5 minute Torah Portion Ki Teitzei by Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

when you will go out to war against your enemies and hashem your god will deliver him into your hand and you will capture its people as captives the verses continue to go on and describe what happens when you find this beautiful woman and you decide you want to take her home to be your wife she's called an asias yaffatoar but the hebrew in the first verse goes like this when you go out to war we're going to hashem eloquence and hashem will place him we just got done saying you have enemies and yet hashem will take one of your enemies and place him into your hand with shavita and you will take captive one of the captives and we talked about this asia toar this beautiful woman who the man has this great desire for as we know in war the adrenaline gets pumping the after seeing so much violence and blood and having weapons of war in your hand many nations when they go out to battle have been accused of and rightfully so of murder and pillaging and raping that's one thing that the jewish nation has never been accused of of raping most likely because of this injunction this this command when you go out to war you're not allowed to rape but you are let it take the captives home to be your wife and there's a whole scheme the truth is it's not preferable the scheme is that you is that hashem set it up that you will not desire her in the end how's that because you shave her head you allow her nails to grow long okay you um change her beautiful garments into these sackcloth type garments very unattractive and she sits there and she weeps over the loss of her own parents who may have been killed in battle but she's going through a process of conversion over the next 30 days she will be your wife if you decide if you still desire her in the end but the scheme is set up that you will not want to desire her in the end and you come to actually hate her hashem has said it up that we know that the yetzara this evil inclination is what you're actually battling against as it says plural your enemies and then hashem will place him first the whole thing is a scheme in order to place him into your hand we say into your hand we mean into your control and therefore the setup the scheme is to allow your yetzer hara to diminish to constantly go down and to get rid of it were you not interested in taking her anymore as your wife and how does it begin if we look in ecclesiastes that's cohellis chapter seven verse two what do we know about a house of mourning a house of mourning can be quite depressing but it's better to go to a house of morning than to go to the house of feasting and why is that for that is the end of all man how can we understand going they're going to a house of mourning is better because it brings the stark reality that we are mortal and that we will face judgment day and that is a reason for the aids of hara to get quite scared and want to leave because that's the last thing he's interested is judgment day and as the rest of the verse says for that is the end of all man and the living should take it to heart so when you really take it to heart and you're in this environment where this woman is crying the whole day long in your living room so your your yatahara is going to really die out because it's going to be in a constant it's like sitting in a house of mourning 24 hours seven days a week and then we have this other idea we come to wars in general there's two types of wars there's the external war that you fight on a battlefield and then there's this an internal war that one fights within his own consciousness and his own heart the one you fight in your heart that's with your yetzara that's with your evil inclination the one you fight outside that's with your enemy your physical enemy so how does it work the opposite ways as we know everything is in the hands of heaven except for the fear of heaven so how does it all begin you must in order to win the war against your external enemy hazal hashem the torah is all teaching us the same lesson now how does this begin it begins down here let's talk about the other way first how does an external war begin it all begins in heaven if we look in judge in the shelf team that's judges chapter 5 verse 20. from heaven they fought the very stars from their orbits did battle with sisera all the physical wars begin in heaven and are fought through the spiritual worlds first the celestial beings the administering angels and the war will then be determined and then we play out here we finish it off when it comes to fighting the internal battle there's no way that we can overcome it ourselves but we have to begin it's us to take the initiative this is what it means that it that we the hashem will deliver him first into our hands so we begin as we mentioned everything is in the hand of heaven except for the fear of heaven we take the initiative first we do battle with our yates of hara and in the end hashem will finish it off he will help us there's no way that we could do this without god's help i would like to wish you all shabbat shalom and the upcoming shana tavan new years getting through the yamadin the judgment day and this hopefully will give you some insight in how to finish off your own truva if you haven't started now's the time welcome to the club you