The Captive of War and the Process of Tshuva (Parshas Ki Seitzei) (HaRav Yitzchak Breitowitz)

you're all doing well and uh approaching as we're approaching uh the end of the old year which has been of course a very very difficult year and we hope and we pray that the new year should be a source of great uh blessing it's important to understand cabalistic what's going on it's a it's an idea thank you that every rashash Hashem puts into the universe the spiritual energy that will sustain the universe for the entire year period uh when you blow the chauffeur what you're doing is you're returning that energy back to God take the old energy and he puts in a new energy so although you know God exists you know before and after God never changes but the infusion of the energy changes now it could be for the worst could be for the better that's not a guarantee but it is very very different and as a result the notion of renewal is not just a metaphor it's an actual reality that there's a differential spirit spiritual energy that comes into the Universe on rashishana and it all depends very much on our chauffeur blowing on our mitzvos on our chuva on our resolution for the for the new year so we have to take this period of time uh pretty seriously because it does really depend it really determines our future the future of the world in a sense the future of the whole universe because uh our sages teach us that the whole universe all the stuff way out there depends really on the myth and the Good Deeds that the Jewish people do in this world so that actually means the anti-semites are right when they say Jews run the world uh indeed that's absolutely what we do believe in a spiritual sense so Jews are at fault for all the bad stuff that happens and Jews get a lot of the credit for the uh when the good things happen as well so anyway this week's para is a very very unique para you know there are 613 Commandments in the Torah this para has more than 70 of them by far this is the highest number of mitzvos in any paria so where do you start like you have more than 70 Mitzvah so I'm going to start with the very first one which frankly is one of the most enigmatic uh laws in the Torah and that is the law of the captive woman and what does the Torah describe the Torah says when you go out and you wage war against your enemy and you see a beautiful woman again this is addressed to a male obviously and uh you you are you you are lusting after her so it says you have intercourse with her but if so you're given so to speak one bite at the Apple one free intercourse but if you want to continue it has to be through marriage but on one hand if you want to continue it has to be through marriage but we also want to discourage the marriage so the Torah gives a ritual you bring her to your house and she is made to be unattractive for a month uh she shaves her her ha hair she lets her fingernails grow long she wears Rags she sits and she cries for a month and then after the month you make a decision if you want to marry her you marry her and she has all the rights of a regular wife if you don't want to marry her she goes free she cannot be kept as a slave she cannot be kept as a servant uh you either marry her or she goes free but the Tyra wants to discourage the marriage option by by requiring this particular ritual but the one thing that's quite amazing maybe quite disturbing is that the Torah seems to be envisioning what we would call uh wartime rape now you know raping a a woman in time of war is unfortunately a very very common situation but it is actually a war crime and uh would it be conceivable that the terror would allow simply raping a woman because passions in time of War are very hard to control so the first thing I want to share with you is uh commentary of one of the Reon him the toos rid rid is an abbreviation rayah of tranan Tran is city in Italy and the to has a very big Kish it is aish and I'm not going to say every commentator says it but I think it's very important that you know this comment that the whole paraa of the beautiful woman is not referring to rape it is dealing with consensual intercourse that's a very important point the Tyra under no no circumstances allows a soldier to rape a woman uh the Torah does give you one free bite at the Apple so to speak but only if it's consensual okay that's very important from a moral perspective but even so you still got a problem hey this is a non-jewish woman what's going on the Torah is allowing you to have one consensual sexual encounter with a non-jewish woman in time of War I mean even that sounds pretty bad even if by the toos rid makes it much less bad than it would otherwise be yeah which is great I'm very very happy to have that toos rid but still the tyus permitting intercourse with a non-jewish woman so Rashi says an interesting psychological thoughts Rashi says the Tyra is making a concession to the evil inclination to the ater Hara because in times of War passions are very very great and if the tah were to Simply say forbidden you would VI not you but some PE some people at least would violate the law anyway so the Tyra in a sense concedes to the atora by giving you a way of doing it but regulating it so to speak and the like it's kind of a concession to the evil inclination still I'm not saying that this is uh a totally satisfying answer because after all isn't our job in life to fight the evil inclination rather than give into it there are going to be some extraordinary cases where the tah actually does concede to the Yater harab uh now there are other questions as well here because I mean there's a lot of things that are really very very murky so you bring her home uh she's given 30 days uh to sit in your house and then you got to make a decision after the 30 days are you going to marry her in which case she has all the rights of a wife or or will she be set free she cannot be kept as a slave the question is is that your decision or is that her decision me meaning let's assume I decide I want to marry her does she have any say in that normally marriage is consensual right you can't marry a woman against her will can you marry aat to against her will and what about her Jewish status does she become Jewish at the end of those 30 days or is the Tyra permitting you to live with a non-jew and if she becomes Jewish once again is it because she agrees to convert or even if she doesn't agree to convert I'm leaving a lot of these questions open because the toos rid only resolves one of the issues the tosas rid basically says no rape okay barem but it still doesn't really explain the nature of the marriage that can occur at the end of the 30 days nor does it suggest the issue of the conversion now it seems to be a I mean the themselves are not as clear uh as as you know you might hope some actually say that both the conversion and the marriage she has to agree to which means in effect she can she can bargain her Freedom she could basically say hey I don't want to get married to you I don't want to convert to Judaism AR Go I Go free others imply that there's kind of a conversion and a marriage even against her her will um so as I say there are a lot of unresolved questions um of course uh there was a rabbi in the uh IDF one of the Chaplin in the IDF who contributed to a Torah Journal uh a theoretical discussion it was a totally theoretical discussion whether the laws of yat TOA would apply today in the modern Wars of Israel and um basically I think he got fired from his position because uh you know looked like he was advocating something that's not entirely proper uh but you know he was writing it from a theoretical perspective but again you got to be careful listen I know myself you got to be very careful whatever you say that gets I don't know if you know this that I'm I'm now portrayed as a um Kamas sympathizer because I uh I spoke about the power of yesel and how it's difficult to fight against yesel which is really you know a statement that I'll make so one of these groups one of the Palestinian groups took like a snippet a two-minute snippet out of my talk and I'm hearing from a lot of people and they said Rabbi says Arabs are Palestinians are impossible to defeat can never be defeated and they're putting it all over the place so you got to be careful in this world I mean on one hand what are you going to do you going to fight I mean I can't imagine all of this is legal I I I can't imagine that it is but they can just cut out something and broadcast a two-minute segment and apparently uh you know that's what people do and it's an awful thing so got to be careful but okay but be it as it may what I want to share with you though is a beautiful powerful thought of the or right the or a commentary on the Kish written by ra benar who was a great Rabbi from Morocco who came to yusim uh in fact his yite is in tamos uh tens of he's buried in Hara Mount of Olives and tens of thousands of people come I don't know if any of you happen to have been in the Mount of Olives uh this past summer the or's yite but anyway he's considered to be one of the great commentators on thees we often call him the the holy and the brings in the name of the zoa a very fascinating point that the para of toar can be understood allegorically allegorically as the struggle against our Yates or Hara and let's take the actual words of the PK the very first pk in the para begins when you go against when you go out to war against your enemy Hashem will deliver the enemy into your hands you will have captives you will capture the enemy so here's what the Z says who is the greatest enemy in your life the greatest enemy in your life is your Yer Hara because your soul is beautiful your soul is Holy but there are forces within the human per it that rebel against God that fight against God that's the aara that wants to pull me down you got to wage war against it you got to wage war against thear and what does the PK tell me when you wage war against your enemy God will give you Victory don't give up God will deliver it into your hands you will be Victor torious if you don't give up and keep on going this is an important lesson very often as we fight whatever demons we're fighting we sometimes give up because we fail and we fail again and the lesson here is keep trying keep going don't give up the villag gone used to say about daving you know some everyone I think all of us unfortunately have had the experience of our minds wandering during ding right so have you ever had the experience that you were saying and all of a sudden you're by and you're not really sure what happened between those two points it's like how did I get here you probably did say the words but you know literally we were so not involved Ina that we don't even know how we got there but Theon says if thear gets you in one bra that you don't concentrate for you get him back in the next bre don't give up never basically say ah you know what's the use of this Shimon you know just give it up even with learning this way let's say you have a morning Sader the morning Sader is three hours whatever it is so let's assume that 2 hours and 50 minutes didn't go too well you only have 10 minutes so it's our tendency of all of us it's only 10 minutes you know I might as well call it a day that's that's not right you still have 10 minutes do something good for those 10 minutes it's going to be worthwhile it's going to be worthwhile you know in the ISA of Kellum the alar of Kum the old man of Kellum was R sa Salter's greatest uh disciple and he created a school for character development it was really uh kind of high school age kids kids uh 16 17 18 and it was a Yeshiva but it had all sorts of EXT exercises to train you in MOS kind was almost kind of obsessive in a way but but it had a a very important point I'll give you one example after a fast uh the food that was served after a fast was always fish with a lot of little bones in it what's the purpose because after a fast a person tends to eat very very quickly like ravenous when you have a lot of Bones you got to eat slowly to spit out the bones you want it to train people you're not an animal that has to give into things or if you got a letter from home in those days there was no email or telephone you got a letter from home you had to wait 24 hours till you opened it up different types of character development things thato kineski as a single boy went to Kellum for a few months in fact he used to tell the story it was very very funny story that uh in Kellum they had a thing you weren't allowed to look around during ding if there was a noise or something you just you know you don't look around here and there so keski said the first day he came to Kellum was a Monday or a Thursday it was a day of Kat Torah and uh when it was time for K Tor it looked like there was no Coen so they were going to call the Israel up but dako keski noticed that a Coen had walked into the B medish so he went to the Gabi and he said oh there's a Coen thinking he did a good thing so they call up the Coen so after daving the Gaba goes over to him and says Yash thank you so much for telling us uh that a coin walked in but you owe one Ruble to the Yeshiva you have a canas he say why do I have a canas because you're not supposed to look around and see who comes into the who comes into the show you happen to do a good thing or it turned out good but you know you don't look around so you actually have to pay a can Kellum was that way so yov keski said about Kellum he says B should go to Kellum for six months but then he said but no more he said it was little little too much but anyway one of the exercises in Kellum which ties into what I'm talking about is that the alar of Kellum wanted the boys to learn the value of time so there was actually a requirement in the middle of the night that you get up for a five minute learning Session 5 minutes so you would be woken up 15 minutes before or 10 minutes before whatever it took now to a f minute learning session no more and no less you really can't be late if the whole Sor is five minutes right and the point was to learn the importance of even five minutes so this is extremely important when you go out to war against your enemy don't give up Hashem will give you Victory okay then it goes on again this is back to the then it goes on and you see in captivity a beautiful woman that you desire that you yearn for says the the beautiful woman is an allegorical reference to your Nish which is beautiful and radiant and holy and you see your Nish captured by the enemy so to speak that the Atara took hold of your Nish that it's unable to express its beauty and its goodness but you want to be reunited with your Nish you want to be connected to that goodness you see raash you see in captivity the beauty of your Nish right we have this feeling sometimes that we can have a sense of a goodness that's within us but we also sometimes feel a little powerless to express it because there's so many other things holding us back this is you see and you feel that your Nisha is captured so how do you reclaim your Nish so bring her to your house so it mentions shave the hair so here hair grows out of the head so again allegorically there for hair represents the expression of ideas and ideologies that are foreign to Torah value systems so shave the hair means as part of the Chua process disabuse ourselves of ideologies that are against the Torah in fact re used to say you know people say brainwashing is such a Negative term uh of course the way they use it it is negative but what is brainwash brainwashing means you want to clean your brain from all the junk that's in there he says it's not such a bad idea he says he says you know dry clean launder whatever it was clean out the junk we get so influenced by ideas that are perverse that are corrupt that are degenerate that are degrading so that's the Shaving the hair get rid of the ideologies that are keeping keeping you away from God now the next thing she does is she grows her she lets her fingernails grow very long now when you have long fingernails it's very hard to grasp things you can't grab things grasping refers to our connection to hedonistic materialism I grab the pleasures of the world long fingernails make that more difficult so so the two steps in the chuva process one is intellect ual and one one is more on the emotional level one is reformulate your ideologies and your ideas so that they are pure and good and right and the other is try to distance yourself from a preoccupation with materialism now our attitude towards materialism is a little ambiguous you know we don't say there's a MIT to be poor we don't say wear a hair short shirt lie on a bed of nails or even fast beyond the mandatory fast days in fact on some level estheticism is considered to be sinful right this is the famous teaching that the nazarites who made a vow not to drink wine has to bring a sacrifice at the end of his period for a sin and what sin did he commit the sin of refraining from a legitimate pleasure that God put into the world God put into the world the pleasures of wine who are you to say I can't have those Pleasures so Judaism is not it's important to know this Judaism is not against pleasure it is not against enjoying the world it's not against appreciating the world Judaism does not Advocate to live a life of poverty be comfortable make a living take care of your family indeed that's an obligation of a Jewish husband to support their family but at the same time we have to be careful if we get too connected to the material world our hearts are no longer sensitive to spirituality the same way in fact this is actually a problem with Internet culture the same way that when you're addicted let's say to fast food you're not going to have the patience to spend three hours cooking a French meal or whatever it is or if you're addicted to internet web surfing you're not going to read Shakespeare or Charles Dickens or William faer because you're used to hopping from thing to thing to thing to thing thing by the way that's why it's interesting that um for you know for many many years uh having a laptop or an internet connection was mandatory in college and you needed it there are a few colleges that actually don't allow you to have internet connections in class because too many people are playing solitire or watching porn or or or whatever whatever it would be so they actually want to go back to the old-fashioned ways of you know pen and paper or whatever what whatever it would be it's very very fascinating that uh they want to go back to the the Dark Ages or the stone ages uh before there was an internet or whatever but educators are concerned about this that the internet has taken away has impaired not taken away but has impaired the ability to concentrate for long periods of time because the nature of web surfing even if you're not doing porn you're doing legitimate research is to jump from here to there to there to there to there it affects an ability to concentrate on gamorra and and and and the like this is actually an educational concern both in the Jewish community and even in the in the secular community so once you get habituated to instant gratification it's much much harder to get involved in deeper things than are not instant that's true in the case of food it's true in Internet versus literature and it's true in Rus versus gmas materialism versus spirituality materialistic Pleasures are instant fast spiritual Pleasures are slow right gamorra could be a wonderful wonderful thing it is a wonderful thing but it's not always going to be immediate you work on it you think about it you review it and then at some point hopefully you'll see the sweetness so Judaism is not against materialism but Judaism is very very worried about the fact that when I'm overly connected to materialism I don't have the patience and I don't have the yearning to be so connected to Rus and spirituality and therefore the says if shaving the hair canotes disabusing yourself of non-culture ideas having the fingernails grow very long which makes grabbing hard is designed to give you a more simple life where you're not overly involved with physicality and materialism you know it reminds me a little bit I don't know if they still have this they probably don't have this commercial now years and years ago perhaps Cola was running um a campaign that if you collected enough bottle caps or enough stickers under the bottle cap you could get a prizes in fact I remember actually when I when I taught contracts actually was a very fascinating case where they had a funny commercial where uh they showed like you know bunch of high school kids some rode their bicycles uh to school and uh some of the rich kids took their cars to school but then they had one kid who comes down with a with a jet airplane because uh he he actually bought a Jet uh because the they advertisement was if you have like five million uh caps you get a jet airplane of course that was a joke because they picked a number that nobody in the world would ever get know hey you know you can get you can get a jet airplane for 5 million uh vital caps so lo and behold some kid managed to do this maybe he was working with Iranians who knows so he went to Pepsi and says I want jet this is a military jet well first of all it's against the law you know private no matter how rich you are you can't just say I want to buy a military jet you know it's against the law so Pepsi said come on kid you know it's a joke right so the kid sued them in court the kid actually took them to court for breach of contract he said if you're not going to give me the jet you got to give me the value of the Jet right the jet is whatever it is uh 10100 million whatever it would be so anyway the court actually said come on kid it's a you know the kid didn't win his case but there actually was this kid who sued Pepsi for a military jet but the catch word the by line of the commercial was drink Pepsi get stuff and I always thought the motto get stuff it doesn't even make a difference what it is anymore it doesn't say drink Pepsi and get this thing or that thing get stuff it's like materialism just for materialism it makes no difference what it is I just want stuff stuff is all that matters right that's kind of you know I don't even enjoy it I don't have to know what it is I just want stuff and that is what can take a person away from Hashem okay so now you understand the idea of Shaving the hair and the idea of letting the fingernails grow and then it goes on we're just going on in the buk she cries for her father and her mother for a month of days says the her father is she Mourns meaning my Mourns over the pain that we cause Hashem by our AOS and the separation we have from Hashem because of our Aus that's crying over the father the mother is the Jewish people that's how we look at it my father is God my mother like the mother land is I'm Israel because when I do have AOS I'm not just hurting me I'm hurting the whole Jewish people why because of the rule call Israel araven Z every Jew is responsible for every other Jew when I do things that are bad it's not just affecting me it affects Everybody by the way that's an important message to think about in the Yesa sometimes a person says oh if I Mis doing I don't go to learn all right so that's my business if I want to go to hell you know what gives you the right to stop me that's just my business first of all that's very short decided thinking anyway hell isn't isn't the greatest place uh but the truth of the matter is the assumption is not even true because is when we don't do things right that creates that contributes to a certain atmosphere in which other people are affected other people get dragged down it's like the T Shi gives a very famous mushel if I'm sitting in a boat with a bunch of people and there's a hole in the boat under my seat and water is coming in and people want to fix the seat and I say mind your own business the hole is is under my seat what do you care and the answer is very very obvious maybe the hole is under my seat but the water is going to sink the entire boat and that's how it is so I cry over my betrayal of Hashem and I cry over the pain I'm causing the Jewish people and for a month of days the zoer says this is the month of el that is set aside 29 days in El doesn't say 30 a a month of days which is actually 29 days which is set aside for introspection repentance and so the reads into the par the process of CHA the process of introspection the process of disengaging from false ideologies and trying to distance myself from excessive Hedonism and materialism and this should be done specifically during this particular time of year a time when Hashem is waiting for us to try to uh do chuva in the various ways that all of us need to do Chua again this is obviously not the simple meaning of the verse the simple meaning of the verse is dealing with the wartime issue that we discussed and as I indicated there are a lot of unanswered questions there but allegorically the Torah has many many levels and the Z as explained by the reads into theas to story this journey of reclaiming our Nas reclaiming our our souls get our souls back and that's why the word Chua is such an evocative word really chuva is always translated in English as um as repent but really Chua means return the literal meaning of chuba is the process of returning now who is returning to whom so there are different ways you could describe it I am returning to Hashem because when I sin I'm far from God I return to Hashem but you also interpret I return to my own Nish I return to my Essential self I return to whom I am now this is interesting because we often look at shuva as I will change myself now behaviorally Chua does involve a dynamic of change but on a deeper metaphysical level chuva is not changing yourself chuva is returning to whom you already are Chua is reconnecting to my own Essence right that's very different in a way you can even say nobody can ever change you are what you are but Chua the goal is to become what I am to become what I already am I'm sure you've heard over the years the famous declaration of the rusa who was a talmid of the meid who was the leader after the balm so there he was a colleague of the balatan and in fact if you look at any any of you learned Tanya so Tanya has H right Tanya has letters of other rabbis who approve the uh writing of the Tanya or the publishing of the Tanya so rusha actually is one of the people who gave a Hask on the tus you see he must have been a very person it's interesting though because all of the folk tales they're told about him always talk about him like the most humble person like you you you it's almost surprising to see him as a great and esteemed Rabbi writing a letter uh for the publication of the Tanya because every story about rushia he's always like the most humble of people uh in fact I'll tell you one quick story which is not the story I'm bringing out here but I'll mention it very quickly that the Mish BR says a person must bless God even for the bad just like He blesses God for the good that everything God brings you is good so a certain T but asked them as a rich or maget I don't understand how can I feel grateful even for the bad things so the magot said go to my Ted rusha he will explain it so he goes to rusha rosha is living in poverty ramshackle house the kids have Rags on there's no food in the house uh water is dripping and he says zusa the rebi said I have to ask you the meaning of the mishna in bras that you got to be grateful for the bad just like you're grateful for the good what is it mean so rusha looks very confused and he says I don't know why the rebi said to ask me nothing bad has ever happened to me that was kind of that that was kind of the answer to that but the other story is this goes back to chuva is that rusa famously said after 120 years when I stand before God I am not going to worry that God's going to ask me why weren't you like Moshe rabeno hey I'm not Moshe what do you want for me why weren't you like Abraham Aina that's not me what do you want what I'm really afraid of is why weren't you zusa why weren't you you you don't have to be anybody else but you but you have to be you and that's the big question and that's what shua is Shuba is returning to the you the real you the real me okay and that's why it's called Shuba that's a much more powerful translation than repent it is to return to whom you are and the sees the process of this in the H so have a good Chas thank you for listening to this awesome production to find out more and to partner in our mission please visit o.edu