What do we do with unjust laws? - Parshat Ki Teitzei Drash 2025/5785

What do we do with unjust laws?

Okay, before I get into this drash, I just want to say. I got a little bit wonky here, so stick with me.

What do we do with unjust laws?

This week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitzei, has the lofty record of being the Torah portion with the most laws. With 74 of the Torah’s 613 laws, that’s a lot. So we’re guaranteed to run into some laws which feel unsavory to the contemporary listener. And it’s true - there’s a law in here, as an example, colloquially known as the Ben Sorer or the wayward and rebellious child, which was considered so foul that the rabbis of the Talmud added laws to make the Ben Sorer’s application virtually impossible.

Of course, there are laws that I would personally laud as well, and I don’t want to sell those short, but then the question quickly becomes;

do we pick and choose our laws? What do we do with unjust laws?

Now I think I have to differentiate here between the American legal system and the ancient Israelite n’ Jewish legal system. Because when I was learning about Jewish law during my studies towards being a cantor, one question kept sitting in my mind. What is the enforcement mechanism for these laws?

In American society, and most societies today, the answer is clear. We have a law enforcement agency. If you run a red light or commit tax fraud, it’s their job to catch you and dole out the determined punishment. It assumes that we might break the law, and provides checks to account for that.

So in pushing against unjust laws in the American civil system, we can organize our community to protest. We can break the laws through civil disobedience. Or we can vote, and hope for the best.

But Jewish law is not organized in the same way. There is no police system to punish you in case you break the law. Nothing will happen if you try to do civil disobedience by eating shrimp. Instead, Jewish law is made up of mitzvot, meaning obligations. And these mitzvot rely on their expectation providing a sense of purpose and belonging. Ultimately, in a traditional sense, you need to adhere to the mitzvot if you want to maintain your community and sense of purpose.

It makes sense. When people need you in one way, shape, or form, then your community is regulated around the idea of showing up for one another.

Jewish law is essentially reinforced through communal consensus, and it is constantly changing over time to fit the Jewish community’s needs. Some examples. We already discussed the ways in which the Talmudic rabbis negated a Torah law in this week’s Torah portion. During the destruction of the 2nd Temple, we transitioned from a religion that centralized its power in Jerusalem to a religion whose laws were determined by rabbis across the world. When the Reform movement was created, that too was a shift. We decided that we needed different markers of belonging than just about adherence to mitzvot.

In our lifetimes, we have seen this shift as well. At one point, marrying within the Jewish community was an expectation of Jewish belonging. Today, interfaith couples are widely accepted. Support for Israel, too, has been an assumption of participation in Jewish community, basically since its establishment. I think right now we’re living in a time where that expectation for Jewish belonging is being fought about in the proverbial public square.

To be clear, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t hold onto boundaries. In each transition that I mentioned, there is something gained and something lost from those changing boundaries.

What I’m saying is that Jewish community is organized around customs, and that we have a say in what those customs will be.

There’s a great quote in Philo of Alexandria’s book of special laws, which states, that “customs are unwritten laws. The decisions approved by men of old. Not inscribed on monuments or leaves of paper which the moth destroys, but on the souls of those who are partners in the same society.”

This month of Elul is a month of checking in and making sure that we are aligned with our own integrity and sense of self. While this generally is about being self-reflective, the same could be true for the collective. Customs are created by the community, and determine who belongs in the Jewish community and who does not. This is the time for the Jewish community to take stock and ask if our customs, (or Jewish laws, loosely understood), are serving the Jewish community’s sense of self. Have our actions been based in fear? Have they been aligned with our values?

I pray that we do this work, while still maintaining the due reverence for our ancestors who set up our systems. Then, we can set up laws that honor them and are true to ourselves.

Shabbat shalom.