By Action Group Ka’ballers, East Coast Mifgash 2013

We are writing to you from an East Coast Mifgash action group in APRIL. As you can imagine, this action group is themed Parshat Hashavua. This weeks parshat is Ki Tavo.

Ki Tavo, as a parsha in Deuteronomy, recounts a bunch of things. Mostly rules and blessings and other stuff like that. We have chosen to have a sicha about tzedakah and the impoverished. “Cursed be he who subverts the rights of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow” (Deuteronomy 27:19). We think it’s important to help others and be nice to others, no matter what type of person they are. In this parsha, it seems that God wants to help all people, but instead bestows it upon us to help each other. It is interesting to us that God might rather create an unjust society and encourage us to be the just people that create an equal society instead of simply creating a just society. The conversation then wandered to the time before fairy tales, and how these verses in the Torah were how people obtained their morals and values.

An interesting idea floated by Eli Marsh (this happens to be his bar mitzvah parsha) was that the way God interacts with humans, is a similar interaction of that of a shutaf leader. Does God not just allowing, but facilitating our (presumably) just actions to shape the world around us make her a shutaf? Is God our partner in shaping the world into a just, moral society?

No one has ever stated that Judaism is a convenient religion. Yet, as Jews, we have an obligation to ourselves and to our people, to strive towards a more just society. This choice, to be moving towards a just society, is an essential choice that we make as Jews. By not engaging in this choice, the degradation of society proves its own punishment. As Jews, and as members of Habonim, we need to constantly be making an active choice to engage with the world, through our friends, partners, and strangers, in order to improve the world we share with all our homies.