This week’s portion begins ”כי־תצא למלחמה – when you go out to war…” (Deuteronomy 21:10).
For us, it is not a question of when. We have now been at war for more than 700 days, and the weight of it becomes more unbearable by the day. Just this week, the remains of two hostages Ilan Weiss (z”l) and Idan Shtivi (z”l) have been returned, while forty-eight others remain in captivity under unimaginable conditions. Gaza is being annihilated before our eyes, its people starving and dying. “When you go out as a troop against your enemies, be on your guard against every evil thing”.
(Deuteronomy 23:2)
Ki Tetze is permeated by an anxiety surrounding the purity of our camp. The phrase “ובערת הרע מישראל - thus you will sweep away evil from Israel” (Deuteronomy 22:22) is repeated five times throughout the portion. The Torah acknowledges that war is inevitable, at times even necessary, yet it insists that when we go to war, we must aspire to uphold a degree of purity. Ibn Ezra comments that ‘every evil thing’ refers not only to the physical but also the spiritual – we must conduct ourselves with purity of body and spirit.
Sforno takes this further by noting that the word for ‘thing’ here ‘dvar’ also means ‘speech,’ in this case ‘evil speech.’ He explains that the Torah’s charge to guard against every evil thing extends as well to our speech — prohibiting לשון הרע. Especially in times of war, our speech holds power, and we must use it carefully and wisely. Only if we refrain from every evil thing, Sforno explains, will the Divine Presence remain with us.
If at the beginning of this war, we believed in its pure intentions – a need to protect our people and ensure that the atrocities of Oct. 7 do not happen again – 700 days later, the Israeli public is increasingly convinced that this war is no longer happening under those same intentions. As the new school year began this past week, we saw thousands of Israeli students walk out of their classrooms, striking in demand of a hostage deal and cease-fire. Reut, a 12th grader, from Pardes Hannah-Karkur proclaimed, “We decided not to return to school while they are being debauched in Gaza…It is impossible to act as if everything's [normal] when our brothers and sisters have been there for almost two years. This is not life, and this is not childhood.” At the same time, dozens of Israeli teachers gathered in protest outside the Education Ministry, lifting their voices for the children of Gaza who have been largely deprived of a proper education since the war began. One teacher confessed, “I feel afraid to speak out”—a reminder that silence in the face of injustice can itself become a form of לשון הרע, an evil corroding the purity of our camp.
As we approach the High Holidays, a time for renewal and reflection, we pray – both with our hearts and our feet to quote the great Rabbi Heschel – that our hostages return home and the annihilation of Gaza comes to an end, that the Divine Presence returns once again to the land of Israel.
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Yoav Rahamim Varadi was born in Jerusalem in 1998 to a Kurdish-Israeli mother and a Hungarian father. At the age of two, his family moved to the United States. After completing his first year of rabbinical school in the American program at HUC, Yoav chose to remain in Israel and transfer to the Israeli program, while also pursuing a master’s degree in Jewish education at Hebrew University. He holds a BA in English from Columbia University and another in Jewish Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary. An experienced Jewish educator, Yoav has worked as a Jewish educator in a variety of settings throughout his life. He is deeply committed to Jewish peoplehood and to Judaism’s power to create meaning and structure in our lives. Yoav currently lives in Haifa with his partner.
For us, it is not a question of when. We have now been at war for more than 700 days, and the weight of it becomes more unbearable by the day. Just this week, the remains of two hostages Ilan Weiss (z”l) and Idan Shtivi (z”l) have been returned, while forty-eight others remain in captivity under unimaginable conditions. Gaza is being annihilated before our eyes, its people starving and dying. “When you go out as a troop against your enemies, be on your guard against every evil thing”.
(Deuteronomy 23:2)
Ki Tetze is permeated by an anxiety surrounding the purity of our camp. The phrase “ובערת הרע מישראל - thus you will sweep away evil from Israel” (Deuteronomy 22:22) is repeated five times throughout the portion. The Torah acknowledges that war is inevitable, at times even necessary, yet it insists that when we go to war, we must aspire to uphold a degree of purity. Ibn Ezra comments that ‘every evil thing’ refers not only to the physical but also the spiritual – we must conduct ourselves with purity of body and spirit.
Sforno takes this further by noting that the word for ‘thing’ here ‘dvar’ also means ‘speech,’ in this case ‘evil speech.’ He explains that the Torah’s charge to guard against every evil thing extends as well to our speech — prohibiting לשון הרע. Especially in times of war, our speech holds power, and we must use it carefully and wisely. Only if we refrain from every evil thing, Sforno explains, will the Divine Presence remain with us.
If at the beginning of this war, we believed in its pure intentions – a need to protect our people and ensure that the atrocities of Oct. 7 do not happen again – 700 days later, the Israeli public is increasingly convinced that this war is no longer happening under those same intentions. As the new school year began this past week, we saw thousands of Israeli students walk out of their classrooms, striking in demand of a hostage deal and cease-fire. Reut, a 12th grader, from Pardes Hannah-Karkur proclaimed, “We decided not to return to school while they are being debauched in Gaza…It is impossible to act as if everything's [normal] when our brothers and sisters have been there for almost two years. This is not life, and this is not childhood.” At the same time, dozens of Israeli teachers gathered in protest outside the Education Ministry, lifting their voices for the children of Gaza who have been largely deprived of a proper education since the war began. One teacher confessed, “I feel afraid to speak out”—a reminder that silence in the face of injustice can itself become a form of לשון הרע, an evil corroding the purity of our camp.
As we approach the High Holidays, a time for renewal and reflection, we pray – both with our hearts and our feet to quote the great Rabbi Heschel – that our hostages return home and the annihilation of Gaza comes to an end, that the Divine Presence returns once again to the land of Israel.
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Yoav Rahamim Varadi was born in Jerusalem in 1998 to a Kurdish-Israeli mother and a Hungarian father. At the age of two, his family moved to the United States. After completing his first year of rabbinical school in the American program at HUC, Yoav chose to remain in Israel and transfer to the Israeli program, while also pursuing a master’s degree in Jewish education at Hebrew University. He holds a BA in English from Columbia University and another in Jewish Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary. An experienced Jewish educator, Yoav has worked as a Jewish educator in a variety of settings throughout his life. He is deeply committed to Jewish peoplehood and to Judaism’s power to create meaning and structure in our lives. Yoav currently lives in Haifa with his partner.