A beautiful woman

                   (Deuteronomy 21:11)

Elul 13, 5778/August 24, 2018

This week's Torah reading of Ki Teitzei opens with the words "When you go out to war against your enemies... " (Deuteronomy 21:10) and closes, 109 verses later, with the words "you shall obliterate the remembrance of Amalek from beneath the heavens. You shall not forget!" (ibid 25:19) Sandwiched between these two calls to war is a rich compendium of commandments regulating various aspects of our personal lives. Yet, while parashat Ki Teitzei is literally teeming with life, it nonetheless begins and concludes rather ominously, with references to war, and in war there are winners and losers.

"When you go out to war against your enemies, and HaShem, your G-d, will deliver him into your hands, and you take his captives, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman and you desire her, you may take her for yourself as a wife." (ibid 21:10-11) Torah is setting forth a law of warfare, clearly with the intention of mitigating the potentially dehumanizing effect of war on the victors and subjugated alike. Torah is describing a battle sanctioned by "HaShem, your G-d," and those warriors conducting the war are doing so on behalf of the G-d of Israel, the nation of Israel and the Torah of Israel. Their motives are pure. But in the heat of battle and in the surge of victory any man can become inebriated with his own survival and feel entitled to pursue his physical urges as he pleases. Hence, Torah intercedes and sets forth a series of conditions which sanction the taking of the captive woman, but at the same time, protect both her from being violated and her Israelite captor from falling prey to his own physical urges. A month long 'cooling off' period is prescribed by Torah, during which the captive woman mourns her family, has her hair shorn and her fingernails left untrimmed. At the end of this thirty day period the Israelite warrior, who has begun his return to civilian life and its realities, and has sheltered in his home a woman who has been divested of her outward physical charms, is now free to choose: will he take the captive woman as his wife or will he "send her away wherever she wishes?" (ibid 21:14) This is Torah's prescription for compelling a warrior trapped in the exhilarating thrill of victory to ultimately act both rationally and with compassion.

The seventeenth century Torah sage know as the Ohr HaChaim interpreted these same verses in a radically different way. The Israelite warrior is not in danger of succumbing to his baser physical urges upon spying the beautiful captive woman. On the contrary, flushed with the victory of his battle for the G-d of Israel, the nation of Israel and the Torah of Israel, the warrior is filled with love and gratitude and a true spiritual awakening, actually attaining a spirit of prophecy, and in this heightened state of spiritual enlightenment he spies within a woman among the captives an inner holiness, a spark of divine beauty. His desire toward her is not due to a physical lust after her earthly beauty, but to a godly desire to bring her into an environment in which her inner spark of holiness can flourish. If, after one month, his insight proves true and her holiness prevails despite the physical distress she is subjected to, then he can take as his wife in holiness.

Are these two interpretations of the incident of the beautiful captive woman truly as diametrically opposed as they seem to be? One understanding is that Torah's intention is to reign in man's physical urges and prevent transgression. And one understanding is that Torah's intention is to facilitate the fulfillment a potentially divinely inspired life saving and life uplifting commandment: redeeming sparks of holiness, imprisoned by circumstance, and welcoming the captive woman into the embrace of the Torah and people of Israel. Can these two approaches be reconciled?

From the moment we emerge from the womb we are, in fact, going out to war against our enemies, our better and lesser instincts pitted one against the other. This is the life that we are blessed with, endowed with the freedom to choose between good and evil, right and wrong, holiness and irreverence, with every move we make and every action we take, from the cradle to the grave. Avoiding transgression, staying far from evil is but half the battle. We must also pursue good with all our might, and strive for holiness in all our deeds. As the psalmist says, "Shun evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it." (Psalms 34:15) In this way we attain two victories: the victory over evil and the victory for good.

There is, however, a war in which we are commanded to give no quarter, to take no prisoners, for there are no beautiful captive women in this war. And this is the war with which Torah concludes our parasha: the war against Amalek. The spirit of the nation of Amalek, which lives and thrives today, and wages a deadly war against its adversaries, does so with the aim of robbing Israel the nation, and all of us as individuals, of the ability to either shun evil, or to do good, by sapping us of our trust in G-d who brought us into this world and will be taking us out of this world when our days are done. There are no sparks of holiness in the doubt and despair that Amalek seeks to sow. May G-d grant us the strength to deny our lesser instincts, and the ability to see the holiness within others and to bring that holiness into our own lives, thereby winning both wars, and subjugating Amalek:

"Therefore, it will be, when HaShem, your G-d grants you respite from all your enemies around you in the land which HaShem, your G-d, gives to you as an inheritance to possess, that you shall obliterate the remembrance of Amalek from beneath the heavens. You shall not forget!" (ibid 25:19)

-The Temple Institute