Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Theological Problems and Resolutions with Slavery and Wartime Atrocities

Okay. Okay, everybody. Thank you for coming. I'm very excited. I had a chance to meet Natan Sharansky for the first time. I got out of a cab, he went into a cab, so I had my celebrity meeting meeting today. And uh I don't know what's going on with the book launch or something. Okay. And uh we're approaching Rosh Hashanah and Oh, I'm sorry. First, let me announce the the dedications for this year. This year tonight uh is sponsored for a Refuah Shlema for Breya bat Chava. And may she have a Refuah Shlema betoch shaar cholei Yisrael. And then a leilui nishama to Tzvi ben Avraham Halevi, Baruch ben Shmuel Pinchas, by Jeremy Bernstein in honor of his father's yahrzeit, the 9th of Elul, and Natan Daniel ben Avraham Yitzchak, uh Rav Natan Siegel, his fifth yahrzeit was the 4th of Elul. I believe that's the same yahrzeit as Rav Kook, I think. Rav Kook is the 3rd of Elul. Oh, so then it's Rav Meir Simcha. Meir Simcha of Dvinsk is a day later, so a very chashuve chashuve date. And once again, we also have an anonymous donor, and we're very grateful for the uh all of the assistance that people give to Rach Shloka's Torah. Uh may it be a big zechus for the coming year uh that all of those who do support Torah should be blessed by Hashem in many many ways. Uh the parsha for this week is Ki Teitzei. And uh Ki Teitzei, you may know, uh has by far the most mitzvahs of any parsha in the Torah. It has more than 60 mitzvahs are in one uh parsha. So, it's from a from a halachic standpoint, it is filled with many, many halachos. Uh, that's not going to be our emphasis tonight, but I do I do want to share with you one little thought connected to the halachic part of Ki Seitze. And that is in Ki Seitze, there is a reiteration of the mitzvah of tzitzis. Tzitzis as a mitzvah does appear in Bamidbar parsha Shlach, it is reiterated in Ki Seitze. Uh, but right before uh that, it gives you the prohibition of shatnez. You're not allowed to wear wool and linen. And then it says, "You shall make fringes on your garment." The Gemara in Yevamos, other other Gemaras as well, derives a very important lesson from that juxtaposition. And that is even though there's a prohibition of shatnez, but at a time when you wore techeiles, now I I mean you knew for sure. I don't mean today. Today we're we're not sure. So, some people do, some people don't. But when there was a definitive techeiles, techeiles had to be wool because techeiles is blue is the wool that is dyed that color. And so, let's assume that you have a linen garment of four corners. Uh, so the techeiles can be wool and must be wool even in a linen garment. And this is exemplary of a very important halachic uh principle that if the only way you could fulfill a negative commandment, I'm sorry, the only way you could fulfill a positive commandment is by transgressing a negative commandment, then in such a situation, I say I say the positive commandment overrides the negative commandment. The only common example you might have today is a bris on Shabbos. If the eighth day of birth of a baby is Shabbos, and doing a circumcision is desecrating Shabbos like you're causing bleeding, making a wound, and yet we say if the only way I could do the mitzvah of bris milah is by desecrating Shabbos, the positive overrides. Now now you understand why this is only true if the eighth day of is Shabbos. If you're doing a bris later, 10th day, 11th day, so why do you have to desecrate Shabbos? You can do the bris the next day. But since there's a special mitzvah of the eighth day, I would say if the only way I could do the positive is by transgressing the negative, this is the famous rule called "Asei doche lo saseh." A positive commandment pushes aside a negative commandment. And the source of that rule or one of the sources of that rule is from the fact that the mitzvah of techeiles and tzitzis that requires wool overrides the prohibition of shatnez, and you can put the woolen techeiles even in a garment of linen. Uh now, the Ramban has a very beautiful observation. Why should it be that a positive command has priority over a negative command? Maybe we should treat it like an impasse, and if it's an impasse you don't do anything, meaning don't transgress, don't do the mitzvah. So the Ramban says symbolically there's a very important lesson here. Because there are two modalities in service of God. There is a modality of yirah, fear, which includes reverence of God, and then there's the higher modality of love of God. Negative commandments represent fear of God. When I'm afraid of someone or I revere somebody, I don't touch their things. I don't cross boundaries. So, when I don't eat treif, when I don't desecrate the shabbos, I am expressing my reverence for the almighty. But, when I go out and I do things, that is more typical of a loving relationship. When you love someone, you do for them. When you're frightened of them, you avoid getting them upset. So, the Ramban says, "Since a lo ta'aseh represents yiras Hashem, and a mitzvas asei, a positive commandment, represents avas Hashem, since love of God is a higher level than fear of God, even though you need the fear as a foundational level, so therefore the positive overrides the negative." And the Ramban says in parshas Yisro that this is the yesod of asei docheh lo sa'aseh. And again, I mention it tonight because the primary source for asei docheh lo sa'aseh is the juxtaposition of shatnez to the reiteration of the mitzvah of tzitzis to teach me that if the only way I could fulfill the techeiles mitzvah in a linen garment is by the wool of the techeiles, it overrides the issue of shatnez. Now, I hope you understand why I connect this to techeiles because if I don't have techeiles, let's say I don't wear techeiles, then I have no reason to put wool in tzitzis in a linen tallis. I would just put linen tzitzis in a linen tallis. There is no need to transgress the negative of shatnez. But, since the techeiles must be wool, so mamela, I would have to transgress shatnez on a linen linen tallis, right? And that's called, once again, asei docheh lo sa'aseh. In fact, occasionally, you know, people I mean, I don't want to get into all the discussion. As you know, this uh whether we have rediscovered the source of the techelet is a matter of great controversy now. There are many people, more and more people who in fact do wear the techelet of in their tzitzit because they claim primarily that the snail murex trunculus uh is the is the techelet. Uh Radziner's, Breslover's have another thing, a cuttlefish, which is almost certainly not techelet, but they have a mesorah that was good. But one of the arguments that is occasionally raised against the techelet is that since you're not 100% sure, you wouldn't be allowed to transgress shatnez, and therefore there's a fear if you identify this as the techelet, you may use it in a linen tallit in which you might be transgressing shatnez if it's not the techelet. Again, that's uh a bit of a speculative chashash because the minhag is we don't we don't make tallisum out of linen. I mean, in fact, we don't we don't do it. So, but nevertheless, that is actually one of the arguments that is occasionally raised against the institu- reinstitution of this safek techelet. Again, that's a a talk for another time. I gather from the facial expressions that you talked about the techelet and the like. Okay. But now I want to go back to the beginning of the parsha. The beginning of the parsha contains a mitzvah or a ritual or a procedure that is really one of the most difficult uh parshiot in the Torah just to understand. In fact, uh one of the I think it was the head military chaplain, the head rav of the IDF, of the Tzahal, when he just talked about this mitzvah of uh intercourse with captives of war, I I and he and he was not he was not advocating anything practical, he was just speaking about the parsha of the week. I believe he lost his job. I believe they fired him because he was they thought he was calling for for war rape in time of war whatever it is. So I have to be careful. This is a delicate parsha to talk about but this is the famous or the infamous if we could use such a word about the Torah of Hashem parsha of the beautiful woman that is a captive of war. Now in order to understand just the facts without even getting into the morality of it you need to understand a little bit about the basic structure of slavery. The Torah obviously does provide for a certain legitimacy of war maybe a war of defense maybe a war against Amalek a war against the seven nations but interestingly enough when there was a Sanhedrin not today when there was Urim and Thummim the Cohen Gadol's breastplate that conveyed prophetic messages there was the theoretical possibility of even a war of expansion. Uh Now that sounds strange but once again it did require essentially divine authorization. So if it wouldn't be justified God is not going to tell you to do it. That's why today there is no concept that would legitimate in Halakha a an aggressive war of expansion but such a category did exist. Now the Torah does say that prisoners of war can be made slaves. They could be made this is called an eved Kenaani which doesn't just mean a Canaanite slave means a non-Jewish slave. Right a prisoner of war can become slaves and the like. Now a non-Jewish slave is a strange hybrid creature. On one hand he's he or she is not Jewish. On the other hand because they have the status of living in a Jewish household they are chayav in mitzvot. They are obligated in mitzvot to the degree that a woman is higher than the mitzvot. So, a non-Jewish male slave would not put on tefillin, but would have to keep the Shabbat and keep kosher. And as a result, I'm I'm going to talk about it from the male perspective, then I'll move to the the woman's life. As a result, a male Canaanite slave or a male non-Jewish slave would have to have circumcision, brit milah, and would have to go to the mikvah. And then, they are higher than mitzvot. Ke'ishah. And then, if they eventually get freed, they are treated as a complete convert. They then become completely Jewish and the like. Now, what's interesting is according to the Rambam, obviously somebody somebody that's a slave that's against their will, but becoming this halakhic half-Jew to eventually become a Jew cannot be done against his will. Meaning, the eved Kena'ani must agree to go to them to be circumcised and go to the mikvah. And the master is given 1 year to try to convince him. Right? If I In other words, if I buy a non-Jewish slave or I capture a person in war and make him a non-Jewish slave, I have 1 year to talk him into brit milah and immersion in a mikvah. If after a year he he refuses, he knows he's a pure non-Jew, I am obligated to get rid of him, but not not set him free. I I sell him back to the non-Jewish world as a slave, which is that that actually creates a kind of built-in incentive, assuming that a Jewish owner will be better, at least in those days for sure, than a non-Jewish owner. That's kind of an incentive to go with the brit milah and go with the tefillah. Okay? Now, I the reason I make this point is because generations of boys in yeshiva and also the girl who learns Chumash are always told kind of ritualistically that a non-Jewish slave is chayav in mitzvahs like a woman. That's not an automatic process. Just because I own a non-Jewish slave, that does not make them chayav in mitzvahs. What makes them chayav in mitzvahs is the milah for a man and the tevilah, the mikvah, for both a man and a woman. And that has to be voluntary. Albeit, I'm given a year to try to convince them. Meaning, you're not allowed to own a non-Jewish slave that has not undergone milah and tevilah. You're given 1 year. After that, it's like the old joke that reminds me a little bit now nothing to do with it, but uh in the 1950s there was a very, very big issue in which many people thought Orthodoxy in America was dying. The Conservative movement had its ascendancy. Now now the Conservative movement is almost kaput, but in the '50s, Conservative movement was the new wave of the future. So many Orthodox rabbis could only get jobs in Conservative synagogues that didn't have a mechitza. So were they allowed to take a position in such a synagogue? So the psak that many roshei yeshiva, many, not just Rav Soloveitchik, but many roshei yeshivas gave, at least under the table, is they allowed you to take this job for 1 year to try to make the synagogue Orthodox and get them a mechitza. But if after a year, they're still Conservative, you have to leave. Now, a number of rabbis took their positions on that understanding. Rabbi Emanuel Feldman who now is retired here in Eretz Yisrael and his son is the rabbi in Atlanta. But Rabbi Emanuel Feldman is one of the great, great American pulpit rabbis uh took his shul in Atlanta at a time when there was no mechitza and there was nothing. And uh turned it over, a Lincoln Square. Uh was the same way with uh Rabbi Riskin uh and and the like. There were a number of other rabbis, I know from my own uh hometown in Connecticut, who followed that psak, but after the year, they didn't change anything, and they didn't leave, and they became Conservative rabbis. So, there's all history there. If you look at the Conservative movement, uh you will see that many of the rabbis of Conservative synagogues, many, not all, uh were actually ordained in Orthodox yeshivas, and uh you know, they took the positions. The older ones, I mean, now most of them are dead of that generation, but they took positions in the 1950s. Cuz people don't realize in the 1950s, Conservative the Conservative movement was growing very, very, very, very much. And uh there really was a sense that uh the old Orthodoxy is kind of doomed. It's dying away. The old European people, you know, they're getting older. And again, uh Hashem has many, many surprises for us. So, eved k'nani is kind of similar to taking a job without the mechitza. That is, you got 1 year. You don't do it within a year, uh you got to get rid of the eved, but you don't lose your investment, you can sell the eved back into the slave market. Now, eishes shifchah to'ah, oh yeah, now now before I get to eishes shifchah to'ah, just thinking about slavery itself, you know, isn't that strange? Isn't slavery bad? Isn't slavery evil? Isn't it immoral? Uh isn't it against the dignity of human beings? All human beings are made in the image of God. Why would the Torah Now, I'm talking about non-Jewish slavery. I'll get to Jewish slavery in a moment, it might even be worse. But we're not even non-Jewish slavery. Why would the Torah permit me to enslave a person against his will, her will, because uh they're a prisoner of war, or I buy them in a slave market. Well, indeed, this is a troubling question uh that we sometimes encounter in the Torah, various laws that seem to be immoral. In fact, it seems to be not only immoral in terms of 20th century Western values or 21st century Western values. That's not so much of a kasha. The Torah doesn't have to fit with everything The New York Times considers to be morality. But, when you have a real problem is it seems to be inconsistent with the morals of Judaism itself. And that's when you really have a problem. Internally within the system, it doesn't fit the overall value structure of the Torah. So, I'm not going to get there. There There are many many topics I'm not going to fully address tonight. I'll throw out a few ideas, and then I'll I'll get to the main thing I want to talk about. Uh that is there are two basic approaches to the legitimation of slavery in the Torah. One is the Torah is simply legitimating a widespread institution that already existed in the ancient world, and the Torah wants to civilize it, humanize it, make it less brutal than it was. In other words, the Torah does not there a law about that? Oh, hi. Shalom. Shalom. The Torah was not saying slavery is a good thing. The Torah was not encouraging slavery. In an ideal society, it would wither away. But, given the fact that this was common, this was accepted, so sometimes the Torah had to kind of deal with the weaknesses of people. So, the Torah said, "Okay, maybe civilization is not ready for the abolition, right? Abraham Lincoln isn't here yet. But, we'll make it more human. You're not allowed to torture a servant. You can't abuse them. So, the Torah tolerates institutions that are sub-optimal in the interest of improving society generally and bringing it to a higher ethical plane. Right? So, that would be the And again, it's somewhat similar, by the way, to what the Maimonides says about sacrifices. He says, "God does not like animal sacrifices. God doesn't care. But, people were so aduk, they were so attached to them in terms of idolatry, and then that included things like sacrificing their children. So, God said, 'I'm not going to order you to go cold turkey. I will tolerate this institution, and I will regulate it in order to take away the excesses and the cruelty.'" Now, I'm very happy with that explanation. That that makes perfect sense to me, but I'll tell you the problem that I have. The problem that I have is there's actually a halakha that if you have a non-Jewish slave, you're not allowed to free them. The Gemara even has a story about a man who walked into a a great rabbi, Rabbi Eliezer, who walked into a shul with his slave, and Rabbi Eliezer was the ninth person, the slave would it was would have been the 10th person, making the minyan, but a slave cannot be counted for a minyan. Rabbi Eliezer freed his slave to make a minyan, which is a very significant loss of economic investment. He just freed his slave for a minyan. But, the Gemara asks, "How could you free your slave? You're not allowed to free your slave." And the Gemara's answer is, "For a mitzvah, you're allowed." Okay, that's a whole whole sugya about what exactly is the heter. But, be it as it may, it seems to me that if you're going with the approach that slavery is inherently a bad thing, but the Torah tolerates it, it allows it, because people were not strong enough to combat slavery, then it would seem to me that if I free my slave, I'm doing a good thing. That that people should be encouraged. How can you actually say, how can the Torah actually say, you're not supposed to free your slave? So, because of this, there is a second approach that's given, and this may this is not politically correct at all, but it actually is an approach that parallels something Aristotle wrote. Now, you could say Aristotle was also a racist and a bigot. And and but but nevertheless, the idea was that many of the Canaanites, many of the pagans, were people that were cruel, they were immoral. Uh they they murdered, they raped. And slavery, meaning bringing them under the auspices of a Jewish environment, would be a way of civilizing the beast. This was a way of forced civilization. And therefore, it was for the greater good of a degenerate group of people that they would be brought into proximity uh to a moral home. Now, if you study the history of slavery in the United States even, you know, pre-Civil War, you will actually see a lot of these arguments uh were made that it's good for the slave, you know, to be a slave. In real life, things don't don't didn't always play out that way. But but but if you follow the laws of the Torah regarding slavery, about not abusing a slave and the like, lemaysa, it it it wouldn't be that bad, meaning uh the this concept could mirror the actual reality in many many cases. I mean, listen, the slave got Shabbos off. That wasn't so common in the ancient world of slavery in which you got Shabbos off. Now, I've been talking about non-Jewish slave, but you may ask me, well, what about a Jewish slave? A Jew, a fellow Jew, uh can become a slave in one of two ways. He sells himself because of his poverty, or or if he steals and he has no way of paying back, he can be a slave for up to six years. By the way, it's not it's not a debtor's prison. And if I owe money and I don't pay pay back, I'm not sold into slavery. It's only stealing. It's not uh non-payment of debt. Like uh okay. How do you justify that? But but there the answer is actually simpler because uh it's very very clear that the status of Jewish slavery should not be called slavery at all. In fact, Hazal actually say he who buys a Jewish slave is buying a master rather than a slave. You have to give him accommodations that are equal to yours. Uh and if you only have one good pillow, he gets the good pillow. So really it's not really I mean that that b'chlal is not even a form of slavery. It is what we call indentured servitude. I mean, listen, it's not worse than a job. I mean a person works, right? You could say you're a slave. All right, so an eved ivri gets room and board. Uh and his family gets supported and the like. So that that really is not what we would even refer to as slavery. But the non-Jewish is indeed slavery and the two basic explanations are either the Torah tolerates but doesn't consider it desirable, or this was a mechanism to civilize degenerate, immoral, or amoral people to give them a sense of values, a kind of a forced socialization as it were. Okay. So now we come to what is a subset of the law of slavery. And here we move into even deeper moral turbulence, uh so to speak. And that is the woman in a time of war. And what does the Torah say? You see a beautiful woman and you have a lust for her, you have a desire for her. So basically you have intercourse with her. You have relations with her. Uh, the simple reading of the verse, the simple reading of the verse is that this is well number one she's a non-Jewish woman. So first of all, the club that's sinful. But sin on top of sin is are we talking about rape? Are we basically saying you have one, you meaning the soldier, has one free bite of the apple? Uh, you know, as you know, uh, rape in time of war is treated under an under international law and rightfully so, as a war crime. So one could raise a very very difficult issue. This is even before we get to the next step, the the other steps about bringing her into your house. But but let's take step one. Step one is man sees beautiful woman in time of war, he's allowed to have relations with her. One time. So is this rape? Now Rashi brings a hazal that says the Torah is making a concession to the yetzer hara. Passions in time of war are so powerful and uncontrollable that God wants to give a mechanism to allow the release of those desires within the framework of a permissible protocol as we will then see the other steps. So I just want to share with you one one view that the Minchas Chinuch brings. This is a very very, uh, to me I'm very happy such a view exists, although it seems to be a minority position. The Tosfos Rid Rid is Rav, an abbreviation, Rabbeinu Yeshaya Miterrani or Diterrani. Trani is a city in Italy. And Tosfos Rid, as anyone that learns Gemara in Yeshiva knows, Tosfos Rid is one of the great Rishonim. And the Tosfos Rid says that the whole parsha of Aishes Yefas Toar the Torah is permitting the prohibition of being with a non-Jewish woman. That That is being permitted one time. But the sexual relationship has to be consensual. It cannot be against her will. That's a very big chiddush, meaning Aishes Yefas Toar is not a legitimation of wartime rape. It is the permissibility of intercourse with a gentile. That's still a a big chiddush, but mitzad the woman, it must be consensual. That's how he interprets a passage in the Sifrei that says "Lo yelchatzenah bemilchama." You cannot pressure her in time of war. Now, some Rishonim means you can't have relations on the battlefield. You have to at least go into a house. That's interpretation one. But the Tosfos Rid learns "Lo yelchatzenah." You cannot force her. This must be a consensual relationship. Now, I have to be honest, as far as I know, this is a minority understanding of Yefas Toar, but at least it's important to be aware that we do have one very eminent Rishon that specifically says under no circumstances would the Torah permit a rape uh of the enemy, so to speak, in time of war. Okay. But that's only the first one. That's the first act. The first act is intercourse with a non-Jewish woman. But then the Torah says, "What if you want to continue the relationship?" Answer? Can't do it. Uh unless you follow a certain protocol. She's brought into the house. Uh and uh she is made uh to kind of look unattractive. Her hair is shaven. Her fingernails, my locus the ratis her fingernails grow long. Uh and uh she cries and mourns her father and mother for 30 days. Or for a month, actually it's 29 days, but for a month. And then at the end of that month you, you meaning the man, makes a decision to either marry her or set her free. This is very important, meaning unlike a regular slave that you can keep or sell, because this woman was in a sense abused, even if it was consensual, but obviously there's a certain amount of abuse here. Your only choice is I apologize. I keep on saying you, I mean I realize I'm I'm talking about from the man's perspective. The man's only choice is marry her and give her a home equal to a wife or set her free. You cannot keep her as a slave. Which means, had he not had relations with her, He he simply, I mean, imagine, had he simply taken her as a slave, she would be a slave. But, because he had this relations with her, which is a form of abuse, then his only choices are marry her or set her free. But, you can't marry her until you go through this ritual. Why is that? Because the Torah actually wants to discourage the marriage option. Meaning, you you've lost you you've definitively lost Okay. I mean, I think it's pretty obvious that there's something going on next door, but okay. See, again, understand this in terms of the system. The right to keep her as a slave was forfeited when the man had intercourse with her. That right is off the table. The only possibilities are marriage or freedom. And the Torah wants to discourage the marriage option by requiring you to kind of let her be in a state of not being that attractive. Which means the Minchas Chinuch quite logically says the following. What if the guy had his time with her and doesn't want her? Does he have to bring her into her house and put her through the rigmarole? Minchas Chinuch argues, why? In other words, the rigmarole is if he wants to marry her, so these are the conditions. If he doesn't want to marry her, he could just free her right away. There's no reason to do these maasim if he has no interest in continuing the relationship. That that's very very logical. And yet and yet the Rambam is mashma that even in terms of setting her free, he first has to go through this 30-day period. It's very difficult to understand why that that is so. Okay, now it's important to understand how the system works, but it still raises a whole bunch of questions. Let's assume at the end of the month period he wants to marry her. Does she have a say in the matter? What if she says, "I don't want to marry you?" I mean normally marriage is consensual. Right? A man cannot marry a woman against her consent. Can a man marry this woman against her consent? And another set of problems is did she eventually convert? In other words, the first relationship, whether it's consensual or rape, that's a separate question, she was a That's for sure. But then she goes through this process. And then husband not husband um the man is given the choice of marrying or setting her free. But did she convert? The Rambam says she must convert. But this conversion can be done against her will. But that's very strange because the conversion normally conversion cannot be done against your will, either. So, the point of the matter is that the the many many questions of asha shifcha to'ar are not only on the first intercourse. See, for the first intercourse, we have the Tosafist read that at least takes it out of the realm of marital I'm not not marital uh martial rape rape in time of war. But you still have a lot of problems about the marriage at the end of the day and the conversion at the end of the day. Kids, what I say uh tonight, I'm going to leave you with more questions than answers. Uh but the point that I do want you to see systemically is that the one thing that Asia de Patoa does is it says, "If the man abused the woman in this way, he has forfeited the right to hold her as a slave." And that that is an important foundational idea. The only choices are marriage with the dignity of a wife or freedom which indeed had he not abused her initially, he would be allowed to hold a woman as a slave and and then of course not have relations with her. I mean, generally speaking, if you have a woman as a maidservant, uh there is no heter at all for the man to have relations with her. I mean, if she she she's a maid in the house or or whatever it is. So again, uh if if these things are bothersome, I you know, I commiserate and I share uh your consternation, but in some sense you can also see that there's a certain there are aspects that are humane even from our limited perspective, the notion that a woman that's abused can no longer be held in any type of slavery relationship. Uh she's either given the equal dignity of a spouse uh or or set free. That's kind of the bottom line here. Okay. But what I want to share with you uh is an amazing allegory. Cabalistic allegory that the Aruch HaShulchan Hakadosh brings in the name of the Arizal and the Zohar. Different elements are from different parts of it. And he says that besides the pashut p'shat of eishes yefas to'ar, it is an allegory and a mashal for the sojourn of the soul in this world. That one of the designations of the radiant soul, which is the breath of God, is a beautiful woman. And indeed, the Baal HaTanya talks about this, that the status of the soul in Olam HaZeh is like a beautiful woman in captivity. There's a captivity here. The soul is not connecting to God. It's separated from Hashem. It's imprisoned in a guf, a body, with yetzer hara and all sorts of uh you know, it's like it's in a cage with the demonic forces. And there's tremendous, tremendous pain to the neshama. And as an allegory, again, this is not the pashut p'shat of the verses, obviously, but as an allegory, it speaks to the journey of a troubled soul to achieve liberation from its captivity. So, it starts off, right? This is just reading the verses. Ki seitzei milchamah al oyivecha. When you go out to war against your enemy, u'nesano Hashem Elokecha b'yadecha, God will deliver that enemy into your hands, v'shavisa shivyo, and you will capture the captives. So, says the Zohar, who is your greatest enemy in life? The yetzer hara. When you go out and wage war against the enemy who wants to destroy you, that's the yetzer hara. God has given you a promise. You will be victorious. Do not give up. Yes, you may lose some battles. All of us lose some. But you keep on fighting. Keep on working. Keep on striving. There will be a point at which you will be victorious. V'shavita shivyo. You will capture the captives. So, the interpretation is, you will recapture that which was captured from you. Your neshama became imprisoned by these demonic evil forces. You can liberate this beautiful woman. And it says, "And you see in captivity I'm just going through the pasuk and eshet cheftah are you seeing captivity? This beautiful woman. You look at yourself. You look at the beautiful soul that is within you. V'chashakta bah. And you have a strong yearning and desire to be reconnected to it. And you want to be mechubar to the goodness within you. So, what do you do? Again, this is all allegorical, obviously. So, it says, "You bring the woman into your home. You shave her hair. And you let her fingernails grow." So, allegorically, it means the following. How do I regain this beautiful woman? And how do I Okay. I'm just trying to Okay. I'm just trying to grasp the logic of this, but okay. Um How do you regain that neshama? So, step one is disengage from foreign corrupting ideologies and philosophies that confuse you and lead you astray. So, shaving the head, right? The head, the hair, these are all the ideas that I absorb in my life. And a lot of it is to clean out the garbage. A lot of it is to separate what is good from what is not good. Shave all of those ideas that aren't good, discard them, throw them away. That's one step in the cleansing process. Now, the other step is let the fingernails grow long. Now, symbolically, our hands is what we grasp with, what I grasp with my with my hands. So, that represents materialism, hedonism, wanting more and more possessions, money, and the like. When your fingernails are really, really, really long, it's hard to grasp things. So, therefore, if shaving the head is symbolic of disengagement from corrupting ideologies and philosophies, let letting the fingernails grow is a disengagement from hedonistic materialism in which you recognize that, you know, I need to make a living, I want to be moderately comfortable, but my life is not about money, it's not about possessions, it's about simplifying my life. Right? Simplifying. Now, we're coming up to Sukkot. One of the big lessons of Sukkot we tend not to to about Sukkot till after Yom Kippur because we have two big holidays before Sukkot coming down the pike. Uh but still one of the lessons of Sukkot is to simplify your life. Moving into the hut. Uh and and and the like. Uh in fact um Pessach Krohn tells a story that he once had a Shabbos guest uh who was he was a baal teshuva but before he became a shomer Shabbos he was a competitive bicyclist. Like a Lance Armstrong type and he did Tour de France and these long bicycle races and all of which take place over Shabbos and the like. So he had to give it up. So uh he was asked the inevitable question uh was it hard to give up bicycle racing to become a shomer Shabbos? So he said he found that becoming a religious Jew was very very similar to competitive cycling. He said it was very very similar. It was a very natural movement because it's exactly the same process. And when he was asked to explain it he said the following. When you're a competitive cyclist and the difference between first place and second place might be a second or a half second. Very very small uh differences in time. So you have to get rid of everything. You have to get rid of as you're riding you get rid of a scarf. You get rid of a cap because the cap might slow you up a little bit. So what you learn as a cyclist is get rid of the baggage you don't need. So he said what I learned as a religious Jew was get rid of the baggage I don't need. It was the same lesson. It was very natural. Huh? Uh yeah shave the hair. He did he did he did both actually. Shave the hair and get rid of the get rid of the material possessions and the like. And then it says and let her cry over her father and mother a month of days. Says the Zohar, her father is Hakadosh Baruch that when the neshama is doing teshuvah, it cries over the pain that it caused God. The mother is the Jewish people. Because every sin that we commit is a betrayal of God to God and to the Jewish people. And she should do it for a month of days. Says the Zohar, the month of days is Elul, which is set aside for this type of teshuvah. That's why it's That's why it's not 30 Elul is not 30 Elul is only 29 days. So, uh that's why yerach yamim does not mean 30 days. It means a month of days that includes 29 days. And then, you're able to marry her. Then, you can reconnect to the neshama. So, obviously, this is very, very far from the simple halachic meaning of the verses, and it doesn't answer any of the ethical questions that I raised that we'll continue to think about, but it's a very, very beautiful mashal that's very appropriate to this time of year especially. And of course, this parashah is always read uh this time of time of year. And it reminds us of the avodah of teshuvah, and it also reminds us of the idea that no matter how sinful we might have been, our neshamot always retain its beauty, its luster, its holiness. It is the Eshet Chayil, the beautiful woman whose beauty is not diminished and not besmirched by the captivity in which it finds itself. And this captivity is very, very painful for the neshama. The neshama feels the estrangement from God. It feels the pain of not being connected. And that's an infinite pain because since the neshama is God's breath, so God's infinity extends to aspects of the neshama as well. So, the pain is infinite. Of course, that also means the pleasure is infinite as well. Uh there's another statement the Or HaChaim makes elsewhere where he says, "If we could consciously be aware of the pleasure that our neshama gets in learning Torah, we would never be able to stop learning. And we would die of starvation and lack of sleep." He says, "We wouldn't be able to stop." So, Hashem does not allow us to feel that pleasure because that is the only mechanism that we can live in this physical world. Quite, quite amazing. Right? The pleasure of learning for the neshama is like the highest level of addiction that one could literally imagine, even not imagine. Okay. So, this is the thought of the Or HaChaim combining the Arizal and the Zohar. But now, I want to raise a problem because you understand that whenever you take a biblical narrative and you make it a mashal for something, the nimshal, the meaning does have to match up with the mashal. You can't just disassociate them. So, here's my problem. On one hand, we are told that this is a mashal for the war that we fight against the yetzer hara. Now, let's go back to the simple meaning that we're talking about behaviors in time of war, physical war. What type of war are we talking about? So, in halakha, I mentioned this as you may I mentioned this at the very beginning, there are two types of wars that can exist in a Halakhic system. There is what is called Mitzvah wars, Milchemet Mitzvah, and there is what is called optional war, that's called Milchemet Reshut. Milchemet Mitzvah is the war against Amalek, the war against the seven nations who inhabited Canaan, both of them are extinct now, a war of defense against enemies that attack us, which is usually the type of war that we fight today. All of that is called Mitzvah wars. And Mitzvah wars, everybody is supposed to participate. We can maybe talk another time about is there a legitimate grounds to exempt Yeshiva students from fighting in the war? Not so simple. The pashtus of Halakha is there would be no exemption. Okay, but we worked out but they a basis for well, okay, and that that deserves a share on its own. I'm not going to talk about that tonight. But there's another category, strangely enough, which are wars of expansion, which are optional wars, but as I indicated, optional wars require a number of conditions that cannot be met today. It requires a Sanhedrin that approved it, and above all, it required Hashem's direct approval through the prophetic medium of Urim VeTumim, which is why today there is no Halakhic legitimacy for the state of Israel, and of course, they would never do it, but there is no Halakhic legitimacy for an aggressive war of expansion. Uh the only Halakhic legitimacy of a war today would be defense because we don't have a seven nations. So we would have a war of defense. Now even defensive war is very very tricky. How do you characterize preemptive strikes? In other words, it's obvious the enemy starts bombing me, we fight back. But what about something like bombing their nuclear reactor before they attack us? Is that in a defensive war which is a Mitzvah even or no is that called Halacha that called an aggressive action which would not be justified without a Sanhedrin and it's a big issue. I mean obviously the bottom line would be that when the risks of attack are very very significant, whatever that means, you don't have to wait until the bomb crosses your border but there going to be different questions about the long term preemption. You're doing something because in 10 years they're going to have an okay. Be it as it may though. The bottom line is Halacha recognizes Mitzvah and Halacha recognizes Reshut and there is no permissibility of Reshut. The only permissibility of a war in Halacha would be Mitzvah and of the three types of Mitzvah I mentioned seven nations and defense, we only have one of those three, defensive wars which may include preemption. We don't technically have or or the seven nations anymore. Okay. So when the Torah gives us the law of Torah what type of war is the Torah describing? Is it a mitzvah war or is it an optional war that was authorized by the Sanhedrin and the Urim and Thummim? So, Rashi says before Rashi explicitly and Rashi gets this from the Sifrei that the whole parsha of Yefat To'ar is dealing with optional wars. Because in wars against Amalek or the seven nations, there are no captives. If that's the case, if the Torah is presupposing captives it's got to be an optional war. That's what Rashi says. Although throughout is a little question that that doesn't follow. It's true that in a war against Amalek or the seven nations there can't be captives. But in a war of defense against a non-Amalek nation, there can indeed be captives. So, maybe he's talking about the third category of war. That's a kasha on Rashi. But bottom line, Rashi does say milchemet reshut. So, here's the problem I want to bring out. There seems to be an inconsistency between the mashal and what the pasuk is talking about. If I were to ask you is the fight against the yetzer hara a mitzvah fight or an optional fight? Obviously, it's a mitzvah fight. It is the fight of my life. It is the purpose of my life. So, why would the Torah choose to convey lessons about fighting the yetzer and doing teshuvah in a parsha that is talking about optional wars? Meaning in the p'shat of the pasuk, it's an optional war, but you're telling me it's a moshol for the struggle against the yetzer hara and the reclaiming of my soul. BUT THAT'S NOT an optional war, that's a mandatory war. So, why is the Torah teaching me about this mandatory war in a parsha that's talking about an optional war? See, there's a disconnect between the midrashic explanation and what the Torah is talking about. So, the great Rav Yosef Zevin, zechrono livracha, such a great, great person. He was uh the founding editor editor of the Encyclopedia Talmudit, and he wrote many, many seforim in beautiful, beautiful modern Hebrew, but he was a phenomenal talmid chacham. And in our polarized age, he was one of the last people who was respected and connected to every segment of Torah Judaism. He was close to Rav Kook. He was close to the Brisker Rav and the Chazon Ish. He was a Zionist, and he was Chabad. He himself was Chabad. So, he was a Chabad Zionist who was close to the Brisker Rav and the Chazon Ish. You're not going to find uh that combination uh today. But he really was connected to everybody, and he knew everything. For many, many years, uh he was a book reviewer, seforim reviewer, for a Mizrachi newspaper. And he could go through a sefer the way a person would go through a John Grisham novel or something. Uh you know, a really dense sefer, he would just like read it and say, "Oh, he skipped uh this Tosafos and this Pnei Yehoshua." Whatever. Just an amazing, phenomenal uh talmid chacham. And uh as you say, he was also a Chabad chassid. Uh and he offers the following insight. Again, I'm modifying and elaborating a little bit. And he says, "It's true that the war against the yetzer hara is a mandatory war, but you fight it like an optional war." Meaning, it's a milchemet mitzvah that is not fought like a milchemet mitzvah. It's a milchemet mitzvah that is fought like a milchemet reshut. How so? What is the difference between a milchemet mitzvah and milchemet reshut? In milchemet mitzvah, at least if it's Amalek or the seven nations, there are no survivors. We are actually told to eradicate. Milchemet So, right, so in milchemet mitzvah, the end goal is to destroy the enemy. In a milchemet reshut, the end goal is not to destroy the enemy. The end goal is to capture and subjugate the enemy. Reb Zeven says, when we fight the yetzer hara, our goal is not destruction. Our goal is conquest. What do we mean by that? Let's assume a person decides at some point in their life that they want to do teshuvah, they need to do teshuvah, they need to change their lives. They could be 20, 30, 40. You could be 90. Right? Any point in your life. How do I deal with the fact that there were so many years of my life in which I wasn't really serving Hashem in the right way. I wasn't doing mitzvahs. Maybe I was even doing destructive things. Maybe I was a drug addict or an alcoholic. How am I mitiakhes to those years in which I was doing bad things. I was in a bad place. Again, I'm not even referring just I didn't keep Shabbos. That's bad, too. But, you know, I was a drug addict. I was I was on heroin. I was in the streets. And now I've changed. How do I look at my past? So, there are two psychological mechanisms a person could go through. One might be called amputation. That was then. Yeah. The first 40 years of my life were pretty bad. But, I'm beyond it. I've gone beyond it. It's a new start. I am simply cutting off that part of my life. I am not connected to it. It's gone. That's like milchemet mitzvah. You kill the enemy. You destroy the enemy. But, in reality that's not the modality that's most beneficial for you spiritually. Because the reason is when your teshuvah obliterates your past, destroys your past, you're basically saying those 40 years were a waste. They were a zero. Okay, baruch Hashem. Now I can make my life have meaning me kano lahaba. But, those 40 years are irredeemable. You're left with years of your life that are just worthless. And there's another aspect. Even with amputation mamash, if God forbid a person has to have a limb amputated, there is a phenomenon that's called phantom pain. The pain is still there. You can't really escape your past. Your past will pop up just like when you tried to delete uh email or something from a complex computer program. As countless people discover. It's still in there somewhere. And somebody's going to find it. I can't really escape my past. My past is my past. Now, there's another modality of treatment. It's not the modality of obliteration. It's not the modality of amputation, which is Muhammad's mitzvah fighting. But rather I take my past and I liberate it. Or from my perspective, I subjugate it. I use it as the basis of the uniqueness of my avodat Hashem. I'm not escaping my past. I'm redefining the significance of my life and using it as a foundation. Now, I'll give a very simple example would be in the case of the drug addict himself. The guy was on cocaine, was was in the gutter for 20 years. Now, thank God, he kicked the habit. Now, he could just say, "Those years I'm simply forgetting about." But that means those years were a waste. But let's assume a person becomes a drug counselor as a result of those experiences. Now, that's fundamentally different than amputation. What that's saying is, "Because I was an addict for 20 years, I have acquired understandings of the struggles, of the trials, of the difficulties that will make me a better counselor than I would have been had I not had those struggles. So, in retrospect, all the years that were evil and decadent and depraved get redefined as years that that prepared me for the mission in life that I now have. This is a remarkable idea that teshuvah does not just change your future, but teshuvah redefines the trajectory of your past. The meaning of your past is now different. Now, maybe a drug addict is a very extreme example of this. But the truth is, even, you know, your run-of-the-mill baal teshuvah, if there's such a thing as a run-of-the-mill baal teshuvah, there isn't. Same thing. You know, sometimes a person becomes from, so they kind of want to cut themselves off from their family, cut themselves off from their interests, because it's not yeshivish enough, not from enough, not chareidi enough. So, I kind of remake myself into something. And if I liked poetry or I liked music, you know, I got to put that to the side. That's not always healthy. In fact, that often creates a certain internal pressure. It creates a certain depression, we'll call it subclinical depression, a certain listlessness, a certain restlessness, which I'm not really sure what's going on, but I don't have enthusiasm in life. Well, I'm a I'm an amateur psychologist, so I I can't claim to be professional, but in a lot of cases, what you're feeling is the phantom pain of cutting off your limb because you thought you had to get rid of it. And it's still haunting you and dragging you down. See, Rav Zev has insight. It is a beautiful, beautiful insight. So, when you fight against the yetzer hara, you don't kill it. You want to use it as part of your foundation in life. You know? Everyone knows, everyone has heard of the great Rosh Yeshiva of Mir, who was nifter a few years ago, Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel. And uh the last uh 20 25 years of his life, he was laboring under tremendous disability, had uh multiple sclerosis, and it's just amazing he kept going and going and going and going, shiurim and chavrusas and collecting money and traveling and he didn't even want to take medicine. Uh he was tre- with all these tremors because it clouded his mind a little bit. I mean, one of the outstanding, outstanding examples of a person who was so devoted to Am Yisrael and to Torah and to his students. And not just his Yeshiva, let's say his Yeshiva, but it was not just his Yeshiva, to the whole Torah world. But his backstory is interesting as well. He was not a baal teshuvah, he grew up in a very religious family, a family that indeed was related to the all the Mir Rosh Yeshivas, the Finkel family. Uh but he grew up in Chicago, was a bit of a modern Orthodox, he went to a co-ed high school. He was on the basketball team. He was on the debating team. And he was as with girls, where where worst of crime of all. Uh and uh he came he came to Mir in fact he even says when he first came to Mir uh to learn because his great uncle, his father's uncle was uh the prior Rosh Yeshiva Reb Leizer Yudel. So, he had never learned Gemara more than an hour at a time. An hour. So, when he learned the morning seder 9:00 to 1:00 he was at going absolutely crazy. So, he then you know so at the end of the hour you know finally we're finished he said to the Reb so what are you guys doing in the afternoon here? Do we do touring? He said, "No, we do more of the same." You know I was like it was something he couldn't couldn't absorb it all. So, when he died he died very suddenly. I mean he was very young but his death was unexpected at the time. So, I went to hear the eulogies as paid them. And all of the eulogies made the same point. Again, I'm going to simplify but but I think I'm I'm fairly accurate. They kind of said, "What's the lesson you get from Nosson Tzvi's life? That even though he came from such a tumel environment, a treif environment, an environment that had no kedusha in it, he managed to escape, he managed to break away." So, don't be discouraged even if you come from garbage you can become great. Now, I I roughly came from a somewhat of a similar environment. Now you know I I didn't like hearing that really because I look back at my co-ed school and other things and I'll tell you the truth all I have all I have are very very warm memories of growing up together and and you know learning Torah and and the like. I mean I'm I'm I'm I'm not emphasizing the co-ed so much but kind of an atmosphere that wasn't so Yeshivish, it wasn't so chareidi. But there was a lot of decency, a lot of menchlikeit. Now the whole message of the haspaidem was you want to become great, you got to forget where you came from. Well, there's truth to some of that. But I think there's another truth that was not articulated. Part of Nesanel Tzvi Finkel's greatness was not that he became what he became in spite of being modern Orthodox in Chicago. But it was the very experiences in Chicago that made him great. The tolerance, the ability to understand the mindset of American teenagers. The ability to deal with people in a non-judgmental way. One of his great strengths was that he often met with American kids who came from modern Orthodox co-ed high schools. And they come to me and they meet a guy with a, you know, beard and, you know, dressed in black. And in Ner Yisrael Beis Medrash, it's much more intense. And they don't expect, you know, they're really scared what he's going to what's he what's he going to talk to them about? And he starts talking about jump shots and he starts about basketball. And they opened up and they relaxed. And they felt that they also had a place in the Torah world. And they could also become tzaddikim and talmidei chachamim. You see, he never And yeah, I don't want to say lashon hara. Obviously, I'm not going to mention names. I mean, I know people who had backgrounds like I had and who had backgrounds like Rav Nesanel Tzvi. But, you know, you never you never know that. It's like they're like, you know, they sound like, you know, 20th generation Meah Shearim people. In fact, okay, I don't want to get too specific, but the sister of one of these people who's a who's actually a big talmid chacham lives in Maryland. And she calls me occasionally and she says, "My brother is eradicating our family history." You know, he brings our mother over to Israel, and she had been a Zionist for 50 years, and you know, he changes her name from Hebrew to Yiddish. And he says he says he's obliterating what we were. Now, that's understandable. You know, you come to a new place, you you reinvent yourself. But Reb Nosson Tzvi, in other words, that's the teshuvah of amputation. Reb Nosson Tzvi didn't amputate his past. He used his past to become the person he became. And it became a source of kedushah. And in truth, that's true for all of us. You come from South Dakota. So, on one hand, you come to Yerushalayim. So, you're kind of embarrassed, you know, here we have these kids, um you know, they're 8 years old, they can they can daven much better than I can daven, or whatever it is. I'll never catch up. Well, it's true that the eighth generation Yerushalmi has a lot of talents and a lot of abilities that we're not going to have. But, the secret is the person from South Dakota has something the eighth generation Yerushalmi doesn't have. And our idea is not to try to escape the formative experiences of our lives, but to use those formative experiences in building the uniqueness of our relationship with Hashem. And that's Reb Zeven's insight with some elaboration. That you fight this milchemet mitzvah not by obliterating the enemy, but by capturing it, subjugating it, reformulating it. So, be'ezrat Hashem, may we be zocheh to look at every part of our lives as a gift from Hashem. And use every part of our being in his service. So, thank you and dish for a tough