Content warning: discussion of sexual violence.
The below is an edited version of a d’var Torah that was delivered at Yale University’s student egalitarian minyan on Friday night, August 24th.
Parshat Ki Teitzei begins with a particularly haunting section:
י) כִּֽי־תֵצֵ֥א לַמִּלְחָמָ֖ה עַל־אֹיְבֶ֑יךָ וּנְתָנ֞וֹ ה’ אֱלֹקֶ֛יךָ בְּיָדֶ֖ךָ וְשָׁבִ֥יתָ שִׁבְיֽוֹ׃ (יא) וְרָאִיתָ֙ בַּשִּׁבְיָ֔ה אֵ֖שֶׁת יְפַת־תֹּ֑אַר וְחָשַׁקְתָּ֣ בָ֔הּ וְלָקַחְתָּ֥ לְךָ֖ לְאִשָּֽׁה׃ (יב) וַהֲבֵאתָ֖הּ אֶל־תּ֣וֹךְ בֵּיתֶ֑ךָ וְגִלְּחָה֙ אֶת־רֹאשָׁ֔הּ וְעָשְׂתָ֖ה אֶת־צִפָּרְנֶֽיהָ׃ (יג) וְהֵסִ֩ירָה֩ אֶת־שִׂמְלַ֨ת שִׁבְיָ֜הּ מֵעָלֶ֗יהָ וְיָֽשְׁבָה֙ בְּבֵיתֶ֔ךָ וּבָֽכְתָ֛ה אֶת־אָבִ֥יהָ וְאֶת־אִמָּ֖הּ יֶ֣רַח יָמִ֑ים וְאַ֨חַר כֵּ֜ן תָּב֤וֹא אֵלֶ֙יהָ֙ וּבְעַלְתָּ֔הּ וְהָיְתָ֥ה לְךָ֖ לְאִשָּֽׁה׃ (יד) וְהָיָ֞ה אִם־לֹ֧א חָפַ֣צְתָּ בָּ֗הּ וְשִׁלַּחְתָּהּ֙ לְנַפְשָׁ֔הּ וּמָכֹ֥ר לֹא־תִמְכְּרֶ֖נָּה בַּכָּ֑סֶף לֹא־תִתְעַמֵּ֣ר בָּ֔הּ תַּ֖חַת אֲשֶׁ֥ר עִנִּיתָֽהּ׃
“When you take the field against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your power and you take some of them captive, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman and you desire her and you take her as a wife. You shall bring her into your house, and she shall shave her head and cut her nails. And she shall remove the dress of her captivity and she shall sit in your home and lament her mother and father for a month of days; after that you may come to her and possess her, and she shall be for you a wife. Then, if you no longer want her, you must release her outright – you must not sell her for money: since you had your will with her, you must not enslave her.”
How are we to think about this narrative? This was my bat mitzvah parsha, so I’ve been grappling with this text for fully ten years. This year, though, I’ve come to it with fresh eyes.
Rashi, the prolific eleventh-century French commentator, references at length a Rabbinic collection of midrash called the Sifrei Devarim. Among the interpretations he cites is the following:
וישבה בביתך. בַּבַּיִת שֶׁמִּשְׁתַּמֵּשׁ בּוֹ, נִכְנָס וְנִתְקָל בָּהּ, יוֹצֵא וְנִתְקָל בָּה, רוֹאֶה בִּבְכִיָּתָהּ, רוֹאֶה בְּנִוּוּלָהּ, כְּדֵי שֶׁתִּתְגַנֶּה עָלָיו (ספרי):
AND SHE SHALL DWELL IN “THY” HOUSE — [not in the women’s apartments, but] in the house which he constantly uses: when he goes in he stumbles upon her, when he leaves he stumbles upon her (i.e. he cannot avoid meeting her constantly); he sees her endless crying, sees her neglected appearance — and all this in order that she should become repulsive to him.
In this interpretation, the Torah offers a protective framework in which the soldier is discouraged from the immoral act of rape by a series of attempts to make the woman he captured unattractive.
But for me today, the image of the woman sitting on the floor of her captor’s home, preventing him from leaving and entering without stumbling over her, evokes something else.
This July, I was arrested in an act of civil disobedience. Along with seven other activists – all of them more seasoned and heroic protesters than I am – I blocked traffic on Park Avenue outside the home of Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan. Our call was for JP Morgan to stop financing the private detention centers where immigrants are held when they try to enter the country.
The goal was to prevent business as usual from continuing in the face of atrocity. Those in power, we insisted, would see the tears of the oppressed, would confront the ugliness of their pain, and would be unable to leave their homes without stumbling over the harm they perpetuate.
What if, in prescribing that the Captive Wife place herself underfoot, that she cry in her captor’s home for as long as she wants, that she make her pain physically visible, the Torah mandates protest? The Jewish soldier here is not a hero and the captive woman is not a harlot. The power relationship is inverted.
I remember watching cars build up down Park Avenue, and feeling something, ever so slight, settle inside me: this is a change. We are not allowing the world to continue as it is. My body, here, says no to this cruelty.
The discomfort of the Captive Wife text is one that sages and bat mitzvah girls, rabbis and feminists, have long tried to resolve. The text itself, though, forces the Captive Woman to the forefront of our mind. Deuteronomy is full of injunctions to kill, capture, and destroy, which we so often look away from in preference for its injunctions to do justice and act mercifully. The discomfort of the text itself is a protest: when we have power, when we are an army, we will do harm. We need to see that. We need to be confronted with the pain that power can cause. We need to stumble over it and trip and perhaps fall.
Some of us are beginning our time in college, and some, like myself, are beginning the end of that time. When I started college, I didn’t see myself as part of any conquering army. But we all have power, handed to us first by the admissions letter and then by an endless series of small connections made with professors, emails sent from a .edu address, lessons in how to speak to someone important in their field. We collect these moments until we stop seeing them. The challenge becomes twofold: how do we use that power, and how do we give it up? Who do we hand it to in our stead?
A few years ago, I likely would have encouraged fellow students to make visible the invisible characters in your lives at school, just as the Torah makes visible the suffering captured woman. And I stand by that: it is, yes, important to introduce yourself to the library security guards you see every day. But we need to do more than that. We need to give power to the people who are in our lives as we build our own, and in particular to the people who are harmed by the same institution in which we build our power.
My own university, Yale, buys up land around the university to create a “bubble” for us to live in, driving up housing prices in New Haven. The university continues to invest its endowment in private prisons, even as incarcerated people across the country participate in a nationwide prison strike. Prominent professors are sexual harassers, and a rapist has just been allowed back on campus. Low-income students are made to work while students whose families can pay explore a full range of extracurricular adventures. And in my own beloved Jewish community, the people who cook our kosher food are not paid a living wage, the result of not being unionized like Yale Dining workers are.
How are we going to allow these cruelties, these injustices, to bring our lives to a grinding halt? How can we shift our communities, our schedules, our conversations, so that we stumble over these problems every time we try to go somewhere? This is our challenge, as we start our year in these places of power: we need not just to see injustice, but to force it to make everything stop.
Avigayil Halpern is a student at Yale University.
