Netvort parshas Ki Tzeitzei 5770: Camping Out
By Rabbi Joshua (campily known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

In commemoration of the seventy-fifth Yahrzheit of the famed Rav Gavriel Zev (Vevele) Margolis, zt'l, author of Toras Gavriel on Chumash as well as several other works, and rabbi of the Adas Yisroel shul on New York's Lower  East Side,1911-1935). His Yahrzheit occurs this Thursday night/Friday, the 10th of Elul. Although today largely forgotten, he was, in his time, one of America's greatest rabbis. When he passed away one week after the passing of Rav Kook, zt'l, the Jewish community took it as a double blow, to the extent that one shul in Minnesota held a joint memorial service for the two rabbis. May his memory be a blessing.

In parshas Ki Tzeitzei, we are given many laws concerning permitted and forbidden marital unions, including the prohibitions of marrying someone from Amon or Moav, which according to the rabbis applies only to the males of these nations, as well as the prohibition of the mamzer, the offspring of certain forbidden relationships, from entering into a union with most Jews. Following these various laws, we are given a number of laws that apply to soldiers at war, such as the need to go outside the camp in case of a nocturnal emission, as well as to relieve oneself, and the need carry a spade to cover what remains after doing so. The Talmud tells us that even according to the opinion that in the rest of the Torah we do not expound, halachically, on the connections between different verses and sections, in the book of Devarim, we do. This is true even in a halachic sense, and certainly true in terms of the general content of the sections. What, then, is the connection between these two seemingly unrelated sections of the parsha? 

Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky, in his Emes L'Yaakov, discusses why these laws of permitted and forbidden marriages are brought here in the book of Devarim, rather than in the book of Vayikra, together with the longer list of sexual prohibitions that occurs there. He explains that the book of Devarim is addressed to the tzibbur, the collective of the Jewish nation, and these laws set forth who is qualified to enter the collective.  That is why the Torah, in connection with these laws, tells us repeatedly that the people mentioned here as prohibited to us, such as the Ammonite, the Moabite, the mamzer, and several others, should not enter the 'kahal HaShem,' or the congregation of God, meaning, the collective of the Jewish people. With this idea in mind we can understand the connection of these laws to the laws of the Jewish army.

There is, in halacha, a concept of 'machaneh Yisroel,' or 'the camp of Yisroel,' which the Jewish army constitutes. Within the entity of the Jewish army, certain halachic dispensations are given by the rabbis (see Eruvin, 17a-b), such as lifting the requirement to ritually wash one's hands before eating a meal, etc. (for a wider discussion of the  institution of 'machnaeh Yisroel,' see Rav Shlomo Goren's Meisshiv Milchamah, vol. 1, pps.139ff).  What constitutes a Jewish army? Whenever ten Jews gather together to wage a war, they constitute machaneh Yisroel, and the shechinah, the divine presence, rests among them. That is why the Torah stresses, in the laws set down about the machaneh in our parsha, that the machaneh must remain holy. According to the Chazon Ish, in fact, these laws apply only in a war that is fought on behalf of the entire Jewish people. The Jewish army camp, then, seems to represent, in miniature, the Jewish people as a whole. This being so, we can understand why the laws pertaining to the maintenance of the holiness of the Jewish collective through restricting them from marrying certain categories of people are followed by the laws of maintaining the holiness of the Jewish camp. The Jewish soldier needs to remember that even in a time of war, when  certain requirements of Jewish law are suspended, and the killing of other human beings often takes place, he remains part of the collective entity of the Jewish people, as represented by the 'machaneh Yisroel,' within which the divine presence dwells.

The saintly  Chofetz Chaim wrote a wonderful book entitled Machane Yisroel, for Jewish soldiers serving in the army. He writes, in an opening chapter that, unfortunately, many  Jewish soldiers do not adhere to Jewish law while in the army, and he gives various reasons for this phenomenon. His major message to the soldiers is that they should not think that just because they are now forced to be in a non-Jewish environment and, at times, compelled to transgress certain laws because of the exigencies of war, that they are no longer part of the Jewish people and are therefore free to do whatever they want. They must always remember that they are, indeed, part of the larger community, and strive to the best of their ability to maintain their fealty to God and his Torah. Perhaps this is also part of the namesake of the juxtaposition of the two sections of the parsha that we have been discussing.   We are first told of the concept of maintaining the 'kahal Hashem,' the holy congregation of God, through marrying observing the restrictions on certain marriages, and then told that when a Jew becomes a soldier, he should not think that he has removed himself from the collective aspect of the nation. Rather, he must always remember that he is part of the Jewish camp, as a microcosm of the kahal Hashem, and therefore must continue to maintain the  holy character of that collective entity, as well as his own role within the collective. 

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