Ki Teitzei means when you leave. When we leave our expectations over the messes great and little, some we have made, some made for us. When we cease to compare the what-it-is to the what-we-wanted or the-way-it-was-supposed-to-be. When we leave behind all the supposed-to’s of our existence. For most, it didn’t happen that way. 

In the portion, Ki Teitzei means, in one sense, if you go out. Then what follows are a couple of not so lofty examples. The words may have entered your vocabulary as when you leave. If you leave — it means that too. 

In an early example in the portion, the story turns to a rebellious kid and what to do about that rebellious kid. There is a threat of sending that kid to juvenile hall. Did anyone ever get sent to juvenile hall, or was it a way for parents to try and cajole their kids into better behavior? The Talmud preserves the argument (Bab. Sanh. 71a).

The language here is what happens when we try to push, convince, cajole behaviors around us when they will not be moved. What to do with our expectations when our expectations of how people should behave are showing?

When we ki teitze, when we leave — if we leave — our expectations where they belong, in a shoebox under the bed, then we are free to deal with people or events the way they are, not the way we think they were supposed to be.

The great what-it-is, I call it. We have ki teitzei’d, we have left the supposed-to-be and have entered the holy way-it-is. Now we are free to be alive to life in its complexity, its messiness, independent of our efforts to manage, cajole, contain.

We are alive to existence as it presents itself to us, not as we would have had it. 

We are now co-creators with G*d in the full catastrophe of existence, as Zorba and the Buddhists say, and (somewhat) free.

Forgive us O holy G*d our lofty strategies and less lofty strategies. We are all learning, studying the world so we may receive the merits.

We’re doing the best we can.

Amen.

Rabbi James Stone Goodman serves Central Reform Congregation and is a past president of the St. Louis Rabbinical and Cantorial Association, which coordinates the d’var Torah for the Jewish Light.