Parshat Ki Tetze

This week’s parsha begins with the law of the captive woman, the “isha yefat to’ar” that the Torah allows a soldier to marry. Clearly, this law is not one of the more ennobling halachot that to be found in the Torah. As Rashi says in pasuk 11, this law is intended to channel a man’s lusts into a minimally acceptable form of behavior, and he is warned that this relationship will end in personal tragedy.

The Sfat Emet (in his Torah from the years 5631 and 5636) explains what we can learn from the law of “yefat to’ar.” .The Sfat Emet says that the “war” mentioned at the beginning of the parsha is a metaphor for our mission in life.

When Hashem completed the creation of the world, the Torah says that Hashem saw everything, and it was all very good. But the world was created in such a way that much of the good is hidden. Even the Yetzer Hara contains a spark of hidden good. When a person battles the Yetzer Hara within him and wins he has revealed the hidden good. This is the “captive woman” of whom the parsha speaks. Before the defeat of the Yetzer Hara there was a spark of goodness “in captivity” but now the person has freed it.

The battle against the Yetzer Hara is perilous and a person must take great care in it. The way to preserve a victory over the Yetzer Hara is teshuva. Fighting the Yetzer Hara means that the person was in contact with it and that means that if the person succeeds he must inspect himself and turn to Hashem and realize that it is only because Hashem helped that he was able to win this battle.

Now we are in the month of Elul . It is the time for teshuva. None of us can afford to be complacent. And most of all, none of us should ever take our blessings and successes for granted.