Deuteronomy Cycle Four Ki Tetze

Ki Tetze

War is not natural. Torah does not show war as a constant state of being, one in which we grow accustomed to the behavior, the necessary tools, the brouhaha of battle, the victories and/or defeats, the daggers or arrows, the machine guns, the concealed fear, the nationalist glory, the anxiety or the sudden and shocking deaths of soldiers and civilians. War, instead is an event in which we take part in. And in order to do so we must exit ourselves and go out.

This we learn in this week’s parasha in the first line. When you go out to war…we read. Ki tetze lamilchama. Often in Torah, the root word for tetze is used in describing our exodus from Egypt. On a very p’shat level, it is used as well in signs in public places (in Israel) to point out an Exit. Therefore the association of this verb with getting out, leaving a specific room or building, leaving the state of mind created by the atmosphere (the purpose, the architecture, the age, the energy), leaving that state of comfort, that state of consciousness…is very much part of the power of the first line of this parasha. In other words, we do not go in into war. According to the sages we go in into God, into the Shechina, into soul-center. In Vayikra Rabbah 4:8 it is said that David says…Let the soul that fills the body come and praise the Holy One who fills the entire world…Let the soul that sustains the body come and praise the Holy One who sustains the entire world…Let the soul that outlives/survives the body come and praise the Holy One who outlives/survives the entire world…Let the soul that is unique in the body come and praise the Holy One who is unique in the entire world. From this we see that the soul is in the body. Going in (therefore) infers a filling-up of body-with-soul. Praising God is a continuation of going-in. This is our natural way.

While this teaching might seem obvious we must look at the world and the ever-ready ever-present visuals of violence and weapons. A violent film is a natural every day event. What we must remember though is that this state-of-war is not natural, or even close to defining ourselves in our holy human form. Fun, wild, mind-boggling, adventuresome, sometimes funny, all entertainment with gratuitous violence is fine to watch as long as we remember the smaller-than-life aspect of it. This is not us. The dramatization is not us. It’s a dramatization of our going out of us…the unusual strange moment when we must go out of ourselves and enter into a completely foreign way of thinking.

Why go out at all? To defend ourselves. Of course. But there’s more.

There is a reason for any revolution according to the Ramchal (Daat Tevunot #34-36 pp11-13). He says this: The goal towards which all the great events and revolutions (that He has brought about) is the complete revelation of His absolute oneness. Therefore our going out into war is only there to bring about enlightenment, to a state of being closer to Him.

Here’s more. God does not say…you will go out to create war. This is not a commandment. And with all of the commandments in this parsha…we see this clearly. There’s a when in there. So there’s almost a feeling of reluctant acceptance, that yes this will happen so we must prepare for the circumstances. We must prepare to come face to face with a being of great holiness and beauty, a vibration we would never expect to find in enemy territory but it is there, just like it is there within us. We must prepare ourselves to deal with the light in our enemies as well as their darkness when we go out.

Knowing this, I can’t help but describe the event I saw at the kotel, the sacred western wall, just yesterday. Soldiers, young kids in berets and green uniform, none older than 18 or 19, all in troops, were crowding into the plaza, standing in a circle around the central flag-pole. An officer was in charge speaking into a microphone. Nationalist music was playing. In the background (towards the kotel itself) I heard shofars (during the month of Elul they are blown everyday) and men praying loudly. I saw parents and relatives of the soldiers waving, kissing. Grandparents were braving the hot sun. Younger siblings were watching wide-eyed. The soldiers themselves were shifting about like school kids while waiting for the event to begin. I was told it was a swearing in. The men had prepared and now they would be soldiers.

The prayers at the wall continued. I wandered down to the womens side, moved past the beggars with their red pieces of prayer-yarn to trade for a shekel or two, noticed the women in tourist uniform, the women in orthodox uniform, the women bent over siddurs praying quietly, not loudly like the men. Like them (I imagine) I prayed for the young recruits, heard during my prayers a loud band, the men on the mens side chanting, the shofars and more shofars in competition with the trumpet and the fervent band music and sounds of stepping and marching above in the plaza.

The military, no doubt was going out. The people in prayer were going in. Or were they? And the noise and rush of the situation…the conflict…was loud. It had become natural…natural to fight for the fighters, to cry for the fighters, to pray for them, to be at war, to handle machine guns and to kiss your son goodbye not knowing if you would see him again. It had all become natural, common visuals even common prayers. It had become natural to pray for those who were fighting, to pray for peace with war in the heart. It had become part of a culture that had embraced the war-state bravely, obsessively, desperately, proudly, beautifully, no matter the emotion here, no matter the uniform or the dress, the hatred or the love, war was in the shape or form of everyone, and was being expressed by everyone. War was as natural as both spiritual and physical survival. Painfully, the people seemed to have had accepted…all of them…those who pray and those who fight and those who beg and those who do neither or both or all …that going out was the only way to continue going in and therefore had morphed war into the action of going-in. It was all being done concurrently or nothing (they seemed to feel) would be do-able, our souls diminished within our beings and our beings destroyed with our country.

In all, this is just what I saw. Torah in action. There with the Holy of Holies not too far away, right there just beyond the wall. My hands were wet by the time I pulled away from the sacred stones, my heart shaken, my eyes swollen. I was one of them/us, no doubt. Amazed by the strength of the young men, drenched in prayer, horrified by the whole situation, placed in a moment of history thousands of years old and thousands of years in the future, I breathed the perfume and smile and guts of the God who loves His people. The God who is bringing us closer to Him, letter by letter, word by word through this very moment.

In and out we all wander (I thought) closer to the source and farther, closer to the source and closer, farther, closer, farther again, really close now. And finally it all becomes a meditation, even this war dance…as we merge into the resounding radiance of Hashem.

How to apply this to today? Accept the confusion. Accept the collection of sounds as if it is a symphony and then see yourself as someone who can, just a wee-bit, help it to get in tune. Go-in. Just go-in. Be a soldier of consciousness within the very center of the Jewish community. See the human sparks around you moving towards a solid center within their hearts to join with the one solid God. Have compassion for those who go out knowingly. Support them. Love them. Feed them. And always remind the world of what it really is to go-in. Be strong. Know your boundaries. Be that example. Be natural. Know why you are here.