September 14, 2022|י"ח אלול ה' אלפים תשפ"ב Eishet Yfat To'ar, Ben Sorer U'Moreh and the Limits of Teshuva By Rabbi Jonathan Muskat

A man in Amsterdam feels the need to confess, so he goes to his priest. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. During World War II, I hid a refugee in my attic." "Well," answers the priest, "that's not a sin."' "But I made him agree to pay me 20 dollars for every week he stayed." "I admit that wasn't good, but you did it for a good cause." "Oh, thank you, Father. That eases my mind. I have one more question." "What is that, my son?" "Do I have to tell him the war is over?

Unusual circumstances happen during wars and the Torah speaks about one of these circumstances in the beginning of this week’s parsha. And I think that this circumstance is actually very relevant to the time of year in which we find ourselves, during the month of Elul, a time when we hopefully are thinking about teshuva. We are thinking about all of the opportunities to mend our ways and all of our resolutions to be better. We encounter Talmudic statements like the one in Masechet Yoma (86a) that if our repentance is motivated by love, then our sins actually become merits. This month of Elul promises so much opportunity and so much potential to undo the past and to transform our mistakes into wonderful learning growth opportunities… And then we encounter the “aishet yfat to’ar.”

The Torah describes a scenario in times of war when a soldier wants to forcibly be intimate with a female captive and the Torah seems to allow it under some circumstances. This halachic ruling seems morally troubling. In fact, many of our rabbis could not accept the possibility that the Torah would sanction rape under any circumstances. As an example, in the Talmud Yerushalmi (Makkot 2:6), Rabbi Yochanan rules that the soldier may not be intimate with the woman until a minimum of a 30-day waiting period and marriage takes place and the Ramban adopts this position. Other rabbis concede that in Biblical times, the Torah forbidding her altogether might be too much to which a society could adhere. The Torah’s way of dealing with this situation is certainly much better than what was expected at the time the Torah was written. Since time immemorial, women taken captive during war have been considered part of the spoils to which the soldiers were legitimately entitled. Here, the Torah states that if a man wants the woman, then he may be intimate with her immediately but then he must marry her and support her if he wants to be intimate with her again. It’s certainly not an ideal result but the likely best outcome considering the prevailing culture at that time. This is perhaps what Chazal mean when they assert that in this instance, “dibra Torah k’neged yetzer hara.” The Torah was speaking to counteract the evil inclination. The Rabbis preached that this practice is abhorrent and repugnant and it should absolutely not be practiced.

But the Torah does more than that. The midrash points out that the Torah writes this halacha immediately prior to the next two halachic sections in the Torah purposely because all these sections are connected. The next section discusses the laws of inheritance in the case of a man who marries two women and the women have kids. In the context of this discussion, the Torah describes one of the wives as the beloved wife and one of the wives as the hated wife. Now why is he married to two wives, especially if he doesn’t love both of them? The answer is that he was married to one wife until his passions got the best of him in battle and he married a second wife and then they had a child, but he doesn’t really love her. And you know what the next section is? It’s ben sorer u’moreh. It’s the wayward son. He is the boy who cannot control his impulses. He is stealing and eating meat and wine.

So what happens? The father calls his son over and says, “Son, let me have a talk with you. You see, I’ve been watching you and I’ve been noticing that you’ve been stealing meat from the freezer and wine from the liquor cabinet. Son, I think you have an issue controlling your impulses.” So the son turns to his father and he says, “Dad, with all due respect, why are you criticizing me for my impulses? Isn’t my very existence a result of your impulses when you were a soldier and you saw my mother and you couldn’t control yourself? Who are you to tell me how to behave?” And the father simply gulps.

Now the ben sorer u’moreh is not necessarily a punishment for the father’s actions; rather, it’s a natural consequence. After all, who is a ben sorer u’moreh? It’s a child who can’t control himself and he learned this from his father. But what about teshuva? Can the man who takes a captive woman in battle do teshuva? Can he undo his moral failure? Maybe the halachic circumstances of the aishet yfat to'ar followed by the unloved wife followed by the ben sorer u’moreh point to the limitation of teshuva that even Yom Kippur cannot solve.

The gemara in Yoma (86a) states that for some sins, all you need is teshuva, for others, you also need Yom Kippur, and for others you also need some amount of suffering. However, the gemara states, “mi she’yaish chillul Hashem b’yado” – if someone has caused the desecration of God’s name, then “ain lo ko’ach bi’teshuvah litlot v’lo b’Yom Ha’Kippurim l’chaper, v’lo b’yissurin l’marek” – his repentance has no power to suspend judgment, nor does Yom Kippur have the power to atone for his sin, nor does suffering alone have power to absolve him. Why doesn’t Yom Kippur atone for sins of chillul Hashem?

The answer is that there are two aspects of teshuva. If I sin, then I have sullied my soul, but there’s always hope. There’s always teshuva. I can come back. I can return. I can undo my past and transform my past behavior into something good and I can actually grow from my failures. I can undo that part of my sin.

However, no matter what I do to myself, I cannot undo the impact that I had on other people. That’s why Yom Kippur and teshuva cannot undo a chillul Hashem because the problem with the chillul Hashem is not about me the sinner, which I can undo, but it’s about the impact of my behavior on others which cannot be undone. The Torah tells a story about an “aishet yfat to’ar,” about a captive of war and says “dibrah Torah k’neged yetzer hara,” that the Torah is trying to counteract or limit the negative behavior of the person with the evil inclination. But the Torah also tells us to beware of the impact, of the unintended consequences, of the unloved wife, of the wayward son. Teshuva may not be able to undo the impact and the unintended consequences of our behavior.

I distinctly remember receiving a phone call about twenty years ago when I first became a rabbi in Los Angeles. I was waiting in my office to receive halachic questions - very exciting for a new rabbi to have people call him to get halachic advice about their day-to-day issues. This is how one of my first phone calls went. A woman called and she had a question for me. She wanted to know if she could give her granddaughter a Hebrew name. That was a strange question that I hadn’t studied in semicha. Can a grandmother give her granddaughter her Hebrew name? I said to her, “I don’t understand. Doesn’t she have a Hebrew name?” So the woman began to cry and said that her daughter intermarried and both her daughter and son-in-law decided that they plan to raise their children as having no religion. So the granddaughter had no Hebrew name. I don’t remember what I answered her, but I remember thinking to myself that this grandmother was someone who only came to shul three times a year and she was not halachically observant, so it’s unfortunate but no surprise that her daughter intermarried. Certainly, there are many wonderful parents who do everything right in raising their children and still a child might intermarry, but if you raise your children with no meaningful religious observance, being a High Holiday Jew, then it is unfortunately very likely that your children may intermarry. And even if this woman does sincere meaningful teshuva now, it doesn’t undo the impact of her actions. Chillul Hashem cannot be undone by Yom Kippur.

This is the famous parable of the pillow, how speaking lashon hara was once described as a pillow, that once you open the pillow up on a windy day and the feathers inside the pillow go flying in the wind, it’s almost impossible to bring back the feathers and stuff them back into the pillow. You can sincerely regret opening the pillow. You can do teshuva, real, sincere, meaningful teshuva, but if you spread gossip about someone, then you cannot undo the impact of your behavior once the gossip spreads.

Now Rabbenu Yonah writes that that this not entirely true. In Shaarei Teshuva, he writes that, “v’gam la’choli hazeh,” and also with respect to this spiritual sickness of chillul Hashem, “af al pi she’ain lo marpe al derech sh’ar ha’avonot,” even though you cannot heal it like you can with other spiritual sicknesses, like the normal method of repentance, “yimtza lo marpe im ya’azrehu Hashem yitbarach l’kadesh torato neged bnei adam” – there is a method of healing, namely, with God’s help, to sanctify God’s Torah to the masses. How do you rectify sins of chillul Hashem according to Rabbenu Yonah? Through acts of kiddush Hashem! If I made a negative impact on society with my behavior and I cannot undo the damage, I must make an equally if not more pronounced positive impact on society with my behavior to rectify the negative impact of my behavior.

What does this mean for us? It means that we always have a dual responsibility. We have a responsibility to better ourselves and a responsibility to better the world. Elul, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur – this time period is specifically about bettering ourselves, returning to ourselves, and returning to God.

But every day of our lives we need to think about the consequences and the impact of our behavior. Are we making a kiddush Hashem or a chillul Hashem? Do we act in a way when people look at us and say, quoting the gemara (Yoma 86a), “ashrei aviv she’limdo Torah ashrei rabo she’limdo Torah” – fortunate is his father who taught him Torah and fortunate is his teacher who taught him Torah? In England and beyond, the world is mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth. If she would have been Jewish, she would have been a walking kiddush Hashem. Everyone looked up to her. She wasn’t political; she transcended politics. She had a high approval rating because she was kind and proper and because she carried herself with tremendous dignity.

Let us live our lives fully understanding the message of “aishet yfat to’ar” to the unloved wife to the ben sorer u’moreh. Let us understand what we can accomplish through teshuva and what we cannot accomplish through teshuva. Let us understand how to rectify the chillul Hashem, the negative impact, that we may have caused in the past. We do this by cultivating a consciousness for how we are perceived by others, thereby moderating our behavior and ensuring our conduct always meets the highest ethical standards. We do this in simple ways, by being courteous, by being friendly, by being inclusive, by taking five seconds to send a friendly text or WhatsApp, by thinking twice before sending that email that could be taken in a negative light, by not being impulsive in what we say and in what we do. It transforms us into people who are conscious and aware of how we are perceived by others. This involves empathy to understand how others perceive us and to realize that every action we perform is being judged, and not only are we being judged, but Hashem and His Torah are being judged. It’s a tall order, but it’s something that can accomplish what Yom Kippur cannot.