Ki Teitze
What are the signs along the way?
Reflection by Ariel Dominique Hendelman, the Or HaLev team
“The name of this week's parsha is Ki Teitze, meaning, `When you go out.`A sizable chunk of the 613 mitzvot are found in this parsha - 74 to be exact. These include the laws of the captive bride, the inheritance rights of the firstborn, the wayward and rebellious son, burial and dignity of the dead, returning a lost object, sending away the mother bird before taking her young, building a safety fence around the roof of one’s home, and the various forms of prohibited plant and animal hybrids.
Ki Teitze or `When You Go Out`is reminiscent of the line from the Veyahavta prayer,`וּבְלֶכְתְּ֒ךָ בַדֶּֽרֶךְ` or `when you walk along the way.` The mitzvot can serve to give us guidance for going out & walking along the way - like spiritual road signs.
In our meditation practice, we encounter what feels like the opposite of signs along the way. We come face to face with our inner space, which is sometimes blank and often riddled with various thoughts, memories or projections. What if those small moments of pure presence are in fact road signs as well? What if those flashes of reminders that we can return to the seat of loving awareness are also guiding us `when we go out?`
Mitzvot are anchors in a chaotic & confusing world, so too is our meditation practice. May we come to rely on these anchors whenever we find ourselves in deep waters."