We are almost to the end of the five books of Moshe (Moses). This week’s parsha (Torah portion), the one we read this shabbat, is called Key Taytzay which means: When you will go out. Out to where?
In this case, our parsha is telling us about going out to war.
Our parsha begins by talking about what to do when you fight your enemies and capture women whom you wish to marry. A strange way to start a parsha, but then this is a strange parsha as you are about to see. For example, the process includes leaving her alone to mourn for 30 days and then if you decide you don’t wish to marry her, she goes free. Just like that. If you can figure that one out, let me know.
Our parsha then moves on to tell us that if we have two wives, one of which we hate, and our firstborn is from the hated one, we must still give him his double share. Next, we learn what to do about a rebellious, gluttonous son. Then we are told that somebody who is to be hung, should not be left over night.
Interestingly, the Torah then tells us that we are not able to ignore an object that was lost by our brother. We are to retrieve it and return it. If we cannot find the owner, then we are to hold onto it until the owner comes for the object. Likewise, if our brother’s animal falls on the road, we must help him raise it back up.
Quickly we are told not to cross-dress and then we are told if we see a nest with eggs or chicks and the mother bird, that we are not to take the mother bird with her chicks or eggs. This is followed by a requirement to put a railing on our roofs so people don’t fall off our roofs and die. Next we are told not to mix seeds in our vineyards and not to plow with an ox and a donkey together, not to wear wool and linen together, and to put fringes on the corners of our coverings.
From here, we learn what happens when a man accuses his wife of not being a virgin, when a man lies with a married woman, when a man lies with a betrothed woman, and when a man lies with a virgin. The parsha moves from this topic to the topic of who is not allowed in the assembly of haShem (god). This bit ends with us being told not to abhor an Edomite (from Esav) because he is our brother, and not to abhor an Egyptian because we were strangers in his land, and that their grandchildren can be part of haShem’s assembly.
The parsha then turns back to war. We are told we need to be careful about our conduct when we camp on our enemies because haShem is with us in the camp to save us and to give our enemies before us. Therefore, our camp needs to be kodesh (holy/separate).
Suddenly, we find ourselves being told what to do when a slave escapes and come to us, and then we are told we are not to have, “Holy whores,” among our sons and daughters. Then we leap to talk of interest on loans and then we are told to immediately make payment on our vows to haShem. Another leap tells us if we are in a vineyard, we can eat the grapes, but not put them in our pack, and if we are in a field, we can hand-pick the kernels, but not use a sickle. Next is talk of divorce, which is followed by a teaching that says in the first year of marriage, a man’s job is to make his wife happy, and so he is not to go into the army are be assigned any task.
Almost done here. We are warned to guard against the Tzaraat affliction and to do all that the cohen/priest tells us to do, and to remember what happened to Miriam on the way out of Egypt. Then the Torah mentions a bit about what to do when someone is in our debt, followed by a warning not to withhold payment from a poor hired hand. After this, we are told that a father will not die because of the sins of his son, and vica-versa. Next we are told not to turn the judgement of an orphaned alien or take the clothing of a widow. After this we are told not to go back and gather what was missed of our produce – it should be left for the orphan and widow and sojourner.
After this we are told what should happen when judging a dispute. Next comes a one-liner telling us not to muzzle an ox during threshing, and then off to the details of a Levirite marriage. From here we are told that if a woman tries to save her husband by grabbing the genitalia of the man her husband is fighting, her hand gets cut off.
Then it is off to a discussion about not having two sets of weights and measures (when doing business). We finally end this twisty parsha by being told to remember what Amalek did to us when we left Egypt, and to wipe out the memory of Amalek. The final words of our parsha are: Do not forget!
As I said before, what a strange parsha. How does anyone make any sense of it? As I have said in previous years, the only way I know how is to see it is as talking about our internal conflict with our evil inclination. If you want to read about this view in detail, I suggest you go to last year’s thoughts on this parsha. I am open to hearing any ideas you might have on how to understand this question. Just add your comments below. Now, having made this disclaimer, let me share with you what I saw in the parsha.
I was struck by two ideas. The first had to do with a man who lies with a woman. Now, understand, I am coming at this with the understanding that the Torah is telling us how to work with our yetzer harah (evil inclination), so, I am not taking this literally. I am looking at this more as if it were a dream. In other words, I am looking at the man and the woman symbolically.
For example, I see the woman as a precious part of a person, and I see the man as a person’s yetzer harah. When a woman is betrothed, it means that the person has promised to apply this precious part of himself to some activity or person.
Now the yetzer harah comes along and desires this precious part of a person to be used for its own purposes.
Our parsha goes on to say that if the man grabs the betrothed in a field, he should die and she is innocent because nobody was around to hear her scream and to rescue her.
This fits into the symbology in the following way: it is basically telling us that sometimes a person’s yetzer harah is going to win. It is going to manage to convince a person to use this precious aspect in a sinful way. And when the yetzer harah wins in this manner, at a time when a person is weak and has no support system, the person should accept that they slipped and fell and screwed up and not beat herself up over it. This is part of life, and it happens. In other words, the person is innocent.
This doesn’t mean that the person should not do anything at all, for the person still has a yetzer harah that is guilty. Rather, we are being told that instead of beating oneself up over what happened, the person should look at how they fell, how the yetzer harah persuaded him to screw up, in order to protect herself from, “Being in the fields alone,” again, ie. from not having a support and succumbing to temptation again.
This is in contrast to when the betrothed woman is caught with a man inside the city. Here they are both killed. Why? Because she could have yelled and been rescued.
In terms of dream symbology, I would have to say that this time the person has a support system to help them. For example, let’s say the person is trying to stop drinking. In this case, the person has been going to AA meetings and has a person he can call at any time she feels weak. However, the person falls without so much as a peep. He might have found himself going into a bar and instead of calling his AA support person, she gets drunk and does something stupid. In this case, since it says that both are killed, we are being told that the person needs to not only look at how the yetzer harah succeeded in convincing him to go into the bar, but also why she didn’t call out to his support system.
The second idea I want to look at has to do with judging. Our parsha talks very briefly about judging and what it says is very strange. I am looking at verse 25:1 in D’varim/Deuteronomy. It reads, “When there will be a quarrel between two men and they approach the judge, the judgement will cause righteousness to the righteous and cause evil to happen to the evil one.” What is this verse trying to tell us?
I think what it is trying to tell us is not so much that good judging we will always convict the guilty and let the innocent go free; rather it is trying to tell us that good judgement will create a situation where something good will happen for the innocent person and something evil will happen to the guilty person even if the guilty person goes free. For example, a guilty person might go free and then walk outside and get hit by a car.
However, I have another way of looking at it. This is not talking just of court cases. It is talking about all cases in life where somebody cheats or acts dishonestly towards another person.
Even if the dishonest person seems to get away with the act, this verse is telling us that if the other person acted honestly, and in an upright way, the final result will be good for him and bad for the dishonest person.
The example that comes to my mind is from the world of sports. Let’s say a team trades players A and B to a second team for players C and D. Now let’s say that the first team knows that player A is hurt but doesn’t tell the second team, and the trade is consummated. It would appear that the first team got away with being dishonest. What often winds up happening, is that players C and D don’t play well for the dishonest team and player B’s play for the second team is way beyond how he played for the first team. In other words, something really good happened for the honest team, and something really bad happened to the dishonest team, even though it appeared at the outset that the second team got cheated and was not allowed to undo the trade.
Along these lines, we see about 13 verses later that if we are to keep honest weights and measures in our business dealings, our time in the promised land will be extended.
Why is this the case?
Because we are working on the same principle of righteous things happen to righteous people. We are just a few short weeks away from Rosh haShanah, the Jewish new year. The words literally mean the head of change. Before we begin to change, we need to look at how our yetzer harah convinces us to act in dishonest ways, and in preventing us from keeping our promises and acting faithfully. Then we can use the energy of this season to really push to find ways to change so our yetzer harah is no longer able to persuade us to act in harmful ways.
I bless us all in this challenging task. May we all succeed and grow to be better people in the coming year!
If you want to read what I wrote about this parsha last year, click here.
About the Author
Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.