Deuteronomy 21:10 - 25:19
Précis: The parasha describes the creation of a just and moral society once the People enter the Land. This parasha, according to Maimonides, contains more commandments than any other - over 70 of the 613 contained in the Torah. Laws concerning battle, treatment of prisoners, the rights of first-born and dealing with disobedient children follow. The next section concerns care for corpses, restoration of lost property, and kindness to animals. A mixed assortment of commands, the source of many rabbinic rulings, include requirements that there be sex-distinct clothing; that mother birds not be separated from their eggs; that roof-tops have parapets; that seeds not be mixed in a field, and that “tzitzit” (fringes) be worn on garments. Laws related to marriage, adultery, maintaining the ritual purity of the camp, charging interest, vows, divorce, and justice to the widow, orphan, and stranger are listed. The parasha concludes with commands for the kind treatment of animals and Levirate marriage.
Deuteronomy 21:10 “When you take the field against your enemies, and the Eternal your God delivers them into your power and you take some of them captive . . .”
An interesting grammatical question is raised by the opening words of the parasha (Ki tetze lamilchamah - "When you [an Israelite warrior] go out to war"). The verb is in the singular form. We can assume that the wars envisioned in the parasha were not being fought by a single individual, but by an Israelite army. Why, then, is the commandment in the singular?
The Baal Shem Tov suggests that the Torah’s choice of the singular voice should be understood not to define the physical battlefield, but rather the inner struggle that every individual faces. We should read the parasha as referring to the ongoing personal war between our “evil inclination” (yetzer hara) and our “good inclination” (yetzer hatov).
This understanding of the text is appropriate during the month of Elul, as we prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Now is the time when we begin to take the measure of our lives, and to determine how often we have sought the “better angels” of our lives, and how frequently we have yielded ourselves to the temptations of the yetzer hara.
The parasha reminds us that this is a battle – and not merely a metaphoric one. It is a battle between good and evil, between morality and immorality, between care for others and self-absorption. It is a battle in which we need to be open to God’s promise of deliverance.
