Think about the little blessings in your daily life. Not just the words “Baruch atah Adonai” that start our prayers, but the moments that remind you to pause: fastening your seatbelt, checking in on a friend, holding the door open for a stranger. These small acts don’t always feel holy, but they are the threads that bind our communities together. 

Parshat Ki Teitzei is overflowing with mitzvot—more than 70 in total—spanning topics of family, justice, compassion, business, and community. Some seem weighty, like laws of inheritance or capital punishment. Others seem small, almost ordinary: return your neighbor’s lost ox, build a guardrail on your roof, send away the mother bird before taking eggs. The Torah presents a vision of holiness not only in great rituals but in the everyday details of how we live together.

Each of these mitzvot invites us to respond with a blessing formula: Baruch atah Adonai, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu. “Blessed are you, Eternal One, who has sanctified us with commandments and commanded us…” The words remind us that holiness isn’t only found within the walls of Neveh Shalom or in our homes on Shabbat, but in our daily responsibilities. For example:

• Returning a lost object (22:1–3) transforms inconvenience into kindness.
• Building a fence around your roof (22:8) turns private property into shared responsibility, preventing harm to others.
• Sending away the mother bird before taking eggs (22:6–7) teaches compassion and gentleness toward even the smallest of creatures.

These mitzvot, and the blessings that accompany them, create a rhythm of sanctity in daily life. By reciting blessings, we pause, notice, and elevate acts that might otherwise pass by unnoticed. In doing so, we acknowledge that safeguarding life and practicing compassion are not optional extras but the very core of Jewish living.

Ki Teitzei challenges us to see our daily actions as opportunities for blessing. Each time we care for another person, act with responsibility, or protect the vulnerable, we are living the words asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav. This week, don’t wait for Shabbat or holidays to sanctify your life. Make a blessing with your actions: return what isn’t yours, put up your “fences” of care and caution, and treat others with compassion. In doing so, may our ordinary days be filled with extraordinary holiness.

As a rabbi I am privileged to be with families in their most joyful moments and in their lowest moments. I am often the confidante with whom people share their fears, desires, and wishes when they have nowhere else to turn. It is in this work that I have often been asked about what happens to our loved ones after they die. And the truth is, I don’t know. No one does. Well, physically we know that our bodies decompose and go back to the dust of the earth from which we were formed. Spiritually, however, we just don’t know. While we have people who have been miraculously revived after a medical death, we don’t have concrete or consistent data. While we might believe that the soul “returns” to God after we die, the question remains, does the soul survive in any significant way? Is reincarnation real? Can my deceased loved one still be present in my life?

My answer to these questions is generally one of inquiry and wonder: what do you think? I could argue both sides of any theory on what happens spiritually to our souls after we die. What we’re really asking in this question is to know, perhaps, that our lives mattered, that when we die we’re not simply vanished from the world.

Perhaps there’s some guidance, if not definitive answers, in this week’s Torah portion. This week we read Parshat Ki Teitzei. We receive laws about war and taking care of hostages, laws about our clothing, laws about family relationships, including parents and children, laws about taking care of the poor, and so much more. Ki Teitzei is actually the Torah portion with the most number of mitzvot (commandments) in it, but the recurring theme is how we should execute and fulfill the mitzvot prescribed to us.

Chapter 25, verse 6 discusses a levirate marriage in which a married man dies childless and his brother takes the widow as his wife to father a child who will be considered as the son of the deceased man. Why is this the prescribed process? The Torah explains that it’s because his name should not be blotted out. This seems to reflect the belief that death does not put an absolute end to an individual’s existence. A person’s name should not disappear forever once they die. Instead, our names and even our presence in the world live on forever by virtue of our actions in the world while we were alive.

There might be different ways of phrasing the question of life after death and just as many guesses as to the literal answer, but the one thing we know for certain is that what we do in life determines how we’re remembered in death. Not in the way that fame and celebrity provide their own version of a legacy, but in the way that people will remember how you made them feel.

When it comes to ethical decisions, the Torah will often offer specific scenarios. For example, “Do not deduct interest from loans to your fellow Israelites” or “When you see the ass of your enemy lying under its burden and would refrain from raising it, you must nevertheless help raise it.”

This week we read Parshat Ki Teitzei. We receive laws about war and taking care of hostages, laws about our clothing, laws about family relationships, including parents and children, laws about taking care of the poor, and so much more. Ki Teitzei is in fact the Torah portion with the most number of mitzvot (commandments) in it, but the recurring theme is how we should execute and fulfill the mitzvot prescribed to us.

Among these verses is a law about what to do if one stumbles upon a bird’s nest in a tree or on the ground with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting with the nest. What are you to do if you want the eggs?

In theory, this is talking about whether we should chase away the mother, or take the mother along with the eggs. It sounds like a conversation about food or the necessity of materials. However, the Torah is clear in specifying that to take the mother along with the young is brutal and forbidden. Rather, respect for the mother earns one the reward of long life. 

There are only two places in the Torah where long life is the reward for observing a commandment; this is one of them, and the other is in the commandment to honor one’s parents. In other words, “respecting the mother” is highly valued whether or not the mother is human. “Long life” is the promise of fulfillment and joy, and the Torah teaches that a mitzvah as important as respect deserves a reward as meaningful as life itself.

Fans of Bob Ross may remember that part of his teaching philosophy was about embracing those “happy accidents” that happen when something unintentional turns into something beautiful and artistic. It reminds me of the notion of the unintentional mitzvah, an idea as old as the Torah itself.

This week we read Parshat Ki Teitzei. We receive laws about war and taking care of hostages, laws about our clothing, laws about family relationships, laws about taking care of the poor, and so much more. Ki Teitzei is actually the Torah portion with the most number of mitzvot (commandments) in it, but the recurring theme is how we should execute and fulfill the mitzvot prescribed to us.

In particular, the laws cover taking care of the more vulnerable members of the community. While earlier in the Torah we learn about leaving the corner of the fields for those who might be hungry so that they can maintain their dignity and pick the food, Parshat Ki Teitzei offers one more way we can support those in need.

Chapter 24, verse 19 presents an interesting unintentional mitzvah when it states, “When you reap the harvest in your field and overlook a sheaf in the field, do not turn back to get it; it shall go to the stranger, the fatherless and the widow.” No one, in this scenario, is purposefully choosing to overlook a sheaf of grain. For whatever reason, the harvester accidentally missed that sheaf, but that accident is now a mitzvah.  

We encourage our children to give tzedakah and donate to worthy causes. In fact, we have deemphasized big Hanukkah gifts (those come from other family members) in favor of a small donation each of the eight nights. It feels good to give something back, whether that’s signing up for a meal on someone’s Meal Train or supporting Ukraine through a local campaign. Most of the time, Duncan and I coordinate these so we know how much money is going where, or who’s responsible for dropping off dinner to a friend. Once in a great while, though, we accidentally double up – an unintentional mitzvah, if you will. And if you’re going to make a mistake, what better kind of mistake to make than doing an extra mitzvah?

Accidents, by nature, aren’t choices. However, we do have the choice in how we react to something we’ve overlooked. True, it was our intention to donate once or add just a few coins to the tzedakah box, but if a mistake unintentionally supports the community or helps someone else who might not have otherwise benefited, then our mistake becomes a bigger gift. Parshat Ki Teitzei and this specific commandment are meant to remind us that sometimes it can be better to let it go, to embrace the happy unintentionality and make a mistake that might just lift someone else up. 

As I was preparing for my bat mitzvah, I wondered why the boys were learning how to lay tefillin and a talit, and I wasn’t being taught the same. I like ritual, and I thrive on routine. I also respond well to tactile learning; I need to feel things, hold items in my hand in order to find connection. I decided I wanted and needed to learn how to lay tefillin, so my father agreed to help me learn. He taught me to wrap the soft black leather straps of my great grandfather’s tefillin around my small arms. I placed the well-worn box between my eyes and wrapped myself in my grandfather’s talit. I felt embraced in Judaism and connected to my past and my traditions.

And then my dad reminded me that talit and tefillin are not mitzvot you can take on just for a day. They are commandments which, once you’ve committed yourself, you must do for the rest of your life. In my case, my obligation to wear these garments had to be more than a teenage rebellion against a “boys only” culture. It meant being sure of my words and committing to the cause anytime I was in daily minyan. I had a choice to make. Saying “yes” to tefillin wasn’t like saying I wanted dessert tonight or deciding on a certain new pair of shoes, it was actually pushing me to fulfill a promise for my adult Jewish life. 

This week we read Parshat Ki Teitzei. We receive laws about war and taking care of hostages, laws about our clothing, laws about family relationships, including parents and children, laws about taking care of the poor, and so much more. Ki Teitzei is actually the Torah portion with the most number of mitzvot (commandments) in it, but the recurring theme is how we should execute and fulfill the mitzvot prescribed to us.

In the midst of these laws, God is establishing a society that will set safeguards on how we treat one another and how we’ll connect with all in our community. In Chapter 23, verse 24 God issues forth a commandment that I feel is one of the most important lessons to being true to yourself and others. “You must fulfill what has crossed your lips and perform what you have voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God, having made the promise with your own mouth.”

The intent of this commandment is between God and the people; however, I believe the sentiment is one that should exist between people as well. What you say you’ll do, you must do. The Torah is asking us to hold ourselves and each other accountable for the commitments we make. This means that we must think deeply about what we’re committing to and whether or not we’re able to fulfill that commitment.

Parshat Ki Teitzei intends to remind us of the power of our words and our promises, and to think critically before we agree to do something so that we’re not letting the community (or ourselves) down. If we are all created in God’s image, then our promises to one another should be treated with the same respect as holy covenants.