When we think of commandments, we think of things we must do actively and with intention. Parashat Ki Tetzei certainly seems to support this idea. With 74 mitzvot, more than any other Torah portion, it repeatedly calls on us to act consciously and with integrity, ensuring the welfare of animals, fairness to workers and safety for one another.
Ki Tetzei concentrates on the power we have to make our own decisions. It is a parashah that gives humankind ultimate responsibility in the ethical outcomes of our world.
Yet nestled among these laws is the mitzvah of the forgotten sheaf. Is leaving a sheaf in the field a commandment, or simply forgetfulness? Why does the Torah legislate this act of forgetting?
The sages grappled with this exact question. Maimonides ultimately ruled that leaving the forgotten sheaf is itself a positive commandment. Returning to retrieve it becomes the transgression.
We usually imagine that holiness is built through conscious choices. Ki Tetzei repeatedly demands this of us, commanding us to act with justice and integrity even in acts of war. The inclusion of the mitzvah of the forgotten sheaf within this parashah hints at something deeper. It turns a moment of absent-mindedness into an opportunity for generosity.
The forgotten sheaf reveals that Torah’s goal is not merely to shape our behaviour, but our character. We are not called simply to perform acts of kindness, but to become the sort of people for whom kindness comes naturally. A person who has spent a lifetime practising justice becomes a person who will one day “forget” a sheaf because caring for others has become part of their nature.
This seemingly ambiguous mitzvah sits among so many active commandments to remind us that ethical living begins with deliberate choices, until those choices become second nature. Transformation comes through repeated acts of goodness, until compassion becomes instinctive. Only when kindness reaches even our moments of forgetfulness, do we begin to create the kind of ethical society Torah envisions.
Reading Ki Tetzei during Ellul, a month of deep introspection leading up to the High Holy Days challenges us to develop our conscious, and unconscious, actions. Ellul asks us not only what we have done, but who we are becoming. As we prepare for the High Holy Days, Ki Tetzei invites us to practise goodness so faithfully that compassion is no longer something we remember to do, it is simply who we are.
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