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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