The Weights We Carry

This week, in Parashat Ki Teitzei, Torah gives us an instruction that seems, at first, to belong in the marketplace:

"You shall not have in your pouch alternate weights, larger and smaller. You shall not have in your house alternate measures, larger and smaller. You must have completely honest weights and completely honest measures."— Deuteronomy 25:13–15

In the ancient marketplace, weights determined what something was worth. A dishonest merchant could keep two sets—one for buying and another for selling—and reach into the bag for whichever one worked in his favor.

Torah says no.

One weight. One measure. An honest scale.

Throughout Elul, we have been talking about middot—the qualities of the soul that Jewish tradition asks us to examine and cultivate. We have considered compassion, gratitude, humility, fear and awe. We have been asking where these qualities are in balance and where they may need some work.

But there is something hiding inside the word middot itself.

A middah is a measure.

And that makes me wonder whether, in this season of measuring the soul, we ought to take a good look at the scales we use to measure one another.

Because I suspect most of us have more than one weight rattling around in the bag.

A friend loses their temper, and we know they have been under tremendous pressure. Someone we dislike loses their temper, and we think: "Wow! You're a terrible person." Someone we love disappoints us, we offer forgiveness. Someone we already distrust disappoints us, and the moment becomes evidence. “See? I knew it.”

And, of course, we do this with ourselves too.

I can explain my own failures with remarkable generosity. I know exactly how tired I was. I know how much I had been carrying. I know what happened earlier that day. I know what I meant, even if what came out of my mouth was something else entirely.

But when another person fails me? Suddenly context can become a lot less interesting.

Sometimes we reverse the scales. We offer compassion endlessly to everyone around us while weighing ourselves with a measure so unforgiving that we would never dream of using it on someone we love.

Ki Teitzei does not tell us to stop measuring.

That matters.

Torah does not pretend every action is acceptable or that accountability is unnecessary. An honest scale still makes distinctions. Some things are wrong. Some injuries require repair. Some relationships require boundaries. Sometimes we really do need to look at another person—or ourselves—and say, “This was not okay.”

The commandment is not to throw away the scale.

The commandment is to stop changing the weights.

And that feels like particularly important work during the month of Elul.

We spend this season examining ourselves. We listen for the shofar. We practice cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul. We consider our middot, our measures.

But an accounting is only as honest as the standard we use to make it.

So perhaps before Rosh Hashanah, there is another question worth asking:

“Do I use the same measure for the people I love, the people I struggle with, and myself?”

Think of a loved one or friend whose challenging behavior you instinctively excuse. Now think of someone you don't like so well. Don't worry. You know who they are. And it's okay. We all have them. Some of us may even be them.

Now imagine that tomorrow they do exactly the same thing.

Would you understand one and condemn the other? Would you go looking for context for one and motives for the other? Would you remember the whole person in one case and reduce the other person to a single action?

If so, maybe the first thing that needs examining isn't the person standing on the scale.

Maybe it's the weight in our own hand.

And maybe that is part of what this season of middot is asking of us: not simply to measure our patience, our compassion, our humility, or our fear, but to notice how quickly we change the measure when another human being steps onto the scale.

Ki Teitzei asks us to empty our pockets.

No large weight for the stranger and small weight for the friend. No generous measure for ourselves and merciless one for everybody else. One honest scale.

Because before we decide what another person weighs, Torah asks us to look down at our own hand—and make sure our thumb isn't on the scale.

,שבת שלום

Student Rabbi Ben