By: Jenn Abrams
PJ Library Manager
When my kids were younger, one of the PJ Library books that was beloved and well-read was No Rules for Michael, by Sylvia Rouss.
The premise is pretty simple. Michael is learning about the Ten Commandments at school and decides that life would be much more fun without so many rules. His teacher gives the class a chance to find out: for one day, there are no rules.
At first, this sounds fantastic. What kid wouldn’t want a day with no rules?
But it doesn’t take long for things to fall apart. Kids don’t have to share. They don’t have to listen when someone else is talking. They can take something that belongs to someone else. Michael quickly discovers that the rules he thought were getting in the way of having fun were actually making it possible for everyone to learn, play, and be together.
I thought about Michael while reading this week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitzei.
The parsha contains 74 mitzvot, more than any other Torah portion. Reading through them can feel a little like being a kid handed an enormous list of rules. There are laws about family relationships, lost property, loans, wages, agriculture, building safety, business practices, and much more.
It’s a lot.
And I find myself asking a version of Michael’s question: Why do we need all of these rules?
Why couldn’t the Torah simply tell us to be good people? Be fair. Be compassionate. Take care of one another.
But when you look more closely at the mitzvot in Ki Teitzei, you begin to see what all those details are doing.
Don’t just care about your neighbor. Return what they have lost.
Don’t just say that you value human life. Build a railing around your roof so someone doesn’t fall.
Don’t just believe workers deserve dignity. Pay them on time.
Don’t just care about people experiencing poverty. Leave something from your harvest for the stranger, the orphan, and the widow.
Don’t just tell us to care for the vulnerable. The Torah reminds us again and again to pay attention to those who might otherwise be overlooked.
As Michael discovers in his classroom, the rules aren’t there simply for the sake of having rules. They help create the kind of community we say we want to live in.
Without them, values like fairness, dignity, responsibility, and compassion can remain just that: values. Beautiful ideas that we believe in, but that don’t necessarily tell us what to do when another person’s needs bump up against our own.
Ki Teitzei seems to insist that our values have to become actions.
I think that’s a meaningful challenge for all of us who care about building Jewish community. We talk a lot about belonging, responsibility, generosity, and taking care of one another. But how do those values actually show up? How would someone experience them when they walk through our doors, interact with our organizations, ask for help, or encounter us in the community?
As adults, we may not get as excited as Michael at the prospect of a world without rules. But I think we can still share his instinct. Rules can feel restrictive. Seventy-four mitzvot can feel overwhelming.
Ki Teitzei asks us to see them differently.
Perhaps these mitzvot aren’t obstacles standing between us and the lives we want to live. They are tools for building those lives; small, concrete actions that help turn our highest values into the way we actually treat one another.
And maybe that’s why Torah needs so many of them.
Please email Jenn Abrams at jabrams@jewishcolorado.org with questions or comments.