Parashat Ki Tetze is comprised of one of the largest, and perhaps the most diverse collections of mitzvot in the entire Torah. A whole jumble of topics – new mitzvot and those we’ve seen before, ritual and ethical, from the sublime to the SEEMINGLY trite, addressing individual and family, clan and society. What holds them all together? Is there a thread running through all of them?
Rashi tries his hand at finding that thread. He begins with the first mitzvah – the law of the captivating war captive. He understands its provisions as intended to curb the Jewish soldier’s desire for the gorgeous, goyish woman by having him exposed to her in her mourning and degradation – perhaps he will not follow through with making her his wife, and set her free. But if he DOES follow through, Rashi understands that the Torah warns us that he will end up hating her.
Ah, a hated, originally non-Jewish wife, in his household with a beloved, Jewish-from-birth wife – a recipe for domestic fireworks. And so, the second mitzvah is not to give primacy to the sons of the beloved wife in matters of inheritance, if indeed the son of the hated wife is the firstborn, but rather, give him his fair double-share as firstborn.
But even so, such a marriage is doomed to produce a poorly adjusted kid, and this brings us to the third law – the law of the rebellious and wayward son. When he refused to respect, or even heed his parents, eating and drinking away their livelihood, he is put to death before he actualized what the Torah sees is his future – crime, robbery and murder.
So we see – lust for war bride leads to domestic horrors leads to incorrigible youth – the three mitzvot are connected.
But where do we go from here? Do we just continue to weave a narrative all the way through the parashah? We could – and some do – go on one more mitzvah – the law of not allowing the displayed corpse of one who has been executed to pass the night in such a fashion, as it is just too degrading to the human image. This could be the rebellious and wayward son! Alright, and then? “Should you see your brothers’ ox or his ass thrust aside (gone astray), do not ignore them, rather return them to your brother”! Ah, you say, son gone astray, ox gone astry? “The gates of interpretation are never locked”, as we say. But the project becomes more and more unwieldy as we move on, trying to tie one mitzvah after another on to the train. If there is some underlying structure in this parashah, it almost certainly does not consist of a narrative spun by threading one mitzvah after another onto an artificial string.
And yet: we simply refuse to accept that the mitzvot appear in this parashah scattershot from Hashem’s blunderbuss. Over and over, we recognize associations.
Here are a few:
1) Technically speaking, it would be permitted to have techelet (the blue-die woolen strings) on a linen garment, despite the prohibition of sha’atnez (linsey-woolsey), because just after the Torah says not to wear garments woven of both linen and wool, it immediately follows with, “make for yourself twisted threads on the four corners of your garments”. (Note: but don’t go doing this nowadays – it’s become more complex over the years)
2) Lashings are given for a person convicted of transgressing a transgression. The standard interpretation restricts those lashing to one who has violated a prohibition by doing an action (as opposed to, say, leaving your chametz in your house on Pesach, and thereby violating the prohibition of “You shall not have chametz…) specifically prohibited (as opposed to a prohibition of sweeping generality. This is learned out from the fact that immediately after the mitzvah of punishing by lashings, we are told, “Don’t muzzle an ox while it is threshing”, which is seen as a classic example of the kind of prohibition violation of which would be punished by lashing.
3) Ashkenazi men don’t wear a tallis until they are married. There is no such explicit indication anywhere in the Torah, so where does it come from? Many point to the fact that the mitzvah immediately following “you shall make for yourselves twisted threads” come the statement, “when a man marries a woman…”
There are many additional examples of juxtaposed mitzvot which impinge upon one another in this parashah. And the phenomenon can be found even on the level of individual words. For example, in the first mitzvah, the captivating captive is called in Hebrew an Eshet y’fat to’ar. This translates literally as “a wife of a beautiful one (feminine) of form”. That’s a pretty round-about way to say “a beautiful woman”. In fact, standard Hebrew would have preferred: Ishah y’fat to’ar – “A woman, beautiful of form”. The fact that the Torah chose to represent her in the way it does is understood that the law permits her to the Jewish soldier (under the very specific conditions laid down) even if she is (or more likely was – see Ibn Ezra who states that this passage should be juxtaposed to the law of laying siege to a city, at the end of the previous parashah) a married woman. The word ishah has been “deformed” by its proximity to another noun, and assumes its combining form eshet.
So many words, so many mitzvot, crowded together in one little parashah – they inevitably rub up against one another, and impact the way each is understood. So many people in one little land, its inevitable that some will want to venture beyond the bounds. “When you go out”, is the name of the parashah – when you go out to war, you’re free of the pressures that proximity brings. The commentators explain that the war spoken of here at the opening of the parashah is of the category known as a “permissible war”, in which captives can be taken. Ooops, sorry, that term is actually, in Hebrew, milchemet hareshut – the war of permissibility. Or, as the commentators explain, a war with your yetzer, that urge set loose when structure crumbles and everything seems permitted.
But the truth is: when we go out to war, we merely bind ourselves anew. We survey the spoil of our deeds, and we inevitably find ourselves eying the contextually irresistible “wife of beauty”, and craving what we believe she holds in store for us, not imagining how she is already an eshet, how she carries with her a whole web of tangling threads by virtue of her merely being “not us”. The word hashak, crave, is derived from the same root as hishuk, linked.
Our work is to be done in the densely packed space of family, neighborhood, city, society, humanity, earth as we know it. Perhaps once upon a time, the vistas seemed vaster and the possibilities infinite, but no more. If we are to find the vast and endless recesses of creation, we'll have to find them right here, in the deformation the individual undergoes when he's about to discover the limits to his self-deification. So let’s not try to escape into imagined solitude, but rather, let us examine who we become when we go bumping along, and let us welcome every loop we are thrown for, as revealing parts unknown of Hashem’s realm.
Rashi tries his hand at finding that thread. He begins with the first mitzvah – the law of the captivating war captive. He understands its provisions as intended to curb the Jewish soldier’s desire for the gorgeous, goyish woman by having him exposed to her in her mourning and degradation – perhaps he will not follow through with making her his wife, and set her free. But if he DOES follow through, Rashi understands that the Torah warns us that he will end up hating her.
Ah, a hated, originally non-Jewish wife, in his household with a beloved, Jewish-from-birth wife – a recipe for domestic fireworks. And so, the second mitzvah is not to give primacy to the sons of the beloved wife in matters of inheritance, if indeed the son of the hated wife is the firstborn, but rather, give him his fair double-share as firstborn.
But even so, such a marriage is doomed to produce a poorly adjusted kid, and this brings us to the third law – the law of the rebellious and wayward son. When he refused to respect, or even heed his parents, eating and drinking away their livelihood, he is put to death before he actualized what the Torah sees is his future – crime, robbery and murder.
So we see – lust for war bride leads to domestic horrors leads to incorrigible youth – the three mitzvot are connected.
But where do we go from here? Do we just continue to weave a narrative all the way through the parashah? We could – and some do – go on one more mitzvah – the law of not allowing the displayed corpse of one who has been executed to pass the night in such a fashion, as it is just too degrading to the human image. This could be the rebellious and wayward son! Alright, and then? “Should you see your brothers’ ox or his ass thrust aside (gone astray), do not ignore them, rather return them to your brother”! Ah, you say, son gone astray, ox gone astry? “The gates of interpretation are never locked”, as we say. But the project becomes more and more unwieldy as we move on, trying to tie one mitzvah after another on to the train. If there is some underlying structure in this parashah, it almost certainly does not consist of a narrative spun by threading one mitzvah after another onto an artificial string.
And yet: we simply refuse to accept that the mitzvot appear in this parashah scattershot from Hashem’s blunderbuss. Over and over, we recognize associations.
Here are a few:
1) Technically speaking, it would be permitted to have techelet (the blue-die woolen strings) on a linen garment, despite the prohibition of sha’atnez (linsey-woolsey), because just after the Torah says not to wear garments woven of both linen and wool, it immediately follows with, “make for yourself twisted threads on the four corners of your garments”. (Note: but don’t go doing this nowadays – it’s become more complex over the years)
2) Lashings are given for a person convicted of transgressing a transgression. The standard interpretation restricts those lashing to one who has violated a prohibition by doing an action (as opposed to, say, leaving your chametz in your house on Pesach, and thereby violating the prohibition of “You shall not have chametz…) specifically prohibited (as opposed to a prohibition of sweeping generality. This is learned out from the fact that immediately after the mitzvah of punishing by lashings, we are told, “Don’t muzzle an ox while it is threshing”, which is seen as a classic example of the kind of prohibition violation of which would be punished by lashing.
3) Ashkenazi men don’t wear a tallis until they are married. There is no such explicit indication anywhere in the Torah, so where does it come from? Many point to the fact that the mitzvah immediately following “you shall make for yourselves twisted threads” come the statement, “when a man marries a woman…”
There are many additional examples of juxtaposed mitzvot which impinge upon one another in this parashah. And the phenomenon can be found even on the level of individual words. For example, in the first mitzvah, the captivating captive is called in Hebrew an Eshet y’fat to’ar. This translates literally as “a wife of a beautiful one (feminine) of form”. That’s a pretty round-about way to say “a beautiful woman”. In fact, standard Hebrew would have preferred: Ishah y’fat to’ar – “A woman, beautiful of form”. The fact that the Torah chose to represent her in the way it does is understood that the law permits her to the Jewish soldier (under the very specific conditions laid down) even if she is (or more likely was – see Ibn Ezra who states that this passage should be juxtaposed to the law of laying siege to a city, at the end of the previous parashah) a married woman. The word ishah has been “deformed” by its proximity to another noun, and assumes its combining form eshet.
So many words, so many mitzvot, crowded together in one little parashah – they inevitably rub up against one another, and impact the way each is understood. So many people in one little land, its inevitable that some will want to venture beyond the bounds. “When you go out”, is the name of the parashah – when you go out to war, you’re free of the pressures that proximity brings. The commentators explain that the war spoken of here at the opening of the parashah is of the category known as a “permissible war”, in which captives can be taken. Ooops, sorry, that term is actually, in Hebrew, milchemet hareshut – the war of permissibility. Or, as the commentators explain, a war with your yetzer, that urge set loose when structure crumbles and everything seems permitted.
But the truth is: when we go out to war, we merely bind ourselves anew. We survey the spoil of our deeds, and we inevitably find ourselves eying the contextually irresistible “wife of beauty”, and craving what we believe she holds in store for us, not imagining how she is already an eshet, how she carries with her a whole web of tangling threads by virtue of her merely being “not us”. The word hashak, crave, is derived from the same root as hishuk, linked.
Our work is to be done in the densely packed space of family, neighborhood, city, society, humanity, earth as we know it. Perhaps once upon a time, the vistas seemed vaster and the possibilities infinite, but no more. If we are to find the vast and endless recesses of creation, we'll have to find them right here, in the deformation the individual undergoes when he's about to discover the limits to his self-deification. So let’s not try to escape into imagined solitude, but rather, let us examine who we become when we go bumping along, and let us welcome every loop we are thrown for, as revealing parts unknown of Hashem’s realm.
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