Ki Teitzei suggests that the real test of Jewish sovereignty may lie not in our greatest achievements, but in the ordinary way we treat one another.

Israel knows how to do the impossible.

We brought Jews home from Yemen, Ethiopia, Russia and across the Jewish world. We revived an ancient language, made the desert bloom, built universities and hospitals, created one of the world’s great technology ecosystems and developed an army capable of defending a tiny country in an exceptionally hostile region.

We can intercept missiles in the sky and develop technologies that change the world.

Yet there is another, much less glamorous question that we do not ask often enough: What kind of country did we actually come home to build?

That question came to me while reading Ki Teitzei.

It is one of the strangest Torah portions. There is no single dramatic story like the Exodus or revelation at Sinai. Instead, Moses gives us law after law—74 commandments in all—covering everything from warfare and marriage to lost animals, rooftop railings, workers’ wages, lending, agriculture and dishonest weights.

Why devote so much of the Torah to such ordinary things?

Perhaps because after all the miracles, speeches and national dreams, this is where the real test begins.

It is relatively easy to proclaim great values. It is much harder to live them on Tuesday morning.

The donkey in the road

The Torah tells us that if we see someone’s lost ox or sheep, we cannot simply walk past. We have to help return it.

Then come four words that may be among the most important in the parsha: “You may not ignore it.”

That sounds almost trivial until we look at modern society.

We have become experts at ignoring things.

Someone else will deal with the poverty. Someone else will pick up the rubbish. Someone else will help the elderly neighbor. Someone else will fix the bureaucracy. Someone else will worry about the struggling family, the reservist whose business is collapsing or the employee who has not been paid.

We pay taxes, elect governments and support charities, and all of these things matter. But somewhere along the way it becomes remarkably easy to conclude that........

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