The Torah column is supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon.
Ki Teitzei
Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19
The walk to Home Depot became a regular outing during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Since we almost always had something that needed fixing, cleaning or improving in our little rental house, it was a great way to get some fresh air and contribute toward 10,000 daily steps throughout 2020 and 2021.
Often gathered at the corner of the Home Depot parking lot were men looking for work.
Today in 2025, there are signs placed in the surrounding blocks that warn people to watch out for immigration sweeps. The same Home Depot that gave us a pleasant diversion during the thick of Covid now appears in the news as a site of panic and confusion.
I can’t turn away from the teaching in this week’s parashah that reminds us of the humanity and often the desperation of those who hope for and rely on getting “hired work” to survive.
“You shall not cheat a poor or destitute hired person among your brethren, or a stranger who is in one of the communities of your land. On that day shall you pay his wages, before the sun sets, for he is poor, ve’elav hu noseh et nafsho, else a cry to the Eternal will be issued against you, and it shall be a sin upon you.” (Deuteronomy 24:15-16)
I’ve left that one phrase in Hebrew for a moment because the language is idiomatic and vague. Literally, it means something like: “for he is poor, and toward it he lifts up his inner self.”
The difficult poetry compels us to pause and consider the complexities of the worker’s financial and emotional condition. As a result, the many translations of that phrase have included:
- “the worker is needy and urgently depends on it”
- “he is afflicted; for it he lifts his life-breath”
- “he is poor, and sets his heart upon it”
- “he is a poor man, and he places his life in jeopardy for it”
- “because he is poor, he risks his life to earn it”
- “he is poor, and to it (his wage) he bears his soul (risking death in his work)”
In these versions, we confront the very real possibility that the man in need is hoping desperately for an offer of employment; he may have no option but to risk his life doing dangerous tasks; and he may be counting entirely on this job for his and his family’s survival.
Despite the different translations, what is indisputable is that the position of the hired worker is one of necessity, urgency and possibly peril. It may even be a matter of life and death.
I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like to live day to day, to depend on piecemeal, intermittent and inconsistent employment, to exist on the edges of society, to be uncertain when wages will arrive and — in the translation that moves me the most — to “have one’s heart set on it.”
Yet this, of course, has been the reality for day (and night) workers for ages, as our Torah makes very plain. In response to what was probably routine abuse of laborers, the Torah insists that they be treated with dignity, their hard work respected and their humanity honored at all times.
The treatment of workers in the United States is among the most urgent and hotly debated issues of our time. Our vast dependence on and debt to immigrant laborers have created profound societal rifts, to greatly understate the case.
I am haunted by the now-regular specter of people running in terror from masked immigration enforcers, including the recent Trojan horse-style incident of a truck filled with “enforcers” who were supposedly employers with offers of jobs that the workers’ “hearts were set on.” We absolutely must do better.
Many of our fellow Americans believe that anyone without “proper papers” should be deported immediately, regardless of circumstances. Others, in fact a vast majority of Americans according to every poll, believe the system should be overhauled entirely so that those who come here to better themselves and contribute in good faith can have a piece of the elusive American Dream. How and when that might be achieved is unfathomably far away.
Parashat Ki Teitzei contains more mitzvot than any other portion in the Torah — 74. Most are compelling, even if obsolete; many are very well known. But the mitzvah concerning the treatment of the worker is the only one in the parashah with the warning that unless it is observed properly, “a cry to the Eternal will be issued against you, and it shall be a sin upon you.”
This is very rare wording. It appeared almost verbatim two weeks ago when we were cautioned, “Beware lest you harbor the unkind thought — ‘the seventh year, the year of (debt) remission, is approaching,’ so that you are mean and give nothing to your needy kin, who will cry out to the Eternal against you, and you will incur guilt.” (Deuteronomy 15:9)
The Torah knows that the temptation to withhold from those in need is a terribly powerful one, so much so that the unsettling promise of a cry to heaven is raised. How much more peaceful and dignified could the world be if hearts and hands were a little more open, if judgments of those less fortunate than we were a little less harsh. This is aspirational to be sure, but also surely worth striving for?
“Give me your tired, your poor.” We all know the words on the base of Lady Liberty. May her call to those who look to these shores for safety and opportunity be stronger and louder than any “cry to heaven” that could ever be raised against all of us.