We are coming down to the wire and the Torah portions are fast and furious.  This week we read from the parsha (Torah portion) called Key taytzay which means when you go out.  Our parsha starts out talking about what happens when we go out to war and find a beautiful woman among the captives.  This leads into a bit regarding a man having two wives, one whom he loves and the other he hates, and if the hated wife’s son is his first born, he gets the double portion of the first born.

We then move into what we do when we have a rebellious son (we kill him) and then we learn that when we carry out capital punishment, we hang the corpse, but not overnight for that is a disgrace to god and makes the land god gave us tomae (mixed).

Next, we read that we shouldn’t ignore our brother’s wandering animals and what to do when we see them.  How we handle our neighbors lost animals, we are told, is also how we handle anything that our brother has lost – with an emphasis on the fact we can’t ignore the item and pretend it isn’t there or that we never saw it.  After this we are told that if we see our brother’s donkey or ox falling on the road, we can’t ignore this either; we must help him pick it up.  From here we are told that women cannot wear the vessels of men and men cannot wear women’s clothing and what to do when we see a nest with a mother bird sitting on its eggs or chicks

And suddenly we are talking about putting a railing on our roofs so nobody can fall and get hurt, and not to plant mixed seeds in a vineyard and not to plow with an ox and a donkey together, and not to wear a combination of wool and linen, and to put fringes (tzitzit) on the corners of our garments.

Next, we jump to a case of a man who marries a woman who claims to be a virgin and he accuses her of not being one.  This is followed by what we do when we find a man sleeping with a married or engaged woman.  After that comes a list of who is barred from being part of the community.  Excluded from this list are the Edomites for they are our brothers (the descendants of Asov), and the Egyptians for we were once strangers in their land.

Now we are back to talking about war and how careful we need to be in our camp because god is within the camp.  Quickly we jump to what we should do with an escaped slave and some thoughts on prostitution, and this leads us into the issues around interest on loans, and then to fulfillment of vows.

Next is a discussion around eating the fruit in your neighbors field, and after that divorce.  Strangely enough, the next thing the Torah talks about is that during the first year of marriage, the man must stay home and please his wife.  This means no army and no work during that year.

Now we come to talk about kidnapping, and then, the affliction called Tzara’at (which is commonly mistranslated as leprosy).  And on to debt recovery and payment of wages and a warning to leave a little bit in your fields and on your trees for the stranger, the orphans, and the widow.  We then jump to the rules of giving lashes, which leads to a line about not muzzling an ox while it is threshing and then we learn about the Levirate marriage.

We come to a warning for a wife not to grab the genitals of the man her husband is fighting.  This of course leads to our being told to be honest in our weights and measures.  And finally we end with a warning to remember what Amelek did and not to forget to wipe him out.

Boy is there a lot of stuff here.  What can I take out to make this summary shorter?  I mean, everything flows so smoothly from one thing to the next.  I just wish I knew the logical flow.  If anyone does, please leave a comment for me and everyone else to see and learn from.

One of the things that is troubling in the parsha is the beginning.  We start off by being told that when we go to war and we see a beautiful woman among the captives, we can take her home and marry her.  What is up with this?

Up to now, god has made an issue of who we can and cannot marry.  Now, just because we go to war, we can let our lust rule?

You know, in a sense, this is the opposite of the rest of the parsha.  The rest of the parsha seems to be telling us of things that we would be tempted to do (like ignore an animal that has fallen on the road) or not do (like put up a railing on our roof).

Now, who is the tempter?  Well, in our family tradition, we call it the Yetzer harah or the evil inclination.  It is the part of us that tells us to be lazy and not help when we see our friends fallen animal, or to try and seduce an engaged woman or to make an extra buck by using false weights on our business scales.  This whole parsha seems to be telling us to watch out for the Yetzer harah and not listen to it – to fight it.

Could it be that this is what the beginning of the parsha is about?  Could the war that we are going out to fight, not be an external war, but an internal war?  And if so, what then are these beautiful women that we can take home and marry?

I think that they are pieces of us, of our soul.  Once upon a time, I think I mentioned the idea that when we do something wrong, when we follow the Yetzer harah, a part of our soul gets caught up in the sin; it gets lost to us.

Now, assuming our goal is to come close to god, then the Yetzer harah is trying to stop us from coming close to god.  It does so by convincing us to turn away from god, or to put walls up between us and god.  When we do this, and this is done by what is called sinning, then a part of our soul gets trapped behind these walls.   When we fight the Yetzer harah, go to war against the enemy so to speak, we are breaking down these walls.  And when we do, we sometimes find lost parts of our souls.

The words we use for soul in Hebrew are feminine, so it would make sense to describe them as women.  And because they are parts of our soul, they look beautiful to us.  When we bring them home and marry them, what we are doing is welcoming back these lost parts of our soul, back into our being and reuniting with them and becoming whole again.

So, what we have now is a parsha that first tells us that we must fight the Yetzer harah and what to do when we find parts of ourselves amongst the evil inclination.  The parsha then tells us how to fight the evil inclination:  by putting up fences on our roofs and by paying people on time, for two examples.

Now we come to the end of the parsha which says to destroy Amelek.  How does this fit in to the rest of our parsha?

The parsha says that when we went out of Egypt, Amalek cut off our rear: the weak and the tired, and that he was not in awe of god.  If we are to destroy Amalek, then it seems like we are at war with Amalek.  If we tie this into the beginning of the parsha, then Amelek is a part of the Yetzer harah.  Which part?  The part that encourages us to doubt god, to doubt ourselves.  The part that tells us we are not worthy.  The weaker parts of us succumb to this and become cut off from the rest of us.  These lost parts are the beautiful women mentioned in the beginning of the parsha.

It is interesting that we are not to fight Amalek until haShem (god) has giving us rest from the surrounding enemies in the land god is giving us to settle.  Perhaps this is the Torah’s way of telling us that before we tackle the big issue we call Amelek, we first need to deal with and come to peace with all the other parts of us that don’t act in accordance with how we want to be.

To understand what I mean by this, please look at my parsha thoughts from last year, around parsha Bo.  I would like to go into detail, but this is very long as it is.  Suffice to say, that Egypt and Pharaoh represent things that might once have helped us, but now enslave us, and the promised land represents the new way we wish to be.  The people who are currently on the land, are being kicked off the land because they do not act in a fashion appropriate for the land and represent our actions that don’t fit with the new way we wish to be.  So, before we can fight the aspect of the evil inclination that feeds on the weaker parts of us, we need to not be fighting the parts of us that are not in harmony with the way we want to be.  And only when we have a respite from that, should we go after Amelek.

In summary, I see this parsha telling us ways/rules to fight the Yetzer harah sandwiched between us being told when to fight the Yetzer harah, and what to do with the recovered parts of ourselves that have been held captive by the Yetzer harah.

Before I go, I ask you all to think about this in relation to where we are in our year wheel.  We read this parsha two weeks before Rosh haShanah, the beginning of change, and we are in a period of looking at what we have done during the past year with an eye towards how we want to be in the future.

I bless everybody success in their war against the Yetzer harah and in becoming shlamim (whole & at peace – shalom in a nutshell).

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.