This meditation deals with the mitzvah of helping to raise up a fellow’s fallen animal. Hakem takim imo, “you shall surely raise [it] up together with him.” The meditation considers this verse in terms of our experience of emotional “falling” on life’s journey, exploring some different ways of understanding what this falling is, and then — using commentaries and rabbinic stories — creates a picture of the reciprocality of the help that we offer this “fallen one,” how the raising up goes back and forth between us, how we are all at times falling/in need of help and at other times, capable of offering assistance to others, and how this exchange is what is meant by imo, by doing the work “togehter.” The conclusion of the meditation suggests further that imo, “with him,” might mean “with Him,” with God, that God is the third partner in this work of raising each other up.
Sources for this meditation (in order of appearance in the meditation):
Deuteronomy 22:4
Exodus 21:33
Deuteronomy 21:1
Deuteronomy 22:8
Rashi on Deuteronomy 22:4
Talmud Brachot 5b (stories about Rabbi Yochanan)
Sefat Emet, Devarim, Ki Tetze, 5635 (1874)
Torah Temimah on Devarim 22:4, paragraph 9
Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva at Pexels
