Ki Taytsay-2015
· What is Ki Taytsay, when you will go out, referring to? Ki Taytsay Lemelchamah.
When you go out to war,
· “And you see among the prisoners a Yefat Toar, a beautiful woman,(a shiksah) if you desire her, you may take her as your wife.”
· Women would go out to the field of battle, dressed to kill, to distract the enemy, and encourage their husbands to win, saying, don’t let us fall into the enemies hands.
· It’s the origin of the modern cheerleaders.
· Rashi: Lo debra Torah ela Keneg Yetzer Hara, because if Hashem would not permit her, he would live with her Be Issur. However, if he does marry her, he will ultimately hate her.”
· Rashi says she’s called an Isha beause she’s married already, obviously to a non-Jewish husband.
· Rashi goes on and says that this section in the Parshah is followed by the Ben Sorer ve Moreh, a rebellious son – because this is the kind of child they will have together.
· Dovid Hamelech took such a Yefat Toar, Maachah, and the son he had with her was Avshalom.
· Avshalom grew up and rebelled against Dovid, and declared himself king, forcing Dovid to flee, and he tried to kill Dovid, who just barely managed to defeat Avshalom.
· If the man wants to marry this captivating and beautiful captive woman, she has to mourn for her family for a month first, shave her head and let her nails grow to look less attractive.
· It’s the only case in Halachah where someone can be forced to be Jewish, because she has no choice in the matter.
· It gets worse. In Kiddushin 21b, there’s a Machloches between Rashi and Tosfos about whether the Jewish man, when he first sees her, whether he can have an initial intimate contact with her.
· Rashi says no and Tosfos says yes.
· The Rambam paskins like Tosfos, that the initial contact with the Yifat Toar is permitted. (see also Sanhendrin 21a and Yevomos 47b).
· The Rambam uses an interesting phrase, that Tochpo Yitzro, his yetzer hara has the guy in a full nelson, he’s totally under the Yetzer Hara’s control.
· The Ramban uses a similar phrase, that Yitzro Misgaber Alov – he’s totally under the spell of the Yetzer hara, almost beyond the point of thinking clearly.
· This is very strange and weird Halachah.
· The initial contact with her, against her will, is allowed.
· He’s going to hate her, and have a rebellious son with her, like Avshalom who tried to kill Dovid Hamelech, and almost usurped the throne.
· She’s converted to Judaism against her will.
· What’s going on here?
· We know that the Torah is a Darchei Noam, written by the Creator of the Universe, and Hashem has infinite wisdom. How can we make sense of this?
· Hashem is perfectly capable of saying NO.
· Look at the 10 commandments – don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t commit adultery. There’s no leeway or compromising there.
· The Gemorah tells us a situation where a man was attracted to a married woman, and the doctors said that if he isn’t able to hear her voice from behind a screen that he will die, and the Rabbis said, let him die.
· There are 365 negative commandments in the Torah, one for each day of the year.
· The Yefat Toar is obviously not a good situation, not wholesome at all, leading to nothing but bad.
· Why not, as Nancy Regan said, just say NO.
· Just like the signs by a pool, No running, no drinking, no shoving, no diving.
· The word Torah means teaching, what is Hashem trying to teach us with this?
· When Rashi says that it’s all keneged the Yetzer Hara, what does he mean by this?
· I’ll make a suggestion.
· Sometimes a force is so powerful, that legislating NO is not an option, it is not feasible
· Admittedly this situation is very rare, this is the only situation like this in the Torah.
· For all other bad situations in the Torah, No means no, usually accompanied by punishment.
· Why is this different?
· Again, sometimes there is a situation that is so powerful that legislating NO is not an option.
· But it does happen – and that is the lesson to be learned from this sugya.
· That when that situation arises, you have to come up with a strategy for reducing the effect of the Yetzer Hara, because to meet it head on is doomed to failure.
· As Rashi says, the people will do it anyway, so the situation must be managed.
· It’s like a Tsunami, and you have to develop a strategy to deal with it, to try to reduce its force.
· She mourns for a month, she shaves her head, she wears sackcloth, even the initial contact is allowed so that the person can come to his senses and say, it’s only a temporary feeling, it doesn’t make sense at all.
· Kiddushin 40a – R. Ilai said, if a person sees that his Yetzer Hara is overwhelming him, Misgaber Alov, he should go to a place where they do not recognize him, and clothe himself in black and cover himself in black, and he should do as his heart desires, and not be guilty of Chillul Hashem.
· A steam engine has a safety valve that when the pressure in the steam engine gets too intense, the pressure can be released, called letting off steam.
· The same is true for someone with an addiction – to liquor, drugs, gambling, even smoking.
· Just saying NO just doesn’t work.
· In 1935 Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith created the 12 step program to deal with and manage the addiction, and by closely following the 12 steps the addiction can be brought under control.
· But saying NO just does not work.
· Does this have any relevance to our lives?
· I would like to suggest that there are two situations in recent history that might fall under this strange category.
· The first is the Haskalla
· The enlightenment, with its emphasis on science and philosophy, struck the Orthodox world in the 19th and 20th centuries very hard.
· I’ve heard that in a 100 years the world went from 90% frum to 10% frum.
· The Rabbis in Eastern Europe circled the wagons and just said NO to everything.
· But it didn’t work.
· In Germany, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch developed a philosophy called Torah Im Derech Eretz, that tried to say, let’s work with the Haskallah, integrate it into Judaism in a way that reduces the power of the Haskallah and actually strengthens Yiddishkeit.
· Here is a quote from Samson Raphael Hirsch:
· “It would be criminal of us to instill in our children a contempt for everything that is not specifically Jewish, for all other human arts and sciences, in the belief that such a negative attitude will safeguard them. Our children would begin to doubt all of Judaism, thinking that it could exist only in the night and darkness of ignorance.” (Collected Writings 7: 415-6).
· On the other hand, when the Reform and Conservative movements rose in strength in America, the Rabbis said NO, and it was the correct approach, and the frum world was better for just saying NO.
· Rav Moshe Feinstein said it was totally forbidden for Orthodox people to sit on boards with the Reform and Conservative.
· Rabbi Joseph Baer Soloveitchik said that if, on Rosh Hashana, the only place to hear a shofar is a Conservative synoagogue, it is totally prohibited to go there, and its essential rather to not hear shofar.
· Decisions are like art – we need to know where to draw the line
· The second case that might have relevance to the Yefat Toar is the Internet.
· This is a debate going on today in the frum world.
· Some say the only correct approach is to just say NO.
· But others claim that the internet is so powerful and pervasive, it is so necessary for work and research, that saying NO is just not an option.
· If that’s the case, then life with internet must be managed in order to reduce its pernicious possible intrusions and affects.
· In Mishpacha magazine Yonason Rosenblum once wrote:
· The spiritual ghetto walls have fallen. The World-Wide Web has made sure of that. Erecting secure barriers and impermeable walls seems increasingly futile. Since we can’t shut out all outside influences, we need a chinuch that vaccinates us against the temptations of an ever more intrusive world.
· May we have the wisdom the know when we have to say NO, and that is 99% of the cases that confronts our lives.
· And in the few cases where the negative forces are like a Tsunami that can’t be fought directly, let us have the wisdom to know how to reduce the negative influences by developing wise strategies.
· As we said, decisions are like art – it’s all in knowing where to draw the line.