Don't Take Me So
Literally
By Rabbi Joshua ( imperceptively known as The Hoffer)
Hoffman
This week's parshas begins with the laws of the
'yefas toar;' the beautiful woman, captured from the enemy in war, whom the
Jewish soldier desires. The Torah presents him with a procedure that he
should follow in order to be able to take her as his wife. If, in the end,
he decides he does not want her,he must set her free. The rabbis tell us that
the Torah offered him this option of marriage because he is driven by his
'yeitzer hora,'or evil inclination, and if he would not have this
opportunity to marry her, he would take her anyway in a manner that is
forbidden. However, continue the rabbis, the soldier needs to know that if
he does marry her, the offspring of this union will be a wayward and rebellious
son. This is derived from the fact that the section concerning such a son
follows shortly after the section on the 'yefas toar.' What is the
analogy between the soldier marrying a 'yefas toar' and the behavior of the
wayward and rebellious son? Rav Mordchai Gifter, in his commentary Pirkei
Torah,explains simply that the soldier surrenders to the urgings of his desires
in taking the 'yefas toar,'and the rebellious son does the same.As explained by
the rabbis in the Talmud,,this son steals from his parents in order to buy
excessive amounts of meat and wine for his personal consumption. Coming from
parents who did not control their own desires,he develops into a person
who controls his desires even less. I would like to suggest a
different explanation for the analogy,based on a comment of Rav Gifter
himself on a verse in the section regarding this son.
The Torah describes the wayward ad rebellious son as one
who"does not listen to the voice of his father and to the voice of his mother"(
Devorim, 21:18).Why doesn't the Torah say that he doesn't listen to the 'words'
of his father and mother? Rav Gifter explains that the term 'voice' ('kol') does
not refer to the specific words that are articulated, but to the general,
unspoken message that is behind the words.The wayward and rebellious son may
actually listen to the explicit orders of his parents, but he fails to hear the
message that is behind what they are saying, As a result, he ends up
acting in a manner that is in contradiction to what they
really want from him and,more importantly, for him. The Ramban, in his
commentary to this section, writes that the wayward and rebellious son
transgresses the Torah imperative of 'you shall be holy,'which, as he explains
in his commentary to parshas Kedoshim, means setting up safeguards around the
commandments of the Torah, and controlling one's intake even of that which the
Torah permits him to indulge in. A person,for example,can be careful to
consume only kosher food and drink,and still transgress this Torah
imperative. Although the Ramban does not spell this out, in regard to his
parents' supervision over him,as well,the son can conceivably do all they
explicitly ask of him, and still end up disregarding what they really want him
to do. Viewing the wayward and rebellious son in this way, we can now better
understand the analogy between the soldier who takes the 'yedas toar' and the
wayward and rebellious son.
As we have seen,the torah
permits the soldier to take the 'yefas toar' only as a concession to his evil
inclination, which he finds difficult to control while on the battlefield.
However,the manner in which he is permitted to take her , the procedure to which
she is subjected, is geared toward discouraging him from marrying her,in
the end. As Rashi explains,based on the Talmud, she is required to do
things,such as comporting herself in an unkempt fashion, that actually
make her repulsive in his eyes,so that he will not want to marry her. Thus, the
true intent of the Torah is that the soldier should desist from marrying the
'yefas toar.' The soldier should be able to understand this,and give upon his
desire for this woman. There is,in fact,a concept of 'retzon haTorah,'
meaning,God's real expectation from us, that is developed by Rav Elchanan
Wasserman in his essay 'Divrei Sofrim,' but goes back to much earlier
sources. For example,the medieval Talmudic commentator and halachic authority,
Ritva, explains the device of 'asmachta,'by which rabbinic laws are attached to
Biblical verses, not merely as a process of finding some kind of 'peg' to
attach the law to, as a kind of reminder. Rather,he explains that, in some
cases, the rabbis discerned that the Torah wished us to go beyond the literal
meaning of the written word by adding on safeguards to the law that is spelled
out in the text. actually,the Ramban writes that the wayward and rebellious son
also transgresses the Biblical requirement of 'ubo sidbakun,' to attach oneself
to God, to cling to Him.Here,too, he seems to be saying that the failing of the
wayward and rebellious son is to ignore the message that is behind the explicit
words of the Torah,following only the exact,literal message and taking every
liberty that he can find. Such a person has no desire to become what God really
wants him to become,and,in this way, he is merely following in the footsteps of
his father,who took the 'yefas toar' despite the subliminal message of the Torah
that he should control himself and leave this woman for others.