Parshat Ki Teitzei
What do we do with the experiences that hurt us?
We often imagine two possibilities.
Hold onto them.
Or let them go.
This week’s parsha offers another way.
After everything we endured in Egypt, Moses gives us an unexpected instruction:
“Do not hate an Egyptian, because you were a stranger in his land.”
It’s striking because the Torah never asks us to forget Egypt.
Quite the opposite.
Again and again, we are told to remember: at Pesach, on Shabbat, and in the laws that ask us to care for the stranger because we ourselves were strangers in Egypt.
But perhaps the question isn’t only whether we remember what happened.
It’s what we allow the memory to become.
The experience of being oppressed could have become a reason for bitterness.
The pain isn’t erased.
It’s given somewhere meaningful to go.
Instead, the Torah turns it into a reason to notice the vulnerable, protect the stranger, care for the poor, and build a different kind of society.
The pain wasn’t erased.
It was given somewhere meaningful to go.
Perhaps the same possibility exists in our own lives.
Being excluded can make us more attentive to someone standing alone.
Having struggled can deepen our compassion for someone struggling now.
Even disappointment can clarify what matters enough to build differently next time.
Healing doesn’t always mean leaving the past behind.
Sometimes it means carrying it forward differently, allowing what hurt us to become part of what makes us wiser, kinder, and more conscious of the life we want to create.
The past remains part of our story.
But it doesn’t have to write the ending.
As Shabbat approaches, may we have the strength to acknowledge what has hurt us without allowing it to harden us, the wisdom to transform difficult memories into greater compassion, and the freedom to choose what we carry forward.
Shabbat Shalom!
