Addict Torah: Ki Tetzei 2022/5782

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Rabbi Alan Lew, z'l, This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, p. 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91-92, 92

Oddly enough, Parshat Ki Tetze, which we read during the third week of Elul, also derives a lesson in the kind of mindfulness we are trying to cultivate [in Elul]...The Torah is not really concerned with the specific case of the woman captured in the battle. I think it has a larger principle in mind in all this. It seems to be suggesting a method for dealing with the tyranny of passion and desire in our lives in general. The raging lust of the victorious solder is merely one instance, one example, of that desire for which we humans throw away our lives, the living death we bring upon ourselves...It shows itself in the impulse that might seduce us into a ruinous midlife affair, or that might cause us to sacrifice our families for ambition, or to give up our heart's work for pursuit of material excess, or to give up our integrity for fame and fortune, or God for the pursuit of pleasure...The Torah never permits too much distance between the values it proposes and the way people actually behave, because it recognizes that to do so would break the connection between our lives and Torah, between our lives and the will of God...[Moreover], this business of desire is the basis of creativity, our productivity. Our desire for the apple in the Garden of Eden got us kicked out of Eden, but it also propelled us into history, and if we try to squelch it, or bury it, we might stop being productive. History might grind to a halt. Since we can't and probably shouldn't repress our desires, and since it is so often a calamity when we follow them, what should we do?...First of all, we watch our desires arise. The soldier at the beginning of Parshat Ki Tetze has to live with his desire, to watch it as it evolves without acting on it, for a full month. And the second thing we can learn from him is that once we have our desires firmly in view, we can strip them of their exotic dress...see them for what they really are....So this is something else we can do during the month of Elul. We can devote a bit of time each day to locating our own particular [desires], to identifying whatever desire has distorted our lives, the beautiful delusion for which we've thrown everything away, or for which we stand ready to do so, in any case. And when we've located it, all we have to do is look at it. We don't have to kill it, and we certainly don't have to act on it, either. We can just let it arise in the fullness of its being, unromantically stripped down to the naked impulse that it is, without hair, nails, or dress, just the bare impulse itself. We can watch this impulse as it arises for the entire month of Elul, and if after a month it still seems to be something that we want, something that continues to arouse strong feeling in us, then we've learned something useful about ourselves. But if this desire stripped of its romantic trappings simply fades away, then we've learned something even more useful. We've learned there is more to heaven and earth than those things on the surface of the world that provoke desire in our hearts. We've learned that if we always act on our desires, on those unmitigated impulses that constantly rise up in our hearts and our minds, then we are doomed to a living death...Better to just watch our impulses arise and wait for truth, wait for something deeper. Better to be strong and brave of heart than to surrender our lives to the empty stuff of desire.

Jeffrey Tigay, The JPS Torah Commentary, p. 194

Because they died in the war (Ibn Ezra) or because she will never see them again (Rambam). In either case, the law recognizes her grief and requires respect for it: "It is not decent for you to take pleasure in her while she is weeping" (Bekhor Shor; Hazzekuni (translation not available))

Richard Eliot Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 629

What pervades the elements of the law is the extraordinary sensitivity to the humanity of a captive woman. Common to one of the most common practices of war, the Israelite soldier is not permitted to rape her. He may take her as a wife. But even then he must give her time to mourn the loss of her family. And if he takes her as a wife and then rejects her, he must let her go completely free. The text uses the same text as the law of divorce (Deut 24:1). And the text recognizes that he has degraded her, so he cannot treat her like a slave to be sold, he cannot receive money for her from anyone else.

Rambam on Deuteronomy, 21:12

V’ASETHAH’ HER NAILS. ...And the reason for this section [i.e. of all these regulations] is that she is converted against her will, and no one asks her whether she is willing to abandon her religion and become Jewish as is [customarily] done with proselytes. Instead, the [future] husband tells her that she must observe the law of Israel against her will and abandon her gods. This is the reason for the verse, and she shall bewail her father and her mother a full month, because she abandons her people and her gods. ... In general, then, she is mourning because she is leaving her religion and joining another people. ... In my opinion this respite is not primarily intended to show compassion for her, but to eliminate the names of idols from her mouth and her heart. The wandering away and separation from her father and her mother and her people will further “quench the coal,” for it is improper to cohabit with a woman who is coerced and in mourning. ... this captive woman who cries out in her heart to her gods to save her and bring her back unto her people and unto her gods. Thus when they inform her that we will force her to give up her people and her native land, and convert to Judaism, we must tell her, “Be comforted for thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity whom ye shall not see any more, forever, (see Exodus 14:13) but, instead, be your master’s wife, in accordance with the law of Moses and Jewish custom.” Then we are to give her a time for weeping and mourning as is the way of mourners in order to assuage her sorrow and her longing, for in all sorrow there is profit and consolation afterwards...

Rabbi Benay Lappe, Rosh Yeshiva, Svara, Hot off the Schtender, August 28, 2020

(https://svara.org/hot-off-the-shtender-i-saw-him-and-i-stood-on-his-grave-expanding-our-traditions-justice-map/)

...As we move our way through the month of Elul, and continue toward Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, during this season of reflection, spiritual introspection, and stocktaking, let us look at our own stories—both personal and societal. What stories have we been telling ourselves which are no longer serving us? What stories are actually causing us harm? What old stories am I still telling myself—about myself, about my father, about my mother, about my child, about straight folk, about queer folk, about White folk, about Black folk, about those whom I haven’t even considered to even be in my story—that may be holding all of us in a place of suffering? What new story do I want to be a part of? Whose story do I want to be a part of? And what do I need to do to make that happen? Teshuva is not about rewriting your history. It’s about acknowledging some of the most painful parts of our relationships, honoring and remembering the pain and the violence, and then saying “yes, this happened and it caused death,” and expanding the story so that it has the space to hold not only our painful past, but a more liberatory future, for all of us. May we all be empowered to reinterpret our tradition’s stories through the wide-angle lens of our pain, our loss, our insights, and our svara. Because traditions do teshuva, too. Traditions learn. We are not only its students, but its teachers. And, like Rabbi Yonatan, we can find our place in a new, more liberatory story.

Devarim Rabbah 3:5, translated by Nechama Leibowitz, in Studies in Deuteronomy, p. 214

It is related of R. Pinhas b. Yair that when he was living in a city of the south some men came there to seek a livelihood. They had with them two measures of barley which they deposited with him, and they forgot about it and went away. R. Pinhas b. Yair sowed the barley year by year and harvested it and stored it. After the lapse of seven years these men returned to that place to claim back their grain. As soon as R. Pinhas b. Yair recognized them, he said to them: Come take these your granaries (full of grain).

Jeffrey Tigay, The JPS Torah Commentary p. 199:

The law means, therefore, that one must house the stray animal as if it were one's own.