By Rabbi Michael Werbow
This week’s Torah portion is Ki Tetze, Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19.
At a certain point in a child’s development, they latch onto the concept that if their eyes are closed, they can’t be seen. They may even play a game with this, covering their eyes and saying, “You can’t see me, you can’t see me.” The Torah, this week, expects us to keep our eyes open. We are told that if we see a fellow’s ox or sheep that has wandered off, we must return it to the owner. We are not permitted to close ourselves off to the needs of a friend or of the animal.
This expectation can be carried into other moments when we should take action. If we see garbage on the ground, do we walk by as if we hadn’t seen it, or do we pause to pick it up?
Picking up the garbage is no one’s specific obligation, which makes it everyone’s. Just because you close your eyes to it, doesn’t mean the garbage isn’t there and that you don’t have an obligation to pick it up. If we, collectively, want to have a better community, then we all have obligations to help out.
We could say, “I didn’t drop this on the ground” or, “someone else threw it there, they should pick it up.”
In reality, we don’t know how it got there. Maybe it blew away from someone. Even if someone carelessly threw it on the ground, they aren’t coming back to pick it up, and while it might not be our responsibility, it’s not not our responsibility, either.
Many are familiar with the quote by Elie Wiesel stating, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
Wiesel was, of course, speaking about bigger and much more tragic events, but the lesson is the same. In an earlier speech, he said that “indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony. One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it.”
The Torah is guarding us from the kind of indifference that Wiesel speaks of. It uses the case of a lost animal to present us with a way to live in our day-to-day lives. Living this way prepares us for how to respond to the major injustices that Wiesel was referencing. See a piece of trash on the ground? Be angry that it is there and act on that anger. Don’t be indifferent. Acting could mean just picking it up and putting it in the closest garbage can. It could also mean, if you don’t find a garbage can anywhere close, petitioning the city to place more in the area.
In Exodus 23:4-5, we are told we are to even help the animal if it belongs to an enemy of ours. There can be many additional reasons not to act but we must fight against those forces and continue to do what is right, even when we don’t feel like it or it isn’t easy. Keeping our eyes open is step one. Acting is step two. ■
Rabbi Michael Werbow is rabbi of Tifereth Israel Congregation in the District.
