Parashat Ki Teitzeiפָּרָשַׁת כִּי־תֵצֵא

Ki Teitzei (“When You Go Out”) contains numerous laws, more than appear in any other Torah portion. These include laws about the treatment of a captive woman, returning lost objects, forbidden mixtures, the erection of a rooftop fence, rape, collateral, and workers’ wages. Ki Teitzei is the most law-dense portion in the Torah: by the count of Sefer HaChinuch it contains 74 of the Torah's 613 commandments, more than any other single parashah. What unites this seemingly miscellaneous body of law is its focus on everyday civil, economic, and family life rather than ritual or sacrifice. The portion translates covenantal holiness into the ethics of ordinary relationships, governing matters such as marriage and divorce, the inheritance rights of the firstborn, honest weights and measures, the prompt payment of workers' wages, taking collateral on a loan, and leaving gleanings for the poor. It closes with the charge to remember and blot out the memory of Amalek, framing communal memory itself as a moral obligation.

The Haftarah for Ki Teitzei is Isaiah 54:1-10, read in this verse range in most Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities. It is the fifth of the seven "Haftarot of Consolation" (Sheva d'Nechemta) read on the Shabbatot between Tisha B'Av and Rosh Hashanah, so its selection is driven primarily by the calendar cycle of consolation rather than by the parashah's legal content. Isaiah portrays an exiled Israel as a once-barren, abandoned woman whom God promises to take back with everlasting kindness, comparing this irrevocable pledge to His post-flood oath to Noah. Commentators also note a thematic resonance with the portion's many laws concerning women, marriage, and protecting the vulnerable, recasting the God-Israel bond in terms of reconciliation and enduring covenantal loyalty.

Ki Teitzei contains several of the Torah's most discussed commandments. Shiluach haken, sending away the mother bird before taking her young (Deuteronomy 22:6-7), carries an explicit promise of long life and is among the most debated mitzvot in Jewish thought. The requirement to build a parapet (ma'akeh) around a flat roof (Deuteronomy 22:8) is the paradigm case for safety obligations in Jewish law. The portion also gives the forbidden mixtures of kilayim and shaatnez (wool and linen), the prohibition against muzzling an ox while it threshes (Deuteronomy 25:4), and the concluding command to remember what Amalek did and blot out his memory (Deuteronomy 25:17-19). Those closing Amalek verses are read again as the special maftir on Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat before Purim; while Ki Teitzei itself is an ordinary Shabbat, it is the source of that Zachor reading.