I recently came across the term “Natural Consequence.” These are things not imposed on you by nature, society, or another person, but occur naturally on their own because of your actions, i.e. if you spend your money on a candy bar, you will not have money for baseball cards. If you think about it, natural consequences are there all around us whether we like it or not. They are part of the choices we make as individuals and as a larger society. It is up to us to be accountable for our role in causing them to happen.
This is a good frame of how to look at this week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitze, a portion which includes rules for what happens when we go out to war. The Ki in Ki Teitze is normally translated as “when,” as in “when you go out to war“ this is how you need to behave. But, the Hebrew word Ki is better translated as the subordinating conjunction “because,” i.e. “because you went out to war” this is what will happen. Thus, the hard decisions about what to do with captured men and women that the Torah portion deals with, become a direct consequence of war itself.
Natural Consequences are also a good frame to use in approaching the new Hebrew month of Elul. Elul is the month directly preceding Rosh Hashanah and is a time to take an account of how the past year has gone and what we can do better in the year ahead. Usually we look at intentionality, things we did deliberately to hurt others or ourselves. But most of what we could do better pertain to choices we made for one thing, that had direct consequences on someone or something else. All of us can think of actions we took that were not meant to hurt but had that effect anyway. Idle gossip that was meant just to further a conversation, anger at another driver that made an already difficult day worse, or just skipping a line at the supermarket, are that had direct effects on others. While it is impossible to avoid “Natural Consequences,” it does not mean they should not be accounted for. In this Elul, let us give one another permission to delve deeper, and perhaps make better choices in the year ahead.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex