Parshat Ki Tetze has the most positive commandments of all the parashot of the Torah. It contains, according to the Rambam's accounting, no fewer than 72 mitzvot. Interestingly, and maybe even in a strangely fitting way, it could also be the parsha that expresses the most darkness, desires, blood, violence, and torture in the whole Torah.
A quick leafing through these dozens of mitzvot, and through the very concrete verbs that sketch them onto the real world, fills the mind with triggers. They resonate with a new, sharp pain. In the post-traumatic, raw-nerved landscape of our lives since October 7th, 2023, we hear the cry of the eshet yefat toar. The voice of that beautiful woman captive, who opens the parsha, mixes with the cries of the rape victim who is commanded to cry out loudly (Deut.22:24), because if she does not call out, she will be found a willing partner in her own rape, and must be stoned to death. Rape and intercourse appear in the parsha over and over, in different contexts, in a single word echoing ownership, rape, violence, and death, and mixing in hatred, stoning, abomination, murder, and conspiracy.
Traditional commentators read the combination of these mitzvot together as a way to face the dark instincts of the time. They read these laws as a biblical refinement against the violent customs of the environment, an effort by culture to take control of human nature's violent and difficult side, to make order out of our dark instincts, to regulate and frame them in a way that might allow society a way forward from the pain of war. Perhaps only one beautiful woman prisoner will cry a little in a closed room. Perhaps only one poor young woman will be stoned, because she froze and wasn't able to cry out as she was raped. But the sun will rise again, life will go on, society will continue to exist, they seem to say.
Indeed, the traditional commentaries chose to read these mitzvot as a single course of action, in which the first act of submission to the dark side, the taking of the beautiful captive, will inevitably lead to despising her, to choosing the son of the loved wife over the son of the hated wife, and even, in the end, to the birth of the rebellious son, who rebels against his parents and ignores their instruction. The seed of the disaster is planted when the beautiful woman is taken prisoner, say the generations of commentators, thus trying to ease and avoid the exceptional permission given by the sacred text here for an Israelite to marry a foreign woman. This seed will come to fruition and destroy the couple from within, they say, sowing it with hate and jealousy, which will eventually be embodied by the son who will rise and consume the entire family. "Anyone who marries a beautiful woman has a stubborn and rebellious son" declares the Talmud (Sanhedrin 107a), and Rashi continues and develops this logic,
"When you go out to battle against your enemies and YHWH your God gives him into your hand, and you take-captive his captives, and you see among the captives a woman beautiful of form, and you desire her, and would take her for yourself as a wife." (Deut. 21:10-11)
Rashi says:
"Scripture is speaking only in view of man’s carnal desires. For if the Holy One, blessed be He, would not permit her to him as a wife, he would nevertheless marry her, although she would then be forbidden to him. However, if he does marry her, in the end he will hate her, for Scripture writes immediately afterwards, (v. 15) “If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, etc.” and ultimately he will beget a rebellious son by her (v. 18). It is for this reason that these sections are put in juxtaposition." (Rashi on Deut 21:11)
Rashi doesn't see the connection between the words that open the parsha, "when you go out to battle", to the order of the calamities that follow. But maybe in these words, davka, that foreshadow the coming destruction, are hidden the key to understanding the whole dark mess. "For when you go to war." The destruction begins at the moment the war begins. There are no beautiful wars, there are no good wars, there are no "clean" wars. War is all fire, violence and blood, and the act of beginning a war exposes all the difficult, dark, and repressed things that usually remain deep inside. Who knows this better than we do?
When the traditional commentators read the law of the beautiful captive, that the soldier who desires her must bring to his home, let her shave her hair, clean her nails, and cry for her presumably dead parents for thirty days, before he may lie with her and marry her, they are imagining a completely hypothetical situation. There was no case like this, no real standing in reality or in history. If they had any knowledge of the situation of women who had been taken captive, it would have been of Jewish women who had been taken captive by non-Jewish captors, in the diaspora and in a reality in which Jews had no sovereignty.
Our reading of Parshat Ki Tetze today, at the end of this bloody year of 5784, should look quite different. Our lives in the sovereign State of Israel were supposed to leave us in a similar situation to that of our ancestors in the time of Scripture, in which the power was in our own hands, and the difficult moral questions about the limits of power and its uses, and our basest, darkest impulses – would be the only moral questions troubling us.
But eleven months ago, the ground under our feet was shaken. The forces of darkness flooded our country. Women, babies, children and the aged of our people were taken captive. Reality, in its own cruel way, cracked open our certainty, our sovereignty, our feeling of control over our life and fate, and slammed down in front of us like a fist on a table. It laid in front of us the hard limits of our power. It laid in front of us our desperate need for compassion and mercy. Our beautiful women sit in captivity and weep for their parents, while our hearts are torn apart by fear and concern.
In the face of these shards, in the face of the fragility of our lives this past year, all we can do is stare. We can stare directly into that darkness, within as well as without, and once again choose mercy – but this time we will also choose to cry out. We will ourselves cry the cry of the young woman, raped, we will cry the cry of the woman captured. We will bear the memory of the limits of power and its sudden loss. We will be the mercy we demand for ourselves and our captive sisters. We will be mercy – and we will be the cry.
Translation: Rabbi Daniel Burstyn
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Rina Levanon is an educator, a lecturer, a creator, a social and educational entrepreneur, and a weaver of life-cycle rituals. She is a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College and serves as Student Rabbi at Kibbutz Beit HaShitta and the Gilboa Regional Council. She lives with her family at Kfar Blum, in the embattled Upper Galillee. She is married to Arnon and mother to Uriah, Tamara, and Zohara.
A quick leafing through these dozens of mitzvot, and through the very concrete verbs that sketch them onto the real world, fills the mind with triggers. They resonate with a new, sharp pain. In the post-traumatic, raw-nerved landscape of our lives since October 7th, 2023, we hear the cry of the eshet yefat toar. The voice of that beautiful woman captive, who opens the parsha, mixes with the cries of the rape victim who is commanded to cry out loudly (Deut.22:24), because if she does not call out, she will be found a willing partner in her own rape, and must be stoned to death. Rape and intercourse appear in the parsha over and over, in different contexts, in a single word echoing ownership, rape, violence, and death, and mixing in hatred, stoning, abomination, murder, and conspiracy.
Traditional commentators read the combination of these mitzvot together as a way to face the dark instincts of the time. They read these laws as a biblical refinement against the violent customs of the environment, an effort by culture to take control of human nature's violent and difficult side, to make order out of our dark instincts, to regulate and frame them in a way that might allow society a way forward from the pain of war. Perhaps only one beautiful woman prisoner will cry a little in a closed room. Perhaps only one poor young woman will be stoned, because she froze and wasn't able to cry out as she was raped. But the sun will rise again, life will go on, society will continue to exist, they seem to say.
Indeed, the traditional commentaries chose to read these mitzvot as a single course of action, in which the first act of submission to the dark side, the taking of the beautiful captive, will inevitably lead to despising her, to choosing the son of the loved wife over the son of the hated wife, and even, in the end, to the birth of the rebellious son, who rebels against his parents and ignores their instruction. The seed of the disaster is planted when the beautiful woman is taken prisoner, say the generations of commentators, thus trying to ease and avoid the exceptional permission given by the sacred text here for an Israelite to marry a foreign woman. This seed will come to fruition and destroy the couple from within, they say, sowing it with hate and jealousy, which will eventually be embodied by the son who will rise and consume the entire family. "Anyone who marries a beautiful woman has a stubborn and rebellious son" declares the Talmud (Sanhedrin 107a), and Rashi continues and develops this logic,
"When you go out to battle against your enemies and YHWH your God gives him into your hand, and you take-captive his captives, and you see among the captives a woman beautiful of form, and you desire her, and would take her for yourself as a wife." (Deut. 21:10-11)
Rashi says:
"Scripture is speaking only in view of man’s carnal desires. For if the Holy One, blessed be He, would not permit her to him as a wife, he would nevertheless marry her, although she would then be forbidden to him. However, if he does marry her, in the end he will hate her, for Scripture writes immediately afterwards, (v. 15) “If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, etc.” and ultimately he will beget a rebellious son by her (v. 18). It is for this reason that these sections are put in juxtaposition." (Rashi on Deut 21:11)
Rashi doesn't see the connection between the words that open the parsha, "when you go out to battle", to the order of the calamities that follow. But maybe in these words, davka, that foreshadow the coming destruction, are hidden the key to understanding the whole dark mess. "For when you go to war." The destruction begins at the moment the war begins. There are no beautiful wars, there are no good wars, there are no "clean" wars. War is all fire, violence and blood, and the act of beginning a war exposes all the difficult, dark, and repressed things that usually remain deep inside. Who knows this better than we do?
When the traditional commentators read the law of the beautiful captive, that the soldier who desires her must bring to his home, let her shave her hair, clean her nails, and cry for her presumably dead parents for thirty days, before he may lie with her and marry her, they are imagining a completely hypothetical situation. There was no case like this, no real standing in reality or in history. If they had any knowledge of the situation of women who had been taken captive, it would have been of Jewish women who had been taken captive by non-Jewish captors, in the diaspora and in a reality in which Jews had no sovereignty.
Our reading of Parshat Ki Tetze today, at the end of this bloody year of 5784, should look quite different. Our lives in the sovereign State of Israel were supposed to leave us in a similar situation to that of our ancestors in the time of Scripture, in which the power was in our own hands, and the difficult moral questions about the limits of power and its uses, and our basest, darkest impulses – would be the only moral questions troubling us.
But eleven months ago, the ground under our feet was shaken. The forces of darkness flooded our country. Women, babies, children and the aged of our people were taken captive. Reality, in its own cruel way, cracked open our certainty, our sovereignty, our feeling of control over our life and fate, and slammed down in front of us like a fist on a table. It laid in front of us the hard limits of our power. It laid in front of us our desperate need for compassion and mercy. Our beautiful women sit in captivity and weep for their parents, while our hearts are torn apart by fear and concern.
In the face of these shards, in the face of the fragility of our lives this past year, all we can do is stare. We can stare directly into that darkness, within as well as without, and once again choose mercy – but this time we will also choose to cry out. We will ourselves cry the cry of the young woman, raped, we will cry the cry of the woman captured. We will bear the memory of the limits of power and its sudden loss. We will be the mercy we demand for ourselves and our captive sisters. We will be mercy – and we will be the cry.
Translation: Rabbi Daniel Burstyn
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Rina Levanon is an educator, a lecturer, a creator, a social and educational entrepreneur, and a weaver of life-cycle rituals. She is a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College and serves as Student Rabbi at Kibbutz Beit HaShitta and the Gilboa Regional Council. She lives with her family at Kfar Blum, in the embattled Upper Galillee. She is married to Arnon and mother to Uriah, Tamara, and Zohara.