Home Run

by Rabbi Mordechai Rhine

It was a tragic moment; but they did the best they could under the circumstances. A Jewish soldier found a non-Jewish girl on the battlefield and wanted to marry her. The woman was placed there by the enemy to entice the Jewish soldiers and distract them from their important task of battling the enemy. Now, the Jews may have won the battle, but this morally weak Jewish soldier wants to marry the woman. Does he really think that he will be able to build with her a Bayis N’eman B’Yisroel, a fine Jewish home?! Did he check where she went for high school and seminary? Did he ask about her chesed hours? Usually we say, “Let the law pierce the mountain,” meaning, the law stands against all whims, large and motivating as they may seem. Why does the Torah suddenly permit him to marry this woman?

Indeed, the commentaries say that really this soldier is a good person. He might even be the finest from the Yeshiva. Yet, when he encountered this woman he was seized by uncontrollable passion for her. The Torah needed to provide a process by which this woman can be allowed to him lest he take her anyway.

One wonders how did it come to be that an otherwise moral and upstanding individual would fall to be so susceptible, that the Torah feels it has no choice but to allow something that should really be forbidden?

The Nesivos Shalom explains that the key to understanding the soldier’s situation can be found in the opening words of the Parsha. “Ki Seitzei- When you will go out.” This otherwise upstanding individual, raised in Torah and purity, entered this new experience of battle with the mind-frame that he “was going out.” In his mind he was leaving the teachings of the Yeshiva behind and entering the big wide world. This perspective was his undoing. When he encountered a challenge he fell prey, and the Torah reached out to rescue him by providing a procedure to allow what ought to be forbidden.

The proper perspective in such a case is what King David prayed for when he said, “Let me dwell in the house of Hashem all of my days.” Does anyone think that King David could honestly expect to live in the house of Hashem all the time. Certainly as a king he would have to leave the study hall to attend to things. Yet, as Rav Matisyahu Salamon explained, everyone has a place they call, “Home”. That is the place we return to after our endeavors are done. It is that place called “Home” which remains the place of our moral calling, no matter where life takes us. Dovid prayed that the house of Hashem should be his home, his moral calling and guide for life, forever.

I know of a young man who was asked to take over his father’s real estate business after his father’s passing. His uncle encouraged him and said, “You’ll do a great job, just please don’t wear your yarmulka to work, and make sure to wear your Tzitzis in.” The young man took the encouragement, but not the advice. At his very first closing the client asked him about “the strings”. He replied, “These are a religious thing; they remind me to be honest in all my dealings.” To this young man it was clear that he was not “going out” to business. It was clear to him that the rigorous yeshiva training of intellectual honesty was now meant to be practiced in the financial arena. The client who heard his fervor and clarity was pleased.

Rav Hutner was once consulted by a student who said that he was “leaving the yeshiva.” The Rabbi told him, “There is no reason to think of yourself as leaving the yeshiva. You are not moving out to a new home. It is more like adding on a new room, a new dimension, to your existing Torah home. You now have additional applications to apply the Torah which you have learned.”

Interestingly, later in the Parsha there is another mitzvah addressed to the soldier, the laws of the bathroom and maintaining a clean camp, even when in battle. The Torah is telling us that even in this new setting, there are laws of Torah which we must not forget.

The soldier with which the Parsha begins was a very good person, a student of the finest yeshivos. But as he entered battle he thought he was entering a whole new enterprise, with new moral ground rules. In his mind he had run away from home, and was therefore susceptible to the enticements placed before him. The correct approach is to realize that home is where the heart is. By doing so one can hit the ball out of the ballpark with nobility and be able to attribute it proudly to the home team.

© 2015 by TEACH613™