I would like to thank Richard Tupper and Ellen and Alan for nagging me for a very long time to give a d'var Torah. I would especially like to thank Tupper for helping my vanity overcome my reluctance, when he told me about six weeks ago that I needed to give a d'var Torah so that it could be published in the book.
"Ki teze l'milchama al oyvecha." "When you go to war against your enemies." These are the words that begin our parsha. I'd like to take you back a chapter and a half, towards the end of last week's parsha, Shoftim. If you look at the beginning of chapter 20 (page 831 in the Hertz and page 1101 in the Etz Hayim) you see that we encounter the exact same five words there. "Ki teze l'michama al oyvecha." It seems to me that the repetition of this phrase provide bookends for us to understand not only how you go to war, but also how you return from war.
"Ki teze l'milchama al oyvecha" opens a discussion of what happens prior to commencing battle: who should not take part in the battle, the process for attempting to conquer a city peacefully, and finally, setting siege to a city. What is allowed in a siege and how the soldiers are supposed to treat the inhabitants and trees of the city complete chapter 20. "Ki teze l'milchama" speaks about how soldiers must behave as they engage in war.
Parshat Shoftim ends with the beginning of chapter 21, the case when one finds a dead body in a field. Why does the found corpse follow the discussion of war? What is the connection between these two situations?
About three quarters of the way into War and Peace (pages 915-916 in my copy, which is the Ann Dunnigan translation,) we get the following passage:
Pierre got out of his carriage and, walking past the toiling militiamen, climbed up onto the knoll from which the doctor had told him he could see the battlefield. . . . All that Pierre saw to the right and left of him was so indefinite that no part of the scene before his eyes satisfied his expectations. Nowhere was there a battlefield such as he had imagined, but only meadows, woods, glades, troops, the smoke of campfires, villages, knolls, and streams; try as he would, he could descry no military position in this landscape teeming with life, and could not even distinguish our troops from the enemy's.
What is the intrinsic difference between a field and a battlefield? There is no difference. By an accident of history, we come to know certain areas, be they fields, cities, or regions, because of what happens in them. How many of us would know the names Fallujah, Sadr City, Nazariah, Kandahar, or Mazar-i-Sharif were it not for the newsworthy events taking place in those cities? We know those names, not because they are intrinsically important or because they were destined to be famous, but because it turned out that things happened there. However, all famous cities are surrounded by other, more anonymous cities, and to return home from those famous cities, soldiers must pass through the anonymous areas. This is where our corpse in the field begins to make sense to me.
Who is it who finds this corpse? The Torah just says "Ki Yimatzeh" and doesn't tell us who it is who finds it. I believe that it is our returning soldiers. As our soldiers begin to return home from war, they must pass through fields. Our soldier or soldiers have passed out of the fields surrounding the warring city and are now in a no man's land that could have been one of the battlefields, but, by happenstance, was not. They find a corpse, a sight too familiar to warriors. This corpse is not in the context of war, but neither is it in a domestic setting. This is the midpoint of the soldiers' return. They are half-way between war and peace. From here they will continue into a more domestic setting.
Now we come to our parsha. In the middle of chapter 21, (page 840 in the Hertz and page 1112 in Etz Hayim) our parsha opens with our bookend phrase "Ki teze l'milchama al oyvecha." This time, however, we do not find a discussion of the ethics of war. Instead, it seems to me that we find a discussion of the life of a soldier who has just returned from war.
"Ki teze l'milchama al oyvecha, un'tano Hashem Elokecha byadcha vshavita shivyo." Our soldier takes captives and finds a woman he desires. Despite the guidelines for his behavior given in chapter 20, our soldier has, nevertheless, been in an environment where he does not need to control his impulses as strictly as he must when at home. Rashi says that the Torah allows the soldier to marry the captive woman because he would marry her whether he was allowed to or not! The Torah is allowing the expression of the man's yetzer harah because the reality is that he will follow his impulses anyhow. The Torah is concerned for the soul of our returning soldier. This acknowledgement that a man returning from war is likely to have difficulties following the strictures of polite society demonstrates an understanding of the psyche of a returning combatant and a desire to reintegrate him into society, even if that means changing society to a certain extent.
The text also understands that the attraction to the captive woman may be fleeting and that once the soldier has adjusted to being home, he may lose interest in her. He is not allowed to sell her or use her as a slave, however. In this way, the Torah does rein in some of what may be the soldier's improper impulses. He is not free to do whatever he pleases.
Rashi continues that if the soldier marries the captive, he will end up hating her, bringing us to the next topic in the parsha, the case of the two wives, one loved, and one hated. This issue evokes Rachel and Leah, as well as Penina and Chana, although in those cases the beloved wife was barren and the "hated" wife had children, and in this case both wives have children. Rashi assumes that it is the captive wife that the man will hate, probably because this discussion is immediately after the discussion of what you may not do if you grow disinterested in your captive wife. But I wonder whether it is the pre-war wife who becomes hated because she is less exotic than the new wife or perhaps jealous of her. Or perhaps it is the captive wife who becomes hated, when the man takes an even newer wife, in an attempt to find some solace. Whatever the case is, the dynamic of this family is not peaceful, and it makes sense that a returning soldier might face strife in his family life.
In the intensely gritty, disturbing, and vile HBO series Rome, a fictional soldier returns to his wife after not seeing her for seven years. He does not know how to speak to her and she fears him. His daughters can barely raise their heads around him, and they fear that he may kill them, which was allowed to Roman fathers. In short, the household is filled with discord upon his return. This type of situation was probably a very common one in the ancient world, and must still be common in military families. What the Israelite soldier has, however, that the other ancient and modern soldiers do not, is instructions from the Torah, guiding him in how he must behave towards his children (albeit, only in terms of their inheritance,) no matter what his inner turmoil or outer dysfunction is.
The next issue in chapter 21 features a son who does not listen to his parents or obey them. Now, this is not a "clean-up-your-room" or "finish-your-homework" type of disobedience. This is the rebellion that comes from a profoundly unhappy child whose parents cannot control him. To my reading, this is the type of disobedience that may come from living in a household with a father who has been to war, who hates at least one of his wives, and who might, if allowed, disinherit you. This ben sorer u'moreh is the result of a fractured society, or at least a fractured family, and if he is not dealt with, the entire society is likely to suffer. Our modern ears cringe at the punishment this boy receives: death. However, what I take from this situation is the idea that the Torah gives guidelines for what we should do when the dysfunction of a society has become so great that it ruins our children. Rather than wade around in uncertainty and further misbehavior, the family is instructed on exactly what they must do. And, of course, as we might expect, Hertz states, "The Rabbis tell us that this law was never once carried out . . . . It's presence in the Torah was merely to serve as a warning."
The final issue of chapter 21 involves a man who has been executed and how his body is to be treated with respect. At this point, if we are to continue with the narrative of our soldier, the worst has happened. He, or perhaps his erstwhile repentant son, has committed a sin worthy of death. Rashi indicates that this is what will happen to the ben sorer u'moreh if his parents do not take care of him. Yet, even though all has been lost, and there no longer exists any hope of a peaceful, domestic existence for this family, there are still guidelines for what must be done. "His body may not remain all night upon the tree, but you must surely bury it on that day."
From here the parsha moves on to thoroughly domestic issues: a wandering ox, proper apparel, birds, roofs, and mixtures of seeds, animals, or fabrics. The Torah has done what it could to provide for our soldier's return to civilian society. Now it turns to the details of that civilian society.
From wedding to marriage to children to death, the beginning of Ki Teze sketches a return to domesticity for our soldier. It is not a contented domesticity, in fact, it is one of increasing horror, but it is also one that is governed by boundaries and rules. Those boundaries and rules form an environment that at least has a chance of reintegrating a soldier into civilian society.
It seems to me that were we living in a society and under an administration that was truly concerned with what Scripture says, we would be able to discern it by this proof: the integration of our soldiers and their families back into civilian society would be a high priority.
Shabbat Shalom Lanu u'lchol HaOlam.
Go home.