Ki Tetse
Parshat Hashavua - Ki Tetse - Rabbi Shimon Felix
The truth is, I was not going to write anything this week - not because I'm on vacation after the end of the summer Fellowship program (vacation? You must be kidding. Here at BYFI the work is never done and the lights never go out!), but rather because I was thinking about next week's parsha. I am planning to write an attack on Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm's thinking on imagined communities and the construction of national identity, and his general animus towards nations and nationalism, based on the beginning of Ki Tavo, which we read next week. But while thinking about that, I realized that something in this week's portion also has a lot to say about someone who still, remarkably, calls himself a Marxist, and who apparently once said, in an interview with Michael Ignatieff, that 20 million deaths (more or less what Stalin was guilty of) would have been worth it had it led to the creation of a Utopian society. So here goes.
Parshat Ki Tetse begins with a somewhat strange commandment, called the law of the pretty woman. It goes like this: If, in the course of a war, the Jews win, and a Jewish soldier wants to take one of the enemy women (a "pretty woman", in his eyes at least) as a captive , the Torah demands that he first let her have a month to mourn her family, and only then can he take her as a wife. The traditional understanding is that the Torah would actually have preferred to simply prohibit the taking of women as spoils of war, but, realizing the futility of that, instead tries to prevent it - maybe our soldier will be put off by a month of her mourning (which includes her shaving her head and other unattractive behavior) and forget the whole thing. Failing that, the Torah hopes to humanize her ordeal - she is given the space to make a transition to what is, after all, a marriage, rather than the rape which usually takes place in these circumstances (not when the conquering army belongs to the modern State of Israel, but that's another story, which you can ask me about). The question is, why didn't the Torah do what it really thinks is right, and simply prohibit the soldier from taking the pretty woman? Why does it compromise, by trying to make this union difficult to consummate, rather than just forbidding it?
Rashi (France, 11th century) has an answer: The Torah allows the soldier to take the captive woman because of the evil inclination, for if God had not permitted him to marry her in this way, he would have simply taken her illegally. This is a remarkable admission of weakness by the Torah! Here we have God, in the Torah, constantly telling us how to live, what to eat and what to refrain from eating, who to marry and who to not, what is right and what is wrong, on just about every imaginable topic, and yet, according to this Rabbinic understanding, in this case, He feels unable to really demand what He knows to be absolutely right. In a perfect world, God would simply tell people to leave the women of the defeated enemy nation alone. However, He understands that people have an "evil inclination", and even if it's God Himself telling them how to behave, they sometimes will not listen. So he compromises, and comes up with this roundabout way to hopefully prevent, or at least humanize, this undesirable marriage. Not perfect, but better than nothing, and a step in the right direction.
This humility on the Torah's part, this profound understanding of and respect for the autonomy of each human being, and of the need to recognize and respect that autonomy, and the acknowledgement of the concomitant impossibility - actually, the undesirability - of trying to legislate a perfect world, is remarkable. The Torah is not trying - here or anywhere else - to create a perfect society. The Torah recognizes the fallibility and individuality of all of us - our "evil inclination", and knows that a social or legal system, even a divinely given one, must take these weaknesses into account, and leave room for our humanity, our needs, drives, and desires. The Torah knows that it can not simply prohibit bad behavior, or demand good - people will not listen, and it is people we are talking to. Rather, the Torah tries, and we must continue to try, to make the world a better place within the limitations of an imperfect human nature; to do otherwise, and to try to legislate perfection, would be to deny, and ultimately destroy, the humanity of the people for whom we are ostensibly trying to create this perfect world. That is precisely what happened in the Marxist states created in the 20th century, with the ridiculous, and ultimately destructive and inhuman goal of engineering a perfectly planned, perfectly just, perfectly fair, society.
There are many other examples of the Torah's humility, its respect for the humanity, autonomy, and will of the individual. Just last week, in Parshat Shoftim (Judges), the Torah told us, three times, that, as years and generations go by, and we want justice, we will have to "go to the judges who will be serving in those days". This phrase, "the judges who will be serving in those days", is understood to mean that the Torah knows that, in the future, we will not be going to Moses for judgement, but, rather, to some guy who lives around the corner, who went to school with us, and who, perhaps, we know is not so clever. And yet, the Torah emphasizes: those will be the only judges you have, they are the ones you will have to go to, and their judgement must be respected as you would respect that of Moses, because the Torah was given to human beings, to keep as well as they can, as fallible, full of lust, desire, and just plain silliness as they may be.These judges of the future (as well as the people they will be judging), may not be the material you want if you are building a Utopia, but that's the only material we have, and, anyway, a Utopia is not what we are looking for.
Perhaps the ultimate expression of Judaism's cynicism about Utopias, and its profound understanding and acceptance of how imperfect - and immutable - human nature is, is this: In his Laws of Kings, Maimonides (Spain, North Africa, 1135-1204), basing himself on material from the Talmud, says the following: "Do not think for a moment that in the days of the Messiah any of the ways of the world will be undone, or that there will be some new thing in the nature of Creation. Rather, the world will go on in its usual way." Maimonides then goes on to explain that this world will be peaceful, and just, and bountiful, and better than it is today, but he tells us all that only after he has insisted that it will retain its essential humanity. This, a better world - not a perfect one, but a human one - is what the Torah attempts to legislate and teach towards, and what Judaism understands as its goal.
Shabbat Shalom,
Shimon
Parshat Hashavua - Ki Tetse - Rabbi Shimon Felix
When I was a kid, back in the sixties, there were two great, popular, anarchistic, anti-capitalist slogans: "Steal This Book", the title of a work by Abbie Hoffman which, not surprisingly, didn't sell so well, and the subject of this e mail: "Property is Theft". Coined (if you'll pardon the expression) by French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1840 (thank you, Wikipedia), in the sixties we understood it as a protest against the very notion of ownership, its inherent and historical inequalities and excesses. I remember it often being conflated with what we believed to be a Native American idea that land can not be owned by anyone (True? A legend? Anybody know?).
I am engaging in this bout of hippie-wanna-be nostalgia (I was a bit too young and way too Orthodox to really be a hippie) not because of the 40th anniversary of Woodstock (no, I didn't go, it's a short, sad story: I was a waiter in an Orthodox summer camp, not far from Woodstock, actually, and we had arranged to go to the festival as our official waiters' outing for the summer (pretty clever, huh?), until the powers that be figured it out (drugs, sex, rock and roll) and locked the camp down for the weekend. Three of us (not me) snuck out and went, and they've never been the same), but because of a few verses in Ki Tetse, this week's parsha: "If you enter your neighbor's vineyard, you may eat all the grapes you want, but do not put any in your basket. If you enter your neighbor's grain field, you may pick kernels with your hands, but you must not put a sickle to his standing grain."
Now, read in a straightforward manner, the Torah is clearly saying that when walking through someone's field we are allowed, within reason (don't fill your basket with the stuff, or harvest his whole field), to eat from the crops growing there. The message seems clear - property is theft, the land and its produce belong to everyone, the "owner" of the field doesn't really own its fruit, anyone can just come and take it. In other words, Steal This Fruit! Now, you could argue that, once again, I've gone too far, and that, by limiting how much the passer-by can take to essentially only what he can eat right then and there, the Torah is actually affirming the owner's ultimate claim to the field and its produce, and you would be right. However, the right of every passing stranger to at least some of field's fruit does limit the extent of ownership, and should make us pause, and rethink, perhaps, what we believe about property, and theft, and how we are all meant to share the earth and its bounty, rather than hoard it for ourselves.
The fact is, however, that the Talmud rejects this reading, as clear and direct as it would seem to be, and decides that the verses only refer to someone who is working for the owner, in his fields, and not to anyone else: simple passersby have no right to take fruit from someone else's field. As the Talmudic discussion goes: "'Issi ben Yehuda says: "If you enter your neighbor's vineyard..." the verse is talking about anyone who comes into it'. And Rav says: 'Issi has left people with no way to live!'" (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Matzia, 92a). In other words, ownership, and its attendant rights, makes possible the social order needed to guarantee an orderly distribution of food, perhaps not the fairest, most equitable distribution, but one that enables just about all of us to eat. Allow anyone to just grab what they want, Rav says to Issi, and we will have chaos, anarchy, and no one will eat. The verse is therefore understood as only referring to agricultural workers, the idea being that it is mean to make people work around food and prevent them from eating (my son Sruli, who has a wedding band, is really ticked off when the band isn't given food from the wedding and the opportunity to eat it, and is usually sure to include this arrangement in the contract). But the simple reading, giving everyone a basic right to take some food as they walk through another's property, is rejected: what's mine is mine, and you can't have it.
So, the Rabbis read these verses not as a challenge to ownership (even if only a somewhat limited one), which would give everyone some claim on other people's 'property', but, rather, as a simple, reasonable kindness which the landowner should show his workers (this dvar Torah would have made more sense next week, erev Labor Day, but that's not a Jewish holiday, is it?). With this reading, they opt for an orderly, capitalist society, in which property is respected and ownership affirmed, but in which, at the same time, the Torah demands that ownership be enlightened, thoughtful, and sensitive, and that we do have to share what is ours, when necessary, with those who have some particular claim to it, like the field worker. However, we need not go beyond that, and subvert the rights of ownership, as that would be dangerously anarchic. I gotta tell you, hippie or not, I am a little disappointed. Are you?
Shabbat Shalom,
I am engaging in this bout of hippie-wanna-be nostalgia (I was a bit too young and way too Orthodox to really be a hippie) not because of the 40th anniversary of Woodstock (no, I didn't go, it's a short, sad story: I was a waiter in an Orthodox summer camp, not far from Woodstock, actually, and we had arranged to go to the festival as our official waiters' outing for the summer (pretty clever, huh?), until the powers that be figured it out (drugs, sex, rock and roll) and locked the camp down for the weekend. Three of us (not me) snuck out and went, and they've never been the same), but because of a few verses in Ki Tetse, this week's parsha: "If you enter your neighbor's vineyard, you may eat all the grapes you want, but do not put any in your basket. If you enter your neighbor's grain field, you may pick kernels with your hands, but you must not put a sickle to his standing grain."
Now, read in a straightforward manner, the Torah is clearly saying that when walking through someone's field we are allowed, within reason (don't fill your basket with the stuff, or harvest his whole field), to eat from the crops growing there. The message seems clear - property is theft, the land and its produce belong to everyone, the "owner" of the field doesn't really own its fruit, anyone can just come and take it. In other words, Steal This Fruit! Now, you could argue that, once again, I've gone too far, and that, by limiting how much the passer-by can take to essentially only what he can eat right then and there, the Torah is actually affirming the owner's ultimate claim to the field and its produce, and you would be right. However, the right of every passing stranger to at least some of field's fruit does limit the extent of ownership, and should make us pause, and rethink, perhaps, what we believe about property, and theft, and how we are all meant to share the earth and its bounty, rather than hoard it for ourselves.
The fact is, however, that the Talmud rejects this reading, as clear and direct as it would seem to be, and decides that the verses only refer to someone who is working for the owner, in his fields, and not to anyone else: simple passersby have no right to take fruit from someone else's field. As the Talmudic discussion goes: "'Issi ben Yehuda says: "If you enter your neighbor's vineyard..." the verse is talking about anyone who comes into it'. And Rav says: 'Issi has left people with no way to live!'" (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Matzia, 92a). In other words, ownership, and its attendant rights, makes possible the social order needed to guarantee an orderly distribution of food, perhaps not the fairest, most equitable distribution, but one that enables just about all of us to eat. Allow anyone to just grab what they want, Rav says to Issi, and we will have chaos, anarchy, and no one will eat. The verse is therefore understood as only referring to agricultural workers, the idea being that it is mean to make people work around food and prevent them from eating (my son Sruli, who has a wedding band, is really ticked off when the band isn't given food from the wedding and the opportunity to eat it, and is usually sure to include this arrangement in the contract). But the simple reading, giving everyone a basic right to take some food as they walk through another's property, is rejected: what's mine is mine, and you can't have it.
So, the Rabbis read these verses not as a challenge to ownership (even if only a somewhat limited one), which would give everyone some claim on other people's 'property', but, rather, as a simple, reasonable kindness which the landowner should show his workers (this dvar Torah would have made more sense next week, erev Labor Day, but that's not a Jewish holiday, is it?). With this reading, they opt for an orderly, capitalist society, in which property is respected and ownership affirmed, but in which, at the same time, the Torah demands that ownership be enlightened, thoughtful, and sensitive, and that we do have to share what is ours, when necessary, with those who have some particular claim to it, like the field worker. However, we need not go beyond that, and subvert the rights of ownership, as that would be dangerously anarchic. I gotta tell you, hippie or not, I am a little disappointed. Are you?
Shabbat Shalom,
Parshat Hashavua - Ki Tetse - Rabbi Shimon Felix
This week's parsha - Ki Tetse - begins with a fascinating law, known as the Law of the Pretty Woman. The Torah says: "When you go out to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God gives them into your hands, and you will take captives. And you see among the captives a pretty woman, and you desire her, and take her for a wife. And you shall take her into your house, and she shall shave her head, and let her fingernails grow. And she shall remove the clothing of her captivity from herself and sit in your house and weep for her father and her mother a month of days, and afterwards you may have intercourse with her and she will be yours for a wife. And if it shall come to pass that you do not desire her, send her on her way; but sell, you shall surely not sell her for money, do not deal unfairly with her, since you have afflicted her."
I'd like to focus on the weeping and mourning which the woman is allowed/instructed to do for her father and mother. Traditionally, there are two basic, not necessarily contradictory, explanations for this. The first is simply that this is a humane gesture to the captive; she is given time to mourn her family and begin to come to terms with her new life with the Jewish people. Additionally, the Rabbis believe that, although the Torah does give in to the 'evil inclination' of the Jewish soldiers and permits them to take women captives as wives, it really prefers that this not happen. Therefore, the Torah mandates these mourning customs, which are actually designed to make the girl unattractive to her Jewish captor and convince him to forget the whole thing, not marry her, and let her go. Her sitting in his house, crying, with a shaven head, no manicure, dressed in mourning, for a month, is meant to present a not-so-pretty picture, and, hopefully, the soldier will no longer find her so desirable and will set her free.
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Parshat Hashavua - Ki Tetse - Rabbi Shimon Felix
Hello, all. It's been a while since I was able to write to you about a portion of the – this summer program that I work for got in the way. It was, in fact, a wonderful BYFI summer; shortly you should be getting an e-update which will tell you all about it, along with lots of other interesting stuff, so let's go to the parsha!
The parsha, called Ki Tetse - When you go out (to war) - is full of a very wide range of laws. One of them is rarely practiced today - the law of sending away the mother bird. The Torah says: "When you happen upon a bird's nest before you on the road, in any tree, or on the ground, chicks or eggs, and the mother is sitting on the chicks or the eggs; do not take the mother with the children. Surely you shall send the mother away, and the children you shall take for yourself, in order that it may go well with you and you will prolong your days."
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Parshat HaShavua-Ki Tetse- Rabbi Shimon Felix
This week's portion, Ki Tetse, begins with a section known as the parsha of the yefat toar - the good looking woman. It is one of the more morally challenging of all the laws of the Torah. This is what the Bible says:
"When you go out to war against your enemy and the Lord your God gives him into your hand and you capture his captives. And you see in captivity a good looking woman and you desire her and you will take her to be your wife. And you shall take her into your home, and she shall shave her head and do her fingernails. And she will remove the dress of her captivity from herself and sit in your home and weep for her father and her mother for a month of days, and afterwards you shall come to her and have intercourse with her and she shall be to you a wife. And it shall be that if you do not desire her you shall send her free and not sell her for money, do not abuse her, since you have humbled her."
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Parshat HaShavua-Ki Tetse-Rabbi Shimon Felix
One of the most difficult and troubling of all the laws in the Torah appears in this week's parsha - the law of the 'ben sorer u'moreh' - the wayward and rebellious son.
This is what it says in the 21st chapter of Deuteronomy:
"When a man has a son who is wayward and rebellious, who does not listen to the voice of his father and the voice of his mother, and they warn him, but he does not listen to them. His father and mother shall seize him and bring him to the elders of his town, to the gate of his place. Then they are to say to the elders of his town: 'This son of ours is wayward and rebellious, he does not listen to our voice, he is a glutton and a drunkard.' Then all the men of the town are to stone him, so that dies. So shall you burn out the evil from your midst, and all of Israel shall hear and be in awe."
The punishment of death for a son who has apparently committed no real crime, other than failing to listen to his parents and having eaten and drunk too much, is strange. The rabbis sensed this, of course, and explain that, uniquely, the ben sorer u'moreh is not killed for what he has done, but for what the Torah knows he will do; his current behavior clearly indicates to us that he will end up as a thief and killer. Better he should die now, before he commits capital crimes, than allow him to live and cause others to suffer.
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