The mornings and evenings are beginning to become cooler. Schools are back in session on Monday. This must mean the high holidays are right around the corner. This is one of my favorite times of the year as we begin to think about a time of renewal, thanks, forgiveness and repentance.
As I turned to this week's Torah portion, in light of being in the month of Elul, which I wrote about last week, I was surprised by what I read. This week's portion, Ki Teitzi, is a text that outlines 74 of the 613 commandments and contains the most number of laws in any single weekly text. The laws include:
Taking a beautiful woman captive during war, the inheritance rights of the first-born,
the wayward and rebellious son, burial and dignity of the dead, returning a lost object, sending away the
mother bird before taking her young, the various forms of creating hybrid plants, judicial procedures and penalties for adultery, rape or seduction of an unmarried girl, and for a husband who falsely accuses his wife of
infidelity. Furthermore, the parsha includes laws governing the purity of the military camp; the
prohibition against turning in an escaped slave; the duty to pay a worker on time, the allowance for anyone working for you, human or animal, the opportunity to have nourishment at work, the proper
treatment of a debtor and
the prohibition against charging interest on a loan; the laws of divorce and the procedures for marriage of the wife
of a deceased childless brother.
Wow - that covers a lot of territory in one week! As I read the text I tried to find some common denominator that tied it all together, but I could not. The more I read the more disjointed it all seemed, as if it was being hurried and thrown together to be finished - rather than to be thought through. I found this quite odd. A light bulb went off for me. We are getting close to the High Holidays and it seemed like we were running out of time to fit all of the necessary commandments in before starting a new year. Maybe there really isn't any rhyme or reason to the text, but it is by sheer necessity to make sure all of the important topics are covered before concluding the year and starting another?
Certainly the last few weeks at Federation we have been busily planning for our upcoming year, but we are also feverishly trying to finish our campaign year, create an Annual Report, organize our Annual Meeting, make sure we meet with our donors and tie up all loose ends as we close our fiscal year in preparation for an audit and begin another. This is an extremely important time of the year as we set the tone for the year to come.
On September 30 we will host our joint Federation/Foundation Annual Meeting and we will install the new officers and board members of Federation and Foundation. Just like the high holidays, it is a time of renewal, reflection, thanks and certainly honor. But, until that time, there is much work to be completed. If we could put a Federation "to do" list together, it may look as oddly mixed as the Torah portion and that is just how life may be sometimes.
