The meaning of the name of this morning’s Sidra is when you go out. It continues with the subject of war, with the previous Sidra concluded. This is the reason why the Sidra begins in the middle of a chapter. The Christians, who divided the Bible into chapters, did not regard this law as the beginning of a new section. But our rabbis did regard it as a new section because the first law in the Sidra of KI TETZE touched on another concern altogether. It is not addressing the conduct of the war itself, but the standards of moral behaviour expected from every soldier taking part in the battle.
Our Sidra, which contains a record number of Commandments, is about the challenges which every human being faces in every single aspect of his life. The first three laws are about personal moral challenges. In ancient times, it was common, amongst pagans, to wage war by bringing women to the front line of the battlefield so as to distract and to tempt the male soldiers away from their military duty. The first law in today’s Sidra is concerned with a soldier who goes out to war and sees a woman prisoner whom he likes and wishes to marry. The Torah allows him to take that woman home, with the view of marrying her. The Torah makes a number of demands on him to allow her to grieve. It acknowledges that there are great dangers in taking her, because she belongs to a hostile nation and she is being separated from her family and country by force.
Why did the Torah allow this kind of immoral behaviour? Our ancient rabbis were surprised but answered that the Torah wanted him to be able to satisfy his evil instinct, rather than suppress it. It wanted him to find out for himself if he could go through with such a marriage. The Torah teaches us that sometimes we have to learn how to discipline ourselves. It does not want to tell us what to do all the time. It is up to us to choose the right path.
But the next two laws in the Sidra sound an alarm bell for any soldier who behaves in this disgraceful manner. It predicts that he will end up hating that woman causing tensions within his family. Even worse, he would end up having a most rebellious son, who will be so unruly that he would have to be taken to court and sentenced to death. A soldier who read this warning was surely put off completely from such an adventure. Later on in the Sidra, we read that the Almighty wants us to have a holy camp in which every soldier pays attention both to hygiene and to a high level of moral conduct.
In the second portion we come across the law which forbids a woman from putting on a man’s clothes and a man from wearing women’s clothes. The Torah calls this practice an abomination because the ancient Canaanites used to wear the clothes of the opposite sex, as part of their pagan rituals.
The word which the Torah uses for man’s clothes is K’LI. The word can also mean ‘a weapon’. On this basis, the Sages deduced the law that a woman should not walk about with weapons attached to her.
In modern times, this law has had significant impact. It is one of the reasons, but not the only reason, why religious women are not permitted to join the Israeli army, as part of the fighting units. Instead, they serve their country in another way. Rabbi Baruch Halevi Epstein of Pinsk, who lived in the 19th century, mentions in his commentary that once he heard that a great Rabbi, of a previous generation, saw his wife taking an axe to break up something in the house. He objected arguing that an axe was an instrument of war and, therefore, included in this prohibition. Rabbi Epstein questioned this ruling on two grounds. First, he did not think that an axe was an instrument of war because it was often used for gardening. Secondly, he held that the law was only that a woman was not allowed to go to war wearing weapons.
One of the most intriguing commandments in today’s Sidra is called KAN ZIPPOR, the law regarding The Bird’s Nest. The Torah says that if we see, as we walking along the road, a nest with a mother bird lying on her eggs or young chicks, we must let the bird fly away before we take the eggs or the young chicks, for our own use. The Torah does not give any reason for this law. Already in ancient times the Rabbi debated the reason for this commandment. According to one school of thought it has no reason and it is to be regarded as a divine decree which we have to obey. According to another school of thought it has a reason. The law is telling us not to take the eggs or the young chicks in the presence of the mother bird because the Almighty wants us to show compassion to birds and to all creatures. Even if they don’t possess feelings as we do, we must behave towards them as though they do have feelings, so that we ourselves do not become cruel. Rabbi Yosef Chayim Sonnenfeld, who was a great rabbinic figure, in Jerusalem, at the beginning of the 20th century, wrote: “The Torah obligates a hunter to send away the mother bird before taking the eggs. Usually, it is very difficult to trap a bird because it can fly away very quickly. But when it is sitting on its eggs, or young chicks, which she loves instinctively, she becomes vulnerable. The Torah forbids us from taking advantage of that vulnerability. It is completely unjust to exploit a bird’s feelings of compassion ”.
According to another interpretation the fundamental concept behind this law is that we are allowed to benefit from the natural environment only to a limited extent. We are allowed to take the eggs and the young chicks. But we must not assume control over the mother bird that has produced the meat that we want to eat. This is one of the Green Laws in the Torah. The Almighty wants us to protect nature and care for the welfare of all life in the amazingly wonderful world which He has created.