Parashat Ki Teitzei
Elul 11, 5771 ~ September, 2011
by Danielle Elkins
Writing
about Parshat Ki Tetzei was determined by my calendar. My kids would be
in school for a couple of weeks, and it was still far enough away from
the holidays: Both allowing me the time to write. To my surprise 68 of
the 613 Mitzvot are in this Parsha, which is more than any other
Parsha. It is all laws! I have truly loved studying the Parshiot with
dialogue, poetry and plots, but the Parshiot with endless lists of
seemingly obscure Mitzvot are a struggle.
In
thinking about this Parsha, while getting ready for another school year
with my three children, I gained a newfound feeling of obligation to
read them as well as awe of their creation. Every year about this time I
make endless lists, rules, and charts for my family in hopes to make
the year a little less chaotic. My goal is a more peaceful and
productive home, but every year the list, rules, and charts are
forgotten within a month. My planning is always too short sighted to
make it through the unexpected. Who feeds the dog, if designated child
is sick or not around? Soon enough we don't look at the list. The lists
definitely don't work if we don't look at them. It is back to me
delegating and organizing as we go. Why do I even bother? As a mother,
I make these lists because I love my family so much that I want us to
have as little conflict as possible, so we can spend our time being
together and helping others in a positive way. Suddenly, Parshat Ki
Tetzei feels like a Parsha with the most love and concern from HaShem
for us. The Torah provides us with Mitzvot for all time, not just for
the first month of the school year.
We
need to go no further than the first law in this Parsha, The Woman of
Beautiful Form, to wonder how this applies to our present day world. In
summary, when a man goes to battle and desires a beautiful woman, who by
the way may actually be ugly, he may take her for a wife but first he
must bring her home where she will spend a month in mourning. The
beautiful captive shaves her head, doesn't cut her nails, and mourns her
lost family for one month. After the one month, the man can decide to
marry her or not. If he still wants to marry her, the wedding will
proceed after two more months. If he doesn't want to marry her, she is
free. The woman actually converts to Judaism, if the marriage takes
place and even if they do not marry she may still have a choice to
convert (The Torah Anthology,
pg-7-8). In theory at least, I wonder why this procedure was never
actually used in our battle against assimilation. In this situation the
use of the word battle refers to battles other than battles pertaining
to the Land of Israel (such as a moral battle). Assimilation due to
inter-marriage after exile from Israel has hurt our people. The parents
of sons who wanted to marry women outside the faith must have felt like
they were loosing the "battle" to keep Judaism alive. "In the opinion of
the Talmud, the Torah only allowed the taking of the beautiful captive
because forbidding the action would have been ineffective..." (Aish.com,
The Spiral Staircase, by Rabbi Noson Weisz) Sounds familiar. The
stories of forbidden love are endless.
The
captive woman in this context could equate to the forbidden. This
Parsha and the Talmud are trying to teach us about how to approach the
forbidden. The soldier is given a way to elevate his seemingly
superficial feelings in a way that will reveal truth or inner beauty.
Just the mental process of this captive mourning her life and family and
strip herself of all physical beauty was enough for the soldiers to use
self-control, because even though there is extensive detail on how to
marry a woman, you desire in battle, it was never actually done. By this
law existing, it alludes to the idea that there could be a desire of
the soldier toward the captive that is a true attraction of the soul.
"This says Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar (1696-1743) in his Ohr HaChaim
commentary on Torah, is the deeper significance of the law of the
"beautiful captive." A Jewish soldier is physically attracted to an
enemy maiden. But beneath this corporeal "husk" a deeper attraction is
at play; indeed, the physical attraction is but the external (and
corrupted) expression of the inner spiritual craving. In truth, the
soldier is being drawn toward a holy soul held captive in the depths of
the kelipot(the "husks" which conceal G-dliness in our world). By
following the regimen of prescribed by the Torah-designed to strip his
desire of its mundane trappings and reveal its holy core---he can redeem
this "beautiful captive." (The Cry of the Holy Sparks, by Zvi Yair,
Chabad.org). Today, our people having lived through thousands of years
of exile and persecution, I wonder if attractions outside the faith are
expressions of true desire of lost Jewish souls.
If
nothing else, we should learn from this seemingly dated law that as
parents sometimes the way to battle the negative desires of our children
is not by making it forbidden, but finding a path to making good
choices. The laws and lessons of the Torah only help us, if we take the
time to look. "Whatever the period or the circumstances in which you
live, it is the Torah that must determine your course of life for you;
you must unremittingly and continually seek to educate yourself up to
it;" (Horeb, by Samson Raphael Hirsch, page 381-382)
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