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Purity in the camp - Ki Teitze

B"H


This week, the Torah presents us with something unexpected: a law about going to war. You’d assume the Torah would only concern itself with lofty spiritual ideals or ritual, not the gritty details of survival in a battlefield. Yet it insists: even in war, when you are far from home, you must carry with you not just a sword, but a shovel. Why? To ensure the purity of your camp. To literally cover what needs to be buried.

On the surface, it seems trivial, why does something so small get so much attention, when lives hang in the balance? Indeed, this is the point. The Torah is revealing something radical: the environment you create reflects who you are. Your dignity isn’t found in your furniture, your status, or even in your victories. It is found in the choices you make when no one is watching, in the quiet details, in the discipline to respect the space you occupy.

This is about consciousness. Carrying a weapon without a shovel makes you powerful but not whole. The shovel is the symbol of integration, of tending to the shadow, of making sure that what is waste, toxicity, or distortion doesn’t contaminate the camp of your being.

We live in a time when the world is obsessed with camps. Which one are you in? Marching for this cause or against it? The energy of division is heavy, pulling us into sides and labels. But the Torah offers a different truth: you already belong to a camp. The Jewish camp. Not in the political sense, but in the sense of identity. A way of being. A way of remembering who you are beyond the noise.

Belonging to this camp isn’t passive. It requires vigilance. Just as the soldier carried a shovel to protect the sanctity of the camp, so must we carry tools to protect the sanctity of our minds, our hearts, our homes. It looks like boundaries around what we allow in: the media we consume, the conversations we entertain, the energies we permit to influence us. Every time you enter your home, you are declaring that what happens inside is sacred.

The Torah’s message is clear: even when the world feels chaotic, dirty, and murky, you must know who you are. The dignity of your camp is not negotiable.

So as this year closes, we cannot not just hope for a better year, we must actively create it. Carry your shovel. Protect your camp. Stand proudly in the truth of your identity. And may this alignment of self with Source invite the ultimate wholeness: the arrival of Moshiach, when all of humanity remembers the one camp we all belong to, the camp of oneness, dignity, and Divine connection.

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