Ki Teitzei: When You Go Out

This week's Torah portion is called Ki Teitzei — meaning literally, "When you go out." It is a reference to violence and war. "When you take the field [literally, "When you go out"] against your enemies, and the Eternal your G!d delivers them into your power and you take some of them captive ... " (Deuteronomy 21:10).

This sentence is but a tiny portion of more than a thousand verses in the Tanach (Jewish Bible) that deal with war. Our Holy Scriptures came into history in a world in which fighting was a common activity. Some might say a normal activity, but I choose to think of war not as normal, and sadly, all too common.

The ancient communities of the Middle East were governed according to tribal customs and laws, and each ethnic community was in a combative relationship with its neighbor. There was no United Nations in those days, no European Union. Some tribal federations, such as the twelve tribes of Israel, pooled their resources, but that was for protection rather than for advancing peaceful relations with the rest of the world. The harsh social-economic and political milieu of the ancient world often triggered violent and deadly conflicts between communities and peoples, and it is rare that we read a comment such as is found in Judges 3:11: " ... and the land had peace for forty years." Our history is sadly one filled with violence.

Our biblical forebears were actually quite militant, and the religious ideology they believed in sometimes sanctioned extremely violent behaviors. Our ancestors carved out political independence that lasted for centuries, conquered neighboring peoples, and even vanquished the great Greek armies of Antiochus, which is commemorated every year in the religious observance known as Chanukah. It was during and a result of the Macabean revolt which is acknowledged at Chanukah that the Judean armies lost two massive and catastrophic wars against the Roman Empire that cost and uprooted millions of Jewish lives. As a result, the survivors reconstituted Jewish life in ways that avoided military engagement.

That created a dilemma with regard to the militant parts of our sacred scripture. What are we to do with all the calls in the Tanach to battle our many enemies? Perhaps the verses referring to war at the obvious external level were intending to convey a deeper, and less obvious, spiritual message.

If we look at this Torah portion cited above as a reference to the daily struggle of making it through to the end of the workweek, then it would have us view our days of the week as us being engaged in a battle and struggling to find meaning to our daily, often mundane tasks. The Sabbath comes as a reprieve from this daily battle, struggle, turmoil which fills our days.

While having elements of truth to it, that perspective seems a but macabre and terribly negative. I hesitate to take the view that my everyday challenges are akin to war. Challenges, yes, but full out war-like? That's farther than I can go. So this Torah portion invites us to dig a bit deeper, peel off another layer of meaning and metaphor, and take a closer look.

The literal Hebrew meaning of this verse is, "When you go out to war against your enemies, the Eternal your G!d will deliver him into your hand ... " The sentence begins by referring to many enemies, but end with the claim that G!d will deliver a single enemy — "him" — into our hands. From this perspective, then, we can extrapolate a reference to an internal “enemy” — the natural human tendency to let the little ego run—and ruin—the show. In Hebrew, this concept is known as the yetzer hara or "evil inclination," a kind of personification of the negative impulses that we all feel.

The most important part of the verse, I think, is that it is G!d who will deliver us from this little ego. Furthermore, the last part of the verse in the original Hebrew tells us, "and you take him (or "it") captive." By taking the yetzer hara captive, we begin to learn to overcome our natural human tendency to make bad choices out of our little ego.

We note, however, that it is profoundly difficult to take one's negative urges, one’s little ego, one’s yetzer hara  captive, to overcome our impulse to make bad decisions and less than optimal choices, to behave in not so good ways, even when we should know better. This verse, therefore, gives us hope that overcoming our evil inclination is possible, because “G!d will [give you the strength if you are open, to] deliver it into your hand."

This is the internal battle. We are only human, and it is virtually impossible to always overcome our tendency to do the less than optimal not so good thing. If we think we can handle it all alone, we are fooling ourselves. And I think that is how we can best understand G!d’s intervention in delivering it into our hand. We cannot do it single-handedly. When we acknowledge our limitations, when we have support, then we are better positioned to allow the overwhelming goodness that is G!d-within to give us the strength to do what is best to be done.

We must always be careful not to take matters entirely into our own hands, for it is our very own little ego which already runs the show and gets us into trouble. As we learn more and more to step out of this small, tight, constricting place of ego and into the expanded space which is G!d-within,  we are indeed delivered, a little more every day.

Our enemies are not those outside of ourselves, but those negative impulses, that are harmful to ourselves and others, that reside within our own ego. We are reminded in this parshah that “when we go out,” when we have the courage to step forward and "go out of" our small ego, and we let G!d-within direct us in our endeavors, we will be delivered.

May these words inspire each of us to “go out” of our small ego and go towards our G!d-within, becoming ever more G!dly in our daily lives. May we be delivered a little more every day. Amein.