Parashat Ki-Tetsei

Rav Haim Lifshitz

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Parashat Ki-Tetsei

      Authority and Ta’ava

 Translated from Hebrew by S. NAthan

l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai

Our Parasha continues to discuss the issue of authority from a new perspective – a human perspective.  Whereas authority is normally perceived as an attitude from a higher source, which possesses a status that enables it to coerce, and that there is no escaping a connection to brute force somewhere at the root of this authority, and that this root exists outside of a human being – a perception of authority as distance, of authority as arising from the gap that separates it from its subjects – the Torah on the other hand perceives authority as a central element within the human structure.

Awe and love do not contradict one another, but rather complement one another.  The patriarchal element, which is charged with protecting principles, values, and the boundaries that separate good and evil, and that determine frameworks, is the source for   the need for authority – not only respect for one’s fellow human beings, but also self-respect, that which protects and cultivates the image of God that is in man.  This is authority that a man cultivates from within himself.  From himself to himself.  The feeling of shame in the face of sin.  One cultivates reverence as an awareness of the quality of the self – as God’s representative on earth, as shluha derahmana, the “messenger of the Compassionate One”.  As an initiator and not merely an obeyer of orders – initiative as a partner, as an ally who identifies with the other side, who enjoys relations of reciprocity, on the basis of the self’s quality rather than on a basis of brute-force, which belongs to the mechanical system of survival.

Awe and reverence come before loving and identifying, because awe and reverence are at the very core of recognizing one’s own qualities, and another’s qualities, and what both have in common:  It is recognizing and identifying with the dimension of height – of the Godly absolute.  Recognition of quality stands in opposition to the senses’ tendency to be drawn – to be dragged – after stimulations from the outside, for recognition of quality grows and blossoms from the self, from the pnimiut which yearns to express itself, and to attach to its supreme source through identifying with it.  It moves from lower to higher rather than from outer, which is the territory of ego.

Authority does not fight with the senses or with the natural tendencies.  It ignores them.  It has no need of outer stimulation in order to act.  The dynamic vector that is created within it has its source in quality’s craving for perfection – the craving “of the part for the whole”, as the Ibn Ezra says. 

Indeed the inner authority constitutes a never-failing source of power: Of stability, of the capacity to withstand pressures.  The capacity of the hasidim to withstand the horrors of the holocaust has been widely proclaimed.  Trained to authority, they were educated to belong to a framework headed by the Rebbe, the admor, the spiritual leader who demanded nothing from his hasidim in the way of personal surrender or self-nullification but rather only recognition, reverence, and admiration for what the Rebbe represents.

This recognition is out of the choice and out of the inner initiative of the hasid, and not out of compulsion, which does not exist.  It is this authority, which grew from within, and which found its expression in dvaikut, attachment to a spiritual leader, that stood them in good stead under circumstances that no human being could have withstood on the basis of his own natural strengths.  Utterly unnatural was the power and the devotion that they had cultivated all their lives, and that they had practiced in relation to the group and to its leader, and mainly, in relation to the values that this framework of belonging represented in their eyes.  Such authority, which appears on the outside as submissiveness and weakness, as a belonging of dependency, is revealed in its full power, transcending beyond the human capacity to cope – specifically in times of distress.

“When you will go out to war against your enemies, and God your Lord will give him into your hands...”  Examining this pasuk, we find that the war ended in victory: “And God your Lord will give him into your hands.”  The Gemara in Masechet Kidushin comments(21):  “The Torah only spoke [permitting eshet yefat to’ar] because it was faced with yetser hara.”  Or HaHaim raises an astonished question: “…At the moment of the act of miracle!  At a point when one needs to increase purity and dvaikut to Hashem, it would permit doing an act of ugliness that is hated by Him Yitbarach?”

  Perhaps in the furious storm of battle the sensation of brute force is stimulated, which destroys everything good of quality and values, and eliminates all moral boundaries.  Therefore the Torah allowed the warrior the yefat to’ar and forbidden foods and other prohibitions.  He would transgress the prohibition in any case: Let him do it as a hetair lesha’a, a temporarily permitted act and not as mezid, a premeditated crime.

Here one must ask:  All well and good during the furious storm of battle.  To what purpose is the hetair, the exemption from prohibition extended?  Why does it continue to apply after the victory, after “God your Lord will give him into your hands”?  Logic would indicate that that it is now gratitude’s turn, that the time has come to return to God with renewed fervor, and not to extend further the confrontation with brute force.  After all, that’s all over now.

Yet this is not human nature.  Once one has awakened and loosed the sleeping dogs of brute force, as a response to danger, brute force arouses in full vigor, and it alone celebrates the victory, without differentiating, unaware that it is a victory of quality over quantity, of values over brute force.  Rather the reverse:  It is aware of victory on the plane of brute force between two forces that have confronted one another, that are utterly involved on the plane of brute force specifically. 

The victor shouts out in triumph, proud of his brute force powers.  He shakes off the reins, and breaks the boundaries that qualitative authority has imposed upon quantitative mechanism.  Arrogance, queen of the animal survival system, chases spiritual authority away in disgrace, and the hazards to spiritual health have only begun.

The Torah alerts us to this danger, and suggests – demands – self-control.  When a human being, a mortal, a flesh and blood creature is roused to desire, and weakness, and the risk of falling into the trap of sin, do not fight him.  Do not break a desire, a wish, or an inclination, because in breaking there are many pieces, more is the result, and quantitative increase is the father of brute force. 

Instead of using force against force, use a delaying strategy.  Waiting.  Restraint through control, by strengthening the mida of patience – strengthening the good mida.  Instead of rallying one’s emotional/physical resources against…rally them for…  For the strengthening of balanced judgment, of moderation, of widening one’s view to include also the dimension of height, to include also “consider the reward of sin against its loss”, to include also a view of the future, of the results.  For after all this same yefat to’ar will ultimately be the hated wife who produces the rotten fruit of ben sorer umoreh.

During the period of waiting, a space will be cleared in your heart for awareness of the self, for self-respect, and for authority, including the power that authority gives you – the ability to rise above yourself.  After all, authority’s source is in the Godly infinity, out of which elements your own inner authority has been cultivated.  Thus authority also grants powers to the one cultivating authority, and these powers prevail over the basic given components of the natural physical/emotional life force.

The connection Hazal make between the section dealing with the yefat to’ar and the section dealing with the hated wife and the section dealing with the deviant and rebellious son is no mystical connection but rather an organic connection holding its own internal dynamic vector:

“And she shall weep for her father and mother” is directed toward consideration for human feelings, toward focusing on the pnimiut of this externalized yefat to’ar, as a human person having feelings, having memories, bound in heart and soul to her past life.  This attention to the human dimension will very soon replace the external stimulation, just as it eliminates the externals from the agitated imagination, after a deeper acquaintance that reveals newer and more interesting aspects of the personality, its qualitative inner aspects.  For this reason, the yetser hara does not work on immediate relatives – despite the fact that the most stringent prohibition against incest applies to them specifically – in that the qualitative aspects of a man’s feelings for his mother and daughter push aside entirely any sensitivity to their external form.  A man is more attracted to to a woman’s external form the less he knows her.

As an introductory question we might wonder at the very fact of a heter for eshet yefat to’ar, even bedi’eved.  Being that both its beginning and its end are in wrongdoing and negligence, it is not appropriate that the Torah should have found a heter.  Apparently this woman expresses a fundamental dynamic vector in behavior patterns. 

The lust for woman is a double-edged sword.  In her elemental nature, woman constitutes a connecting factor.  She arouses and stimulates and attracts toward relating and connecting, since after all her basic reason began as “it is not good for man to be alone.”  Without her man feels isolated and detached, even from…the Divine.  He is cut from the umbilical cord from which he is meant to draw the vitality, the koah hame’orair, the “power that rouses” him to fulfill his role as the representative of the Divine in creation.

A woman’s role in a man’s life is to perseveringly protect and promote his ability to maintain a connection with his source.  Without her, a man sinks into the abyss of egoism, to the point that the sources from which he draws his sustenance become blocked.  Lust and desire exist in a man’s physical-emotional life force as pipelines for the flow to and from and with his Godly source – lust to attach to God.  This lust requires the stimulation of being aroused, as mentioned, by the woman. 

Hazal therefore define woman as playing a double role – both aiding in the service of God and interfering with it.  If a man has found his correct mate, for the sake of heaven, then woman –  by her very presence – arouses  the desire lidbok baHashem, to attach to God. 

In the section dealing with yefat to’ar, Hazal awaken us to the role of woman, and warn of the negative role she is capable of filling.  Employing the delaying tactics suggested by the Torah allows her to be turned in a positive direction, by one’s own awakening toward a higher direction.  We see here that the eshet yefat to’ar can fill an important role in the service of God, for one who so merits, in the sense of “from fierce has come forth sweet.”

Ben sorer umoreh, the deviant and rebellious son is the embodiment of absence of authority.  “He does not obey us.” 

“And his father had never saddened him in his life by saying, ‘why have you done so.’”  The navi (Melachim I, 1:5) discloses the cause of Adoniyah’s insolent rebelliousness against his father the king. 

An additional problem is resolved by this – the question of what the connection is between the opening of the chapter, “and the king David was old”, and the continuation which deals with the rebellion of Adoniah?  The connection, here as well, is authority’s need for ta’ava.  Ve’hamayvin yavin. 

“Should you happen across a bird’s nest.”  See Ramban’s discussion of the problem of reasons for the mitsvot and of the Gemara in Brachot 33: “ ‘The one who says ‘until a bird’s nest your mercies reach,’ should be silenced.’  And the mitsvot were not given except to purge people thereby.” 

It is not the bird who needs the mitsva of shiluah haken, sending away from the nest.  Rather the sender needs to educate himself in the mida of compassion, in the ability to identify with and to be considerate of the natural connection that exists between a mother and her progeny, “and the superiority of man over the beast is naught.” 

Similarly the obligation to educate for responsibility, in the mitsva of ma’akeh, the protective fence around a roof, and in the laws against prohibited mixtures, kilayim and shatnez, in agriculture and in textiles, in order to impenetrate and to deepen within one’s consciousness one’s own subjection to the authority of the law, even if the law does not appeal to one’s mind, heart, or imagination.

The Gemara in Brachot (19:A,B) discusses respect for the deceased.  The strictness of the halacha prohibiting exposing one’s tsitsit in a cemetery, because of la’ag larash, “mocking the deprived” – since the dead cannot enjoy the mitsva of tsitsit.  Skippping over graves out of respect for royalty.

Ignoring the requirement to return a lost object if one is old and it does not befit one’s dignity.  Like shiluah haken – reverence for human beings opposite reverence for heaven. 

In the Torah, a consistent heirarchy – a scale of values – exists.  All need reverence for heaven and draw their own value and reverence from this source.  When a conflict is created between reverence for the creatures and reverence for heaven, such as when shatnez is discovered in one’s own garment, no contradiction exists.  Quite simply the Gemara determines: “There is no counsel and no wisdom against God.”  All things are canceled in face of reverence for heaven.  Yet on the other hand, reverence for heaven obligates reverence for man.  And reverence for man, source of authority, obligates one first and foremost to reverence for oneself.

The discussion on the previous page of the Gemara as to whether the deceased can sense and be aware of what is done in the world is irrelevant, in that sensitivity to kvod habriot, reverence for one’s fellow creatures, begins with you.  Sensitivity to la’ag larash: Even if the deprived one does not feel it, you feel it.  We see here to what extent the Torah is sensitive to educating for personal sensitivity, even toward abstract others.

So too with the bird’s nest: Sensitivity to the profound connection between a mother and her progeny as a human principle, for yourself, man.

So too with the deviant son – sensitivity and strict care against coarseness of spirit, against the lack of sensitivity to others, sensitivity that is still yet in the realm of “being.”  “Let him die innocent and let him not die guilty” – in the realm of the qualitative pnimiut, though it will never reach the realm of “doing.”

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