Parashat Ki-Tetzeh begins with one of the most baffling mitzvot in the entire Torah – a concept called the אשת יפת תואר (literally, “the attractive woman”).
This law applied when Beneh Yisrael would go out to battle against an enemy nation, and they would take captives. If a soldier saw a captive woman and desired her, the Torah allows him to marry her, after he follows a certain procedure. He needs to take her home, have her cut her hair to make her less attractive, and let her cry for her family for one month. If he still desires her after that month, then he is permitted to marry her.
Rashi explains that clearly, the Torah does not want the solider to marry this non-Jewish woman. However, דברה תורה כנגד יצר הרע – the Torah presented this command to counter the yetzer ha’ra (evil inclination). If the Torah did not prescribe a method for permitting the woman, the soldier would likely take her in a forbidden manner. Therefore, the Torah presented the soldier with a permissible way to marry the woman he desires, so he would not take her illicitly.
We must wonder, is this really how it works?! Does the Torah provide a permissible way for eating pork, or cheeseburgers, for those who really want it? Why all of a sudden now, in the particular instance of a soldier who desires a woman captured during the battle, the Torah found it necessary to allow him to marry her so that he does not take her in a forbidden way?
The answer is an important one, and one which is ever so relevant for each and every one of us.
The prophet Yirmiyahu (8:6) criticizes the people for not regretting the sins they’ve committed: אין איש נחם על רעתו לאמר: מה עשיתי, כולו שב במרוצתם כסוס שוטף במלחמה – “There is no man who regrets his evil, saying, ‘What have I done?’ They all continue running, like a galloping horse in war.” This pasuk compares the people to a horse galloping out to battle, which doesn’t stop, and keeps running forward. The people were so “busy,” so frantic, always running, so they never stopped to think and ask themselves, מה עשיתי – whether they were doing the right thing, acting the right way.
This is so true about today’s world, as well. Everyone’s running, constantly. We have made ourselves what I call “thinkless” – we live without thinking. We don’t stop to think about why we do what we do, and why we don’t do what we don’t do.
This explains so much about people’s behavior. Why are there people who believe in Hashem and believe in the Torah but don’t make sure to pray every day, keep kosher, or observe Shabbat? Because they’re not thinking. Why are there people who had beautiful marriages but now speak disrespectfully and offensively to their spouse? Because they aren’t thinking. Why are there generally good people who occasionally say such insensitive or foolish things to others? Because they aren’t thinking.
Why did the Torah allow the soldier to marry the captive woman? Because he was placed in a situation of being כסוס שוטף במלחמה, like a horse on the battlefield. He is at war, and during war, a person can’t think. For a soldier at war it is especially difficult to stop and think. Soldiers are, almost by definition, thinkless. And so the Torah made an exception for them, finding a way to allow a soldier to marry a woman whom otherwise he would not be allowed to marry. He must bring her to his home for a month, during which time he will be able to think carefully about whether this is truly what he wants.
But too many of us are thinkless by choice. We turn ourselves into aסוס שוטף במלחמה , a horse frantically galloping to the battlefield. We fill our time with important things and not-so-important things, leaving us little, if any, time to think. And so we’ve become thinkless, to the point where we fail to ask ourselves מה עשיתי, whether we’re acting the right way and living the way we are supposed to live.
The month of Elul is the time for us to stop and think, to switch from being thinkless to thinkful. This is the time to pause, to stop our frantic race, to stop galloping, and to seriously and honestly challenge ourselves, to think about what we need to do differently. Let us take full advantage of this month to stop living “thinklessly,” and to instead live thoughtfully, making the right decisions and acting the right way.