TORAH SPARKS

 

 

Parashat Ki Tetze

September 10, 2022 | 14 Elul 5782

Torah: Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19; Triennial 24:14-25:19

Haftarah: Isaiah 54:1-10

 

 

 

Parents on the Same Page

Ilana Kurshan

 

I m sure my children are not alone in their exasperating tendency to make the same request of each of their parents in the hope of eliciting different responses. Ima, can we have ice cream for dessert tonight? my daughter will ask me, and I ll tell her no, the ice cream is for Shabbat, but she can have a cookie instead. Then, when I ve left the room and my husband has come in, she ll repeat her request: Abba, can we have ice cream for dessert tonight? And then he ll say yes, unaware that I ve already responded, and I ll get frustrated at her and at him at her for asking him, and at him for not checking with me. After all, how can we expect our kids to obey us when it seems as if we re not even in agreement with one another?

 

Such family dynamics are alluded to in the law of the wayward and defiant son, one of the many commandments discussed in this week s parashah. To be sure, I would not want to suggest that I d compare my daughter or any of my children, for that matter to the disobedient child who refuses to heed his parents voice even after they discipline him. Such a child is seized by his parents and taken to

the public square, where the parents declare, This son of ours is disloyal and defiant; he does not heed us. He is a glutton and a drunkard (21:20). The elders of the town then stone the disobedient son as a way of sweeping out evil from the midst of the people of Israel. This is a far cry from the kind of punishment I would ever want to inflict on my own children, and yet the Talmud s discussion of the laws of the wayward and defiant son offers a way of thinking about parenting and discipline that seems relevant in our household, too.

 

The Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin devotes an entire chapter, at least nominally, to the laws of the wayward and defiant son, explaining who might qualify for this designation. The Talmud severely limits the applicability of such laws, reading each of the Torah s words highly literally. Since he is a son, he cannot be a daughter; these laws apply to boys only. Moreover, he must be a son but not a minor or a full-grown adult, which the Talmud interprets as signifying that the laws of the wayward and defiant son only apply during the brief three-month window in which a boy is obligated in the mitzvot, and yet is still at the beginning stages of puberty (69a). In addition, since the child is described as a glutton and a drunkard who disobeys his parents, the Talmud specifies that he must have stolen meat and wine from both his mother and his father (71a). However, he cannot have eaten this meat at a religious celebration, because the consumption of large quantities of meat and wine is considered meritorious in such a context. With these highly restrictive laws, the Talmud renders it nearly impossible for a child to qualify as wayward and defiant.

 

The laws limiting the cases in which a son may be designated as wayward and defiant impose considerable restrictions on the parents as well. Since both parents have to seize the child and bring him to the public square, they must be able-bodied enough to do so; neither parent may be lame or missing an arm in order for the son to qualify. And since the parents have to point out their son and make a

declaration before the elders about their son s disobedience, neither parent may be blind or mute or deaf. Perhaps even more implausible and more relevant to the problem of discipline in my own home the parents have to speak in one voice, since the Torah teaches that the parents must declare that their son does not heed us, or, more literally, does not listen to our voices. Based on these words, Rabbi Yehuda teaches that the mother and father must be equal in their voices (71a). One parent can t say yes to ice cream while the other says no.

 

Expanding upon this notion, Rabbanit Dr. Penina Neuwirth (in Drasha, p. 459, untranslated) explains the stipulation that the parents must be equal in their voices as signifying that only when both parents uphold the same values and enforce the same rules is the child held liable for disobedience. A child cannot be expected to obey his parents when they offer that child conflicting models of how to behave. In such a situation, the child is likely to get confused by the mixed messages, and to make errors of judgment as a result. Such a child does not get punished as wayward and defiant because the fault lies not with the child, but with the parents who fail to transmit a consistent educational message.

 

Perhaps the law of the wayward and defiant son reflects an awareness of how difficult it is for children to navigate conflicting parental models. The Torah s law, while seemingly cruel and merciless, actually reflects tremendous compassion for children by shifting the responsibility to their parents, who must strive to speak in one voice before their children. Of course, even in two-parent households where the parents are happily married, those parents will not agree about everything certainly my husband and I do not. But as much as possible, we try to keep our disagreements private so that our children experience us as a united front. If I suspect that my children are approaching me with the same question they ve already asked their

father, I try first to determine if he has already responded, and to stand by his decision regardless of whether or not it s the decision I would come to on my own.

 

Granted, our children are likely to encounter many different voices over the course of their lives, and learning how to navigate that cacophony of values and opinions is part of the work of becoming one s own person. But for now, our children are still young. At these early stages of maturation, when they are still figuring out who they will be as teenagers and then as adults, I would like us, as parents, to model harmoniously the values we wish for them to uphold. I hope that when that time comes, the firm foundation we have set for them will be an anchor, allowing them to sail calmly and confidently into new, uncharted waters without feeling adrift and unmoored.

Good Person, Beware of Yourself

Vered Hollander-Goldfarb

 

 

Text: Devarim 23:10-15

 

10When you go out in a camp against your enemies, then keep

yourself from every wicked thing. 11If there is any man among you who becomes unclean by some occurrence in the night, then he shall go outside the camp . 13Also you shall have a place outside the camp, where you may go out; 14and you shall have an implement among your equipment, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it and turn and cover your refuse. 15For the LORD your God walks in the

midst of your camp, to deliver you and give your enemies over to you; therefore, your camp shall be holy, that He may see no unclean thing among you, and turn away from you.

 

● Unlike many laws where Devarim adds a new detail to a law that appeared earlier in the Torah,, the laws of war do not appear in the earlier books of the Torah (despite the Israelites having already battled Amalek and other nations). What might be the reason for this?

● What warnings does the Torah give to a person who finds himself in a military camp?

● What is the reason for these warnings?

● What is the role of v.10 in this section? (Another rule, a heading, or something else?)

 

Commentar y: Ramban Devarim 23:10

 

When you go out in a camp against your enemies, then keep yourself from every wicked thing The correct interpretation regarding this commandment appears to me that Scripture is warning of a time when sin is rampant. The well-known custom of forces going to war is that they eat all abominable things, rob, plunder, and are not ashamed even

of lewdness and all vileness. The fairest of man by nature comes to be possessed of cruelty and fury when the army advances against the enemy. Therefore, Scripture warned, then keep yourself from every wicked thing. And by way of the simple meaning of Scripture, this is an admonition against doing anything forbidden.

 

● How does Ramban understand the need for v.10? What is included in it?

● Why is a special warning needed in this situation? What is forbidden is already known!

 

Commentar y: Shadal Devarim 23:15

 

Therefore, your camp shall be holy The main point is to establish in their hearts that the LORD is going before them and the victory is from Him, therefore He commanded that they shall picture the LORD before them always, as if they are in His Temple. But this is not because of

the Ark, for mostly it did not go out with them

 

● According to Shadal, why does the Torah demand to keep the camp holy? Why does he stress that the Ark is not the reason for the demand for holiness?

● How might viewing the camp as holy affect the people s behavior?

Broken Trust

Bex Stern Rosenblatt

 

 

The good times continue in this week s haftarah, the fifth of the seven readings of consolation between Tisha B Av and Rosh HaShana. Once again, we focus on the painless production and rearing of children for personified Jerusalem. Once again, the punishments and the abandonment that had been described in the Book of Lamentations are brought to an end and even reversed.

 

 

In Lamentations, chapter two, we read a cry of absolute desperation: Get up, shout out in the night Pour out your heart like water, before the face of the lord. Raise your palms to him, for the spirit of your little ones, fainting from hunger. In Isaiah, we are told again to shout out, but the cry has been transformed into a noise of celebration. We read, as translated by Robert Alter: Sing gladly, O barren one who has not given birth, burst out in glad song, exult, who has not been in labor, for the desolate one s children number more than the children of the one with a husband.

 

 

Haunting all of these joyous tidings is our fear that it will not last. If what was bad has been made good, what is to stop it from being made bad again? Having experienced what happens when God gets really angry, it is hard to let go of the possibility that it might recur. It is as if for the first time we understand what it means to be in relationship with God – that we must accept the bad with the good. The texts encourage us to let ourselves feel each moment fully, whether despair or jubilation.

The text in Isaiah also contains references intended to promise that we need fear no longer. It suggests that we will never again be subject to God s anger in such a violent way. The haftarah closes as follows, as translated by Alter: For as Noah s waters is this to Me, as I vowed not to let Noah s waters go over the earth again, so have I vowed not to be furious with you nor to rebuke you. For though the mountains move and the hills totter, My kindness shall not move from you nor My pact of peace totter. Just as we have never experienced another near destruction of the world by flooding, so too should we never experience a near destruction of our people by God.

 

 

The text also brings us back into the context of our previous covenant to our ancestors. The way our redemption is described in Isaiah recalls the language from Genesis. In our haftarah, we read, For to the right and to the left you shall burst forth. The language used here, of descendants conquering and inhabiting lands that are not yet theirs, is reminiscent of the promise that God made initially to Abraham and then to Jacob back in Genesis when Jacob dreams of a ladder. There, we read And your seed will be like the dust of the earth and you shall burst forth to the east, the west, the north and the south.

 

 

As we approach Rosh HaShanah and begin to think about forgiveness, the ability to trust each other and ourselves to follow through on promises we have already broken becomes paramount. Our haftarot for these seven weeks provide a guide to how that may be possible.