirot. Teshuvah, and only teshuvah, addresses failure. The Torah’s insistence that God “takes no bribe” thus guards both the integrity of judgment and the integrity of compassion. Yet the Torah itself introduces an additional element that seems, at first, to complicate matters. On the one hand, we are told that God “does not show favor.” On the other hand, in Birkat Kohanim we recite:

 

“May the Lord lift His face toward you and grant you peace.” (Bamidbar 6:26).

 

The phrase “lift His face” evokes precisely what the earlier verse seemed to deny. If God “does not show favor,” how can we ask that He do exactly that?

 

The Gemara in Berakhot brings this tension to the fore. The ministering angels turn to God and ask: Your Torah says that You do not show favor, and yet You show favor to Israel. God’s answer is well known, but its implications are easily underestimated:

“How can I not show favor to Israel? I wrote in My Torah, ‘You shall eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord your God,’ yet they are meticulous with themselves and bless even on a kezayit (size of an olive) or a kebeitzah (size of an egg).” (Berakhot 20b).

On its surface, the response seems puzzling. The Torah’s obligation of Birkat HaMazon is framed in terms of satiation: “You shall eat and be satisfied and bless.” The Gemara notes that Israel often bless even after eating amounts that fall short of full satiation – a kezayit or a kebeitzah. For this they are said to be “worthy of favor.”

 

We might initially understand this as a technical detail. Israel are praised because they perform an act that exceeds the strict requirement. But that reading does not yet explain why this particular act should be so central to the notion of nesiat panim.

 

Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshischa, in Kol Simcha, offers an explanation that shifts the entire discussion. When a person blesses over a small amount of food, he is not merely adding another religious act to his day. He is demonstrating that the relationship matters more than the gift. Gratitude for a banquet may reflect appreciation for the food itself. Gratitude for a kezayit reveals that the thankfulness is directed toward the One who provided it.

 

Anyone can recognize abundance. Anyone can say “thank you” when the table is full. The test of relationship lies elsewhere. It lies in the capacity to notice small gifts, to view them not as negligible but as significant precisely because they are expressions of care. When Israel bless even on a kezayit or a kebeitzah, they show that their attention is not fixed only on the magnitude of the gift. It is attuned to the presence of the Giver.

 

Read in this light, God’s answer to the angels becomes clearer. The question was framed in terms of “favor.” Why should Israel be singled out? God’s response does not introduce a new legal calculus. It points to a different dynamic entirely. Israel’s behavior reveals that the covenant between them and God is not a matter of minimal compliance. It is a relationship in which gratitude seeks opportunities to express itself even when no obligation demands it.

 

This does not mean that judgment has been suspended. The Gemara does not say that because Israel bless on small amounts of food their aveirot are erased. It does not suggest that Birkat HaMazon on a kezayit functions as a “bribe” in the courtroom. Rather, it reveals that there is a second language at play – a language in which God’s response is shaped by the quality of the relationship as well as by the facts of the case.

 

It is precisely here that other talmudic discussions begin to shed light on the distinction. The Gemara in Niddah and in Rosh Hashanah resolves the apparent contradiction between “He does not show favor” and “May the Lord lift His face toward you” by distinguishing between before a heavenly decree has been sealed and after it has been sealed. Before the decree, there is room for “favor”; after the decree, there is not (Niddah 70b; Rosh Hashanah 18a). Tosafot, commenting on this distinction, note that it does not conflict with the teaching in Berakhot. The angels’ question in Berakhot concerns the moment before judgment has been finalized. Their puzzle is not how God could alter a verdict once it has been rendered, but why He grants a unique kind of favor to Israel at the stage when His posture toward them is still in formation. Tosafot explain that the answer lies in Israel’s own conduct. They themselves behave  – beyond the strict letter of the law – and God’s response reflects that posture (Tosafot to Niddah 70b, s.v. kan kodem gezar din).

 

The contours of the distinction now come into view. What emerges from these sources is not a contradiction within the Torah’s view of God but a distinction between two different realms. One is the realm of judgment, in which actions are weighed and verdicts rendered. There, bribery and favoritism have no place. The other is the realm of covenant, in which love, gratitude, and devotion shape the relationship between God and Israel. Confusion arises only when the categories are collapsed into one another. A bribe attempts to introduce the language of relationship into the courtroom. Nesiat panim - bestowing favor - reflects the vitality of the covenant without compromising the integrity of judgment.

 

Bribery belongs to the courtroom, where it seeks to corrupt judgment; nesiat panim belongs to the covenant, where it expresses the vitality of the relationship.

 

Chazal themselves were sensitive to the possibility that these categories might become confused. The Mishnah in Megillah teaches that Birkat Kohanim is read but not translated, and Rashi explains that otherwise people might mistakenly conclude that God simply plays favorites. They would fail to understand that Israel are worthy of such favor (Megillah 25b; Rashi ad loc.). The text is therefore preserved in its original language, so that nesiat panim will be heard as covenantal, not as a distortion of justice.

 

The Netziv’s comment on our verse offers a further refinement. In Ha’amek Davar (Devarim 10:17), he asks what kind of conduct could even be imagined as a “bribe” toward God. Simple fulfillment of mitzvot cannot qualify. Performing what one is obligated to do is not a gift; it is fidelity to the covenant. Where, then, might bribery enter? The Netziv suggests that the verse alludes to a different type of behavior: acts that rise above ordinary expectations, forms of piety that appear exceptional, even heroic. They might be seen as a kind of “offering” beyond the basic requirements of the law. Yet, he warns, such excellence cannot excuse neglect in areas where the Torah does in fact obligate. One cannot appeal to personal stringencies in one realm as compensation for failures in another. Extraordinary devotion does not erase ordinary responsibility.

Indeed, one could argue that the Netziv is extending the very logic of the earlier commentaries. A mitzvah cannot function as a bribe because excellence in one area cannot compensate for neglect in another. The temptation is subtle. The more impressive the act, the easier it becomes to imagine that it may offset less visible failures. The Netziv insists that the Torah rejects precisely this sort of moral accounting. Spectacular piety does not purchase leniency where basic obligations have been ignored.

 

Placed against the backdrop of our earlier distinction, this teaching becomes even clearer. The covenant certainly has room for excellence. It welcomes those who seek to live beyond the letter of the law. But it does not allow excellence in one dimension to function as a shield against truth in another. Bribery is precisely that attempt: to use a good in one area to avoid confronting a wrong in another. The Torah’s “does not accept a bribe” closes that door.

 

It is not difficult to see how these categories extend beyond the realm of formal service of God, into the texture of human relationships. The courtroom/covenant distinction is not only a theological framework. It is also a lens through which we can examine the way we live with one another.

 

Consider marriage.

At its core, marriage is a covenant. It is not simply a contract, nor merely an arrangement of shared responsibilities. It is a relationship in which two people commit to live in faithfulness, openness, and mutual care. Within that space, the categories of bribery, teshuvah, and nesiat panim acquire new, human forms.

 

There are, first, the “courtroom” elements of marriage: the obligations that define basic integrity. These include honesty, fidelity, reliability, and the ordinary work of sustaining a home. When these are compromised, something fundamental has been damaged. In that realm, the logic of “no bribe” applies. No bouquet of flowers, no generous gift, no dramatic gesture can erase the need to confront what has gone wrong.

 

At the same time, there is the covenantal dimension of marriage: the warmth, the gratitude, the countless acts of kindness that are not required by any written agreement. Here, nesiat panim- bestowing favor - has a place. When husband and wife live in a way that looks beyond the minimum, noticing each other’s efforts, expressing appreciation for small gestures, and creating moments of joy that no rule demands, the relationship deepens. Each begins to see the other not merely as someone who fulfills obligations, but as someone who delights in giving.

 

It is here that a simple story can be illuminating.

Many years ago, I bought my wife a particularly beautiful bouquet of flowers in the Machane Yehuda market. As I walked through the shuk, I noticed that the bouquet drew attention. The women who saw it seemed to divide, at least in my imagination, into two groups. Some looked at the flowers and seemed to think, “What a lovely gesture. I wish my husband would buy me a bouquet like that.” Others looked at me with a slightly different expression, as if wondering, “I wonder what he did wrong that he needed such an impressive bouquet.”

 

The bouquet itself had not changed. What shifted was the story projected onto it. In one reading, it was a gift arising from affection. In the other, it was a kind of compensation, a sign that something had gone wrong and now needed to be “made up for.” The difference lay not in the flowers but in the imagined relationship.

 

The Torah’s categories help us name that difference. When gifts appear only in the wake of wrongdoing and are used in place of honest conversation and repair, they come dangerously close to the realm of bribery. They are attempts to offer something good so that the difficult work of teshuvah may be avoided. But when gifts emerge as part of a steady pattern of affection, gratitude, and kindness – when they are woven into a life in which truth is spoken and wrongs are addressed – they belong to the covenantal realm. They are expressions of love, not efforts to manipulate judgment.

 

The Gemara in Berakhot can now be heard as describing a similar dynamic, transposed into the relationship between Israel and God. When Israel bless even on a small amount of food, they are not trying to purchase leniency. They are acting from within the covenant, saying in effect: “We notice Your gifts, even when they are small. We cherish the relationship, not only the abundance.” God’s “favor” in response does not erase the demands of justice. It affirms the depth of the bond.

 

This brings us back to the two blessings that stand at the center of our discussion: Birkat HaMazon and Birkat Kohanim. Arguably, these are the only two blessings explicitly mandated by the Torah itself. One might perhaps add Birkat HaTorah, but Birkat HaMazon and Birkat Kohanim nevertheless occupy a unique place within the Torah's spiritual vocabulary

 

On one level, they occupy very different positions. Birkat HaMazon begins with human beings who have eaten and are satisfied. The Torah commands them to bless. That blessing rises from below, from the table, from the experience of receiving. God gives; we respond.

 

Birkat Kohanim, by contrast, begins above. The Kohanim recite the words, but the blessing itself is portrayed as coming from God. As Ramban notes, the Kohanim become channels through which divine speech descends. The text is explicit:

“Thus they shall place My name upon the children of Israel, and I shall bless them.” (Bamidbar 6:27).

 

Birkat HaMazon and Birkat Kohanim thus move in opposite directions. The former begins with human beings who have received and now respond with gratitude. The latter begins with God, whose blessing descends upon His people. One rises upward from earth to heaven; the other descends from heaven to earth. One is gratitude, the other grace.

What the Gemara in Berakhot teaches us is that these movements are not independent. The favor expressed in Birkat Kohanim is, in some sense, a response to the gratitude expressed in Birkat HaMazon. When Israel bless even for small gifts – a kezayit, a kebeitzah – they reveal a covenantal posture. They are not counting only in terms of sufficiency. They are attentive to relationship. In turn, God “lifts His face” toward them, not because justice has been overridden, but because love has been reciprocated.

The symmetry is striking. In a healthy marriage, something similar occurs. There are moments in which one partner gives without being asked, offering support, kindness, or joy that cannot be claimed as a right. There are moments in which the other responds not merely by accepting the gift, but by expressing gratitude in ways that far exceed what could be demanded. Over time, those two movements – giving and gratitude – reinforce one another. The home becomes a place in which blessing flows both upward and downward.

 

Bribery, in this picture, is the attempt to redirect those movements into the wrong realm. It is the effort to use a gift to erase a debt, to use a gesture to silence a truth, to use an act of piety to avoid confronting a failure. The Torah’s insistence that “He takes no bribe” thus guards us against a confusion that can damage both our relationship with God and our relationships with one another.

 

Nesiat panim, by contrast, is the recognition that when a covenant is lived with attention and love, God’s response – and our own responses to each other – are shaped not only by the ledger of obligations but by the presence of affection. It does not cancel justice. It accompanies it.

 

If we return, finally, to Moshe’s initial description in Parashat Eikev, we can see the arc more clearly. The Torah begins with fear of God, walking in His ways, love, service, and mitzvot “for your good.” It then speaks of a God who does not show favor and does not take bribes, who nevertheless upholds the cause of the orphan and widow and loves the stranger. It ends, in our discussion, with blessings that move both upward and downward, with a people who bless for small gifts, and with a God who lifts His face toward them.

 

Between these points lies the path of covenantal life. In that life, we are called to reject the shortcuts of bribery, to embrace the hard but liberating work of teshuvah, and to cultivate the small, seemingly “unnecessary” acts of gratitude and kindness that allow nesiat panim to flourish. In our relationship with God, this means noticing His gifts and blessing Him even when they appear small. In our marriages and homes, it means noticing each other’s efforts and responding with affection that does not wait for obligation.

 

Bribery belongs to the courtroom. Nesiat panim belongs to the covenant.
And a covenant, whether between God and Israel or between husband and wife, is sustained not only by justice, but by love.

 

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[1] This Dvar Torah is in honor of the wedding of my niece Naama, and new nephew Eden