Ki Teitzei

Ki Teitzei (Biblical Hebrew: כִּי־תֵצֵא, romanized: kî-tēṣēʾ, lit. 'when [you] go out') is the incipit and title of the 49th weekly Torah portion, or parashah (Hebrew: פָּרָשָׁה, lit. 'portion'), in the annual cycle of Torah reading in Judaism. It is the sixth parashah in the book of Deuteronomy, comprising Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19. The parashah sets out a series of miscellaneous laws, mostly governing civil and domestic life, including the treatment of a beautiful captive woman; inheritance among the sons of two wives; the punishment of extremely wayward sons in the community; the treatment of the corpses of executed persons; the treatment of found property; actions undertaken when coming upon another in distress; rooftop safety; prohibited mixtures; sexual offenses, membership in the congregation; camp hygiene; runaway slaves; prostitution; yibbum (יִבּוּם, 'levirate marriage'); and destroying the memory of Amalek, among other topics. The parashah is made up of 5,856 Hebrew letters, 1,582 Hebrew words, 110 verses, and 213 lines in a Torah Scroll (סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה, sefer Torah). Jews generally read the parashah in August or September. Jews also read the part of the parashah about Amalek (Deuteronomy 25:17–19) as the maftir (מַפְטִיר, maftîr, 'concluder') reading on Shabbat Zachor (שַׁבָּת זָכוֹר, Šabbāt Zākôr, 'Sabbath of Remembering'), the special Sabbath immediately before Purim, which commemorates the story of Esther and the Jewish people's squashing of Haman's plan to commit eliminationist genocide against Jews living in the Achaemenid Empire. Esther 3:1 identifies Haman as an Agagite, and thus a descendant of Amalek.