Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, my friends, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Practical Parsha Podcast. This is Rabbi Shlomo Cohen and I hope you are well.
[00:00:08] For this week we're continuing with Parshas Kitsaytse. It's a jam packed parsha and in fact, Parshas Kitzeitze has the most mitzvos of any of the parshios of the Torah, and we're going to jump right into it. But before we do, as always, if you have any questions, comments, would like to say hello, introduce yourself, send me an email at Rabbi Shlomokon kohnil.com I'd love to hear from you just to give a quick overview of some of the highlights of this week's parasha, because there's so much to talk about, so many mitzvos.
[00:00:49] So Moshe Rabbeinu is continuing his speech, as we've said, said in the past weeks. But the Parasha begins with this mitzvah of Yiphas Toar, the woman of beautiful form, which we're going to get into a little bit, you know, in the podcast, explain this fascinating mitzvah and what we can take out of it.
[00:01:09] The Parasha continues with the commandment of the firstborn, that he has this right to a double portion, as well as the Ben Sorare Umorer, the wayward and rebellious son, of how he is to be dealt with.
[00:01:24] The Parsha gives us mitzvahs on how to deal with the property of another person, as well as a special mitzvah of Shiluachan, of sending away the mother bird. It's one of the chukim, it's one of the mitzvahs that we do not understand. The reason we do it because Hashem told us to do it. We have the mitzvah of Tzitzis.
[00:01:44] We have the prohibitions against adultery, the different forbidden and restricted marriages, and generally there's a lot of concepts about the sanctity of the Jewish people. The parasha continues with the prohibition against taking interest as general concepts on vows to Hashem, making vows. And we have as well a worker's right to eat, that when a worker is working in a field, um, he has the ability to eat in certain circumstances, he can't be held back.
[00:02:18] Additionally, there's a prohibition against kidnapping, keeping the dignity of a debtor, that if someone owes money, there's certain, you know, there's only what you can collect from him. You cannot take certain things even though he owes you money. There's the commandment in this week's parasha about paying your worker in a timely fashion to pay on time.
[00:02:36] And we have general considerations for the orphan and for the widow to be extra considerate and kind to them as well.
[00:02:46] The parasha finishes with the mitzvah of gifts to the poor, the mitzvah of Yibum, that if a man passes away without children, the brother comes and either has to marry his sister in law or he has to perform halitsa, which releases her to marry another man.
[00:03:04] Finally, the parasha concludes with having honest weights and measures and remembering what the nation of Amalek, the Amalek, did to the Jewish people.
[00:03:15] The first idea I want to share with you today takes us to the beginning of the Parsha, to the mitzvah of the Yifas Torah.
[00:03:23] Now, the mitzvah of Yifas Torah is a fascinating mitzvah. The Parsha begins by telling us that when the Jewish people go to war and they're in battle, in the heat of battle, and they see a woman who they desire, the Torah gives, um, specific instructions to that soldier that if, um, his evil inclination is yetzer hara or he desires this woman, the Torah allows him to take her back to his house to go through a process of, you know, he has to, you know, he takes these clothings that she was wearing. They used to dress. The Gentile nations would dress their daughters in fancy clothings during times of war to entice the warriors. So he changes her at his fancy clothing to regular clothing. He cuts her hair, he lets her nails grow long, she cries for her father and mother.
[00:04:24] And after a certain amount of time and this process, he has the ability to marry this woman and she converts to Judaism and he can marry her if she would like. And if she doesn't, and if he doesn't want to marry her, he has to send her back to her people.
[00:04:42] And really the Torah is hoping that this soldier that during the heat of battle, when, you know, it's known that war creates, brings out, I guess, the worst in people at times.
[00:04:55] Uh, hopefully that moment where he had this desire, this urge for this woman will subside and reality will set in his intellect, his thought process will get the better of him and he won't just give in to his desire and hopefully he'll send her back. And in fact, the Torah, the Commentary has explained to us that, uh, the juxtaposition of the next two mitzvahs of the Torah that goes from Yephas Torah, this woman of beautiful form, that she has to go through this process to Marry. And that if he goes through this process, the next commandment of the Torah talks about the firstborn, the firstborn's right, that even if a man has, uh, two wives, uh, a loved wife and a hated wife, and the firstborn is from the hated wife, he has to. He can't, you know, take away that firstborn, right, from that child that's from the hated wife. He has to give it to her. And then the parsha continues with the wayward and rebellious son. And the commenters explain that, you know, if he goes through with this, it's not going to lead to anything good. It'll end up that he's going to hate her, right? That's the hated wife. And will end up that the child will become the wayward and rebellious son. But the point is, so we see very clearly that the Torah encourages him to not give in to those urges, not give in to those sensations, and to make the better decision, send her back and not harm her. But there's a very fascinating concept here to be discussed about this whole mitzvah, uh, this whole process of this woman of beautiful form. The Jewish nation, when they went to battle, they had the army, they would go fight. And now they're sort of letting the soldier bring back this woman, it seems like for his own pleasure, right? Or to marry her, right?
[00:06:47] What's going on over here? And Rashi explains that that God only gave the Torah equal to the evil inclination, meaning to say is that God doesn't put us in a situation that we can't overcome.
[00:07:10] So therefore, if a person is going to war and this woman is there and he's desiring her, we're not going to hold him back from a situation. We're not going to say, you can't do anything here, you can't bring her back, because if we don't permit it to him, he's going to do it anyways. So therefore, the Torah is a process for a person to bring this woman back into his house to marry her again. We're hoping that he is going to send her back. But there's this concept of loy dibra Torah, Eleknegid yetzehara that Hashem only gave the Torah Kenegad that it's opposite the yetzer hara, meaning he only gave it to us in a situation that we could overcome it. He's not going to set us up for failure. He's not going to put us in a situation that we can't overcome, that we can't make the right decision. So in this situation, in the heat of battle, where there's passions are raging and there's adrenaline flowing and there's people almost are, uh, could lose control of their emotions, lose control of their actions. So therefore the Torah is not going to put you in a situation where you might come to do it anyways. A person, if it's not given in a permissible way.
[00:08:21] And really the question that I'm trying to get to here is if we know, if you look into the Torah, parshios, the Torah portions last week, um, we see very clearly who makes up the Jewish army, who are the soldiers that are part of this fighting force. And uh, the Torah tells us very clearly that if anybody had any, you know, sins, right, somebody who was scared, the Rakh Levav in last week's Parasha, we see that the Cohen Gadl who would make the announcement to go to war, the high priest, when he would make this announcement to gather the people, there's a lot of exemptions for the army. Someone who just got married, someone who just built a new house. And one of the exemptions is someone who is fearful. You know, Yarev Verakh Levov. He is fearful and uh, soft hearted. And the commentaries explain that. What does it mean, fearful?
[00:09:13] Who's this fearful person? It means that he's fearful because of his sins.
[00:09:18] And the sin that could be enough to disqualify somebody from um, serving uh, in the army is even speaking during prayer. One of the parts of prayer, it's like a small sin like that. So you could just imagine for a second that the people who are fighting, who made it through this process, they weren't, you know, rabble rousers, they were righteous individuals. They were people of uh, very high esteem. They were very, you know, exalted people. And now we're, you know. And now in this week's Parasha, when we're talking about going to war, we're talking about right away about this, that this righteous, this righteous guy who we just talked about last week's Parasha, who has no sins, he's going to go to war now and all of a sudden, a second later, he's going to see a woman who he desires. And he's going to want to, you know, he's going to want to bring him, bring her back home to him. Like what's going on over here? We were just talking about the most righteous person that doesn't even have the smallest sin.
[00:10:17] And the idea that uh, it's brought down I think is a very powerful idea for Us, which really ties into a story that I heard this week, is that nobody is, I guess, exempted from the evil inclination from the yetzer hara.
[00:10:35] And in fact, the bigger a person is, the bigger, uh, the scholar.
[00:10:41] The more righteous a person is, the bigger his or her yetzer hara is, the bigger his inclination, his evil inclination will be right, because it goes together.
[00:10:54] As great as a person can be. So too, on the flip side is the pull towards doing bad and to doing, you know, things that are not so good.
[00:11:05] And I think the important idea that we could take out of this is that as far as we may come and as far as we go and as much as we grow and as high as we get, we get closer to hashem on the higher level and higher level, we always have to be on guard for our yetzer hara. And even all the more so, uh, the greater that we become, the closer to hashem that we get, we have to guard ourselves even more.
[00:11:31] Because as long as we're living on this earth, as long as our heart is beating, the yetzer hara, the evil inclination, is trying to pull us to do bad, to do evil. And it's our job, as long as we're living, to fight against that, to be on guard for all his different machinations, all his different, you know, schemes to try to get us.
[00:11:54] And that's the lesson of this week's parsha, because even though we're talking about the most righteous people, in a second, the yetzer hara could make a situation, could put us in a place where we might be overcome by our passions and make the wrong decision, God forbid. And that's the lesson here. The juxtaposition from last week where we're talking about the most righteous people, the greatest people of the generation, where they don't have the smallest sin, to this week's parsha, where, you know, they're seeing these women in battle and desiring them.
[00:12:26] Because anybody, anybody who's living, no matter how great you are, can be prey to the yetzer hara. And the key is knowing that, because as long as we know that he's coming to try to trick us, to try to get us, the yetzah hara, the evinclination, so we know we could watch out for him. But the second we think we're too great, we're not at risk. We're not at fault for these type of sins, even though they might seem so removed from. From us. So then we're toast. We're done. I heard a story this week. I know somebody who works In a nursing home, and in the nursing home they have different departments.
[00:13:05] And this fellow, he had to take care of a task with one of the department heads, the housekeeping department head.
[00:13:15] And he went together with this woman to look at the storage room. There was a storage room that had to be looked at together, just him and her.
[00:13:26] And this fellow's friend, I know he went to this room with her, with this woman. And in most buildings, there's a lot of times there's self closers on doors. That means when a door opens, it closes automatically.
[00:13:43] And this door specifically in this room, which didn't have any windows and people were not coming in and out, there was a lock on the door. That means if they both would go into the room, the door would close and they would both be secluded in this room together.
[00:13:58] So this fellow, when he went into the room, this woman, the housekeeping department head, went in first.
[00:14:06] And being that he didn't want to be secluded in the room with her in a locked room, he stood in the doorway looking for something just to block the door that it should be ajar. He found a piece of wood.
[00:14:22] She didn't even notice what he was doing.
[00:14:25] They completed a task that needed to be done, and that was that. When they were about to leave the room, she said, let me get my staff for a moment. She went, got her staff and, uh, told them, do you guys remember last week when I was speaking to you about this room?
[00:14:41] And I said there was. And I was telling you that there was two workers, a male and a female, they were both working in that room together by themselves. And I said that this fellow, let's call him Chaim.
[00:14:55] And I said, chaim would never go into a room by himself with a woman.
[00:15:02] And she turns to her staff and says, it just happened right now. I had to go into this room with him. And he made sure that something was blocking the door. Meaning to say is she saw Chaim, and she recognized him as someone who was observant, someone who lives according to the ideals of the Torah. And she recognized on her own that he would never go into a room by himself, into a locked room with a woman that's not his wife, not his family.
[00:15:40] And when the situation came, Hashem, uh, brought about this situation that he was able to make a kiddush Hashem. He was able to sanctify God's name by following the halachah. Because there's halacha, there's Jewish law, it's forbidden for a man to be secluded with a woman who's not his family. And there's obviously different qualifications for this halachah. But because he was scrupulous in this halacha, he was able to sanctify the name of Hashem that this non Jewish woman that a week before, when she told her staff, she used him as an example to show her employees of somebody who would never do that, to be secluded with a woman in a locker room. And she used him as an example that you shouldn't do that. It's not something you should be doing.
[00:16:24] And it happened. It happened to her in that exact same room. And he was able to be Mekad Hashem Shemaim. He was able to sanctify the name of Hashem. And I think this is very important just to remember that we're all at risk of being, uh, targeted by the Yetzer Hara. And I think we see it in this week's Parasha very clearly that even the tzadikim, the righteous ones, had to, you know, it's talking to them, it's talking to them, and they have to be careful, and everyone has to be careful from all these schemes and plans of the Yetzer Hara. Second idea I want to share with you today takes us to the mitzvah that the Torah tells in this week's Parasha that a person is not allowed to take his donkey and his ox and put them together in a harness to plow together.
[00:17:14] Additionally, another mitzvah in this week's Parsha is that if a person has a worker and he's working in the field, he's picking grapes, he's picking apples, you can't hold him back. You can't hold him back from eating while he's doing his work. You have to let him eat.
[00:17:32] So, you know, interesting. What are these two mitzvahs about?
[00:17:36] What's the idea behind them? Can we get something out of them practically for ourselves?
[00:17:42] And I saw.
[00:17:43] I heard a beautiful explanation from a fellow who I met, um, in the synagogue actually earlier today.
[00:17:52] And he said a beautiful story. He said that Ravshach, who was one of the leaders of Jewry in Israel, he's really one of the leaders of world Jewry. He passed away probably 30 years ago. 25, 30 years ago. He, towards the end of his life, he couldn't see well.
[00:18:09] And they wanted to take him to a specialist who lived in Jerusalem.
[00:18:14] And there were people trying to arrange the appointment, but he was resistant to going to this specialist, even though he couldn't see well. So they asked him, why are you being Resistant. Why don't you want to go? So he said, if I go to Jerusalem for this specialist, my wife's going to ask me where I'm going, and I'm going to tell her that I'm going to this specialist to help my eyes. And she's going to feel bad because she was blind, she couldn't see, and she's going to have this feeling in her cells that, you know, I can't see. He was so, you know, concerned about his wife feeling that way, that he was even willing to forego his own vision just to not make his wife feel bad. You know, it's a certain level, uh, it's a tremendous level. And finally the end of the story ended that he was able to go to Jerusalem for another reason. And once he was there, he was able to, you know, have an appointment. He didn't want to. He had a reason to go to Jerusalem for something else. And therefore he wouldn't be in a situation where he would have to, you know, he wouldn't lie, God forbid. He would only say the truth. So he went to Jerusalem for something else. And they worked it out that while he was there, he was able to see that doctor. But the point was, is that he didn't want to say something to his wife to cause her pain.
[00:19:28] So one of the explanations I heard from this, uh, Hamid Chacham, from this Torah, uh, scholar who I met, he said that when the Torah gives us this prohibition, one of the reasons that are brought down for this prohibition of putting a ox and a donkey together is that an ox is an animal that chews its cud, so it always looks like it's eating.
[00:19:50] And a donkey is an animal as well that doesn't chew its cuddle.
[00:19:58] And a donkey is an animal that does not chew its cud. So for a donkey to be with an ox that always looks like it's eating causes the donkey pain, that it can't, you know, it's not eating. So therefore, the Torah puts a prohibition to put the donkey and the ox together, to plow together with them. And similarly, we see by a worker that if a worker is working, you can't make them do work when the fruits are right there. You have to let them eat.
[00:20:24] But what do we see here? The tremendous sensitivity that the Torah has for people, and, uh, the sensitivity it has for animals is not necessarily for the animals. It's so that we should learn to have that sensitivity that when we think about, we need to think in a way to be sensitive for the animals. So we will become sensitive. It's sort of different in the way that people portray some, you know, giving pain to animals. The Torah forbids giving pain to animals, but it's not necessarily for the animal. It's for us. It's so that we should not become cruel people. We should not become, you know, um, not caring.
[00:21:04] We need to have the sensitivity to others, to all, even to the nth degree, to think things through that, you know, and that's what really the Torah is telling us here. It's not just thinking, you know, what's right in front of our face, but to think a few steps ahead, which is really. That's what signifies in the. In the donkey and the ox together. Because we're thinking so far ahead about the sensitivities for others that even for the animal, we're thinking for the sensitivity for others, even for the animal, we're thinking about that sensitivity. The point is, we need to think about it so far ahead, five steps ahead, that we're not causing other people pain. I think it's a very important thing to remember, to keep it in our mind that we have to not just look right in front of us. It says we have to look at the outcome of things, and we have to look how we deal with things. And causing people pain is not something simple. I am not saying we are on the level of rabshach, but the point is we need to be cognizant and think a little bit ahead, uh, of the actions that we are going to do, the effect that it is going to have. That is a very powerful idea we see from this week's parsha. The last thought I want to share for this week is that there's a mitzvah, uh, in this week's Parasha, that a man cannot wear a woman's clothing, and vice versa as well, that a woman cannot wear a man's clothing. The posse reads Asha m ki. So, uh, male garb should not be worn on a woman, and a man shall not wear a feminine garment. For anyone who does so is an abomination of hashem. The question I want to talk about today, and the idea I want to bring out, is really, what's the meaning behind this prohibition?
[00:22:53] How do we understand it?
[00:22:56] And, uh, like many things on this podcast, what can we take out of this? A man wearing women's clothing or a woman wearing man's clothing? Like, what's so bad? Like, why does the Torah have specifically talk about this?
[00:23:09] And to make a prohibition that men can't do Something that a woman wears, and a woman cannot wear what a man wears. Like, what's going on here?
[00:23:20] And I think the idea, I saw idea brought down from Rabbi Shmuelvitz that we see from this mitzvah. And I think it's not just this mitzvah, but it's a lot of the ideas and the mitzvahs that are talked about in this week's Parasha specifically, uh, that teach us that everyone has their unique mission in life, everyone has their job in life.
[00:23:45] For one person, what can be considered the holy of Holies for another is an abomination.
[00:23:52] I think this is something very powerful that we have to remember because we look at others a lot of times and we want to be other people.
[00:24:02] And sometimes, right, a person could say they want to be similar to someone else, or, you know, a, uh, woman could say she wants to be similar to a man or a man wants to be similar to a woman.
[00:24:16] We have to recognize that Hashem, uh, made us who we are.
[00:24:23] He made us how we are.
[00:24:26] He gave us our situation that we're placed in.
[00:24:30] It's for us. The situation we're placed in is for us. It's tailor made for each and every one of us.
[00:24:35] And I think it's not just, uh, the fact that we all have our specific mission in life and our specific task, and men have different strengths than women, and women have different abilities than men. And we see in the Torah as well. And in fact, the Targum Yonason explains that when it says the garments of a man, it's referring to the mitzvah, uh, of wearing tzitzis and wearing tefillin. That a woman is not allowed to wear tzitzis and wear tefillin. She's not. You know, in fact, women are not obligated in many of the mitzvahs of the Torah. So there could be those that say that the Torah is, God forbid, it's, it's sexist, it's very man centric. And nothing could be further from the truth because the Torah and Hashem recognizes the innate nature of people and how people are different. Men and women are different. They have different, um, potentials that they need to reach.
[00:25:35] If you think about for a second, right, A man, after taking care of the children for a few hours, he's going out of his mind. A woman, they're able to do it for hours and hours and hours, right? A woman doesn't have as much strength as a man, right? And we see that there's different strengths in personality and just abilities.
[00:25:54] It doesn't mean that one is better than the other. But the Torah recognizes the potential that each individual, whether it be man, woman, and each person in their own right, needs to get to. And if you take that to the idea of the mitzvahs, the different mitzvahs that men are obligated in and women are not obligated, and there are mitzvahs that are just for women and not men.
[00:26:17] The point is, is that the spiritual potential that each one of us need to get to, that a, uh, man needs to get to, is different than the spiritual potential that a woman needs to get to. And therefore, I've heard it actually in some explanations to understand that women are really ahead of the game, more ahead of the game than men, and women are more spiritually inclined than men, and therefore they need less obligations, they need less mitzvahs to get them where they need to be. That's one understanding. But the basic idea here is that everyone has their takhlis, everyone has their point they need to get to. And it's nothing wrong being different, right? The garbage man who collects the garbage and the pilot doesn't mean that one's better than the other. Just they have different jobs, right? One's not better than the other person. I think to tie this into other mitzvahs in the Parsha, we see shatniz mixing forbidden, uh, garments together, mixing animals to be in the same yoke. There's a lot of mitzvahs in this week's parsha that talk about how everything has its place, um, sending away the mother bird from the nest. A lot of the common denominator, a thread that runs through many of the mitzvahs of this week's Parsha, I think, show us this idea that everyone has their place and everything has this place in creation. It's not just a randomness, as some like to say. Everything is part of this divine plan. Everything has its place in creation. Every person has his or her job. I think it's a very powerful thought we see from this week's Parsha, not just from the prohibition of switching of cross dressing of men not wearing women's clothing and women not wearing men's clothing, but rather throughout the parsha, the different mitzvahs that we have here. If you look throughout the Parsha, it's this common denominator of recognizing that not just every person has their place, but everything has their place. So with that, I'm going to finish for today's podcast. I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, comments or would like to reach out, feel free to send me an email at rabbi shlomo kon kohnmail.com have a great day.
