We Who See Shall Not Ignore: Ki Tetze & Sight
Every morning, I open WhatsApp to another plea: a reservist struggling to keep his business alive, a widow raising funds to honor her husband, friends building a park in a fallen friend’s memory.
I used to respond to each one—donating, clicking, carrying their names in my heart. Now I skim. The appeals don’t stop, and I feel overwhelmed.
That change haunts me. If seeing is meant to stir us, what happens when we see too much to bear?
In 2003, Susan Sontag called being a spectator of distant suffering a “quintessential modern experience.”
That was before WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, and the endless scroll in our pockets.
What might she say today?
I’ve begun to think of this struggle as bound up with the ethics of sight. In Judaism, seeing is not simply passive; it is a summons to act.
Yet what happens when our senses are flooded, when images of pain arrive without pause, and distance no longer shields us from others’ burdens?
Should I open every WhatsApp plea from Israel when I know I cannot help everyone? Should I read about yet another school shooting, or a genocide in Sudan, when I have no way to respond? Should I look at children suffering in Gaza if it will not change what I do?
We are awash in suffering. Yet we rarely ask: what is the ethic of our attention?
Our Torah portion, Ki Tetze is dizzying. Moses’ long speech shifts from narrative and poetry to law.
With seventy-four commandments—the most of any parasha—it feels scattered, challenging generations of commentators to find a unifying thread.
But one theme stands out: the spiritual and ethical power of sight.
Take one of the parasha’s most morally complex laws: the case of a woman captured during war. The Torah says: “When you go out to war… and you see among the captives a beautiful woman and desire her…”
What follows is not encouragement but restriction. The soldier may not harm her. He must bring her home, allow her to grieve her family, and only then marry or release her.
The Torah does not erase the soldier’s ugly impulse, but it does insist that even in war, sight—even when fueled by desire or violence—creates responsibility.
A few verses later, we encounter a very different command:
“If you see your fellow’s ox or sheep gone astray, do not ignore it; you must return it.”
Even if it’s only an animal—or even an object—you can’t look away. If no one else is around, you must take it home and care for it until it can be returned.
It’s an ordinary moment—a lost animal. But the Torah’s language is pointed: you must not hide yourself. You may not ignore what you see.
That phrase—you shall not ignore—should stop us short. The Torah knows that most people would rather look away. And yet it insists: your eyes are not neutral. They bind you.
A recurring formula emerges: you see → you must not ignore → you must act.
It reminds me of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who taught that the face of another is never just a face—it is a call. Seeing another person is not neutral; it’s sacred. The encounter obligates us.
Yet in our world, sight has been flattened. We see too much. Asked to care about everything, we risk caring about nothing.
Algorithms know human suffering drives clicks, and they inundate us with more images than the human nervous system can bear.
Which brings me back to my opening question:
How do we live ethically when we are bombarded with more suffering than we can possibly answer?
I don’t have a perfect answer. We are in the midst of an ongoing information revolution, and the rise of AI will only deepen the moral questions around sight, attention, and responsibility.
But this week’s Torah portion challenges us not to abandon the responsibility of seeing. Its moral formula—you see, you must not ignore, you must respond—still matters.
In an age of nonstop images, we must cultivate discerning sight. What if we made it a practice to respond meaningfully to one image of need each week? Or committed to acting when we see suffering in our own neighborhood, in the places we actually inhabit?
Simone Weil, the French philosopher and mystic, wrote: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
Our capacity for attention and empathy may be limited, but it’s also precious. Scatter them across everything, and we risk becoming numb—not only to distant tragedies, but also to the needs right in front of us.
Maybe that’s what the month of Elul, enveloping us now, comes to teach.
Teshuvah (Return) is not about doing or fixing everything—it is about choosing where to look, where to turn, where to begin. To see clearly, to not ignore, and to act with intention.
