It is difficult to imagine a Jewish mother instructing her son about the law of the eshet yefat to’ar, the beautiful captive woman, before he goes off to battle (chapter 29):
(10) When you go out to battle against your enemies, and Hashem your G-d delivers them into your hands, and you carry them away captive, (11) and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you want her, and you would take her for yourself as wife;
(12) then you must bring her home to your house; and she will shave her head, and trim her nails; (13) and she will remove the clothing of her captivity from upon her, and stay in your house, and cry over her father and her mother for a full month. After that you shall lie with her, and husband her, and she shall be your wife.
(14) And it shall be, if you do not want her, then you shall release her to herself; but you shall not sell her at all for money, you shall not deal with her as a slave, because you have violated her.
Which mother would like her son to find a wife in this manner? For that matter, which mother would like her son to act in a way that even somewhat resembles this? Does she dream her son could impulsively capture a pagan enemy to take home to meet his parents and shul community just because she is attractive to him?
Not to mention, what is she to make of her son’s self control, or lack thereof? There were no Jewish girls he might have met? Is it truly so that he could not do any better, that he will see a beautiful woman and think “I want her” and let that be the beginning of their sacred Jewish marriage?
There is a dispute between the Ramban and the Rambam over whether or not the soldier lives together with his captive in the field or whether he must wait until after the month of her mourning. Surely, this is something we would prefer not to think about. Indeed, it is something every parent would pray never occurs at all. Lo alenu, they might say, if they hear of a neighbor’s son who met his wife in this way; let it not happen to us.
All of this being the case, how shall we square the general Jewish impulse with this law? How shall we square it with the Torah’s calls for character, self control, and sacred sexual mores?
Of course, this is not a new question and the Sages addressed it directly: “The Torah here is addressing the evil impulse (yetzer hara): It is better to eat a properly slaughter animal, even though it is dying, than to eat it after it has died on its own and (thus has) become a (prohibited) nevela” (Kiddusin 21b-22a). Meaning, as Rav Nachum Rabinovich pointed out in his essay The Role of the Commandments (Pathways to Their Hearts, chap. 2), “even though it is not an ideal situation, the Torah provides a permitted, less debasing alternative.”
It is better, as the Rambam writes in the Guide (3:41), that the soldier at least take her somewhere private, that he do her no violence, and that he wait to be with her again until after she is allowed a period of mourning, than the more terrible alternative. This is not a celebration and in no way does this indicate that what has happened is something good or desired. In fact, the Rambam is clear that Hashem does not command a soldier to take a beautiful captive. Rather, this is what he calls a “din.” A din “is not a commandment to perform a specific act perforce. Rather, the mitzvah is that we are commanded to apply this procedure to the particular matter” (Sefer HaMitzvot, Aseh 95).
And so, of course, no Jewish mother wishes this for her son. “Fortunate is the man who is not overcome by his impulse,” writes Rav Rabinovich. “The passage of eshet yefat to’ar is not addressed to him at all. However, considering the strain of war and the uncontrolled torrent of emotion in battle, the Torah created an exception to the prohibition against cohabiting with a gentile woman, under specific conditions. It established laws to minimize the damage caused by this surge of lust.”
This mitzvah comes, then, to minimize damage, to help heal the moral and spiritual ailments of a man who failed. It is, as the Rambam writes in the Guide, an “exhortation to noble moral qualities.” For one reason or another, this man is not there now; the Torah helps him along what will no doubt be a very difficult path toward a stronger character, towards the kindness and sanctity demanded of the Jew. He is not there now; but he could be eventually.
We should appreciate, then, that this is how Hashem has structured His covenant with us. Not only does the Torah account for imperfection, but it recognizes that we will sometimes fail in the most terrible ways and that fiascos are endemic to some situations in particular. This does not mean we cannot try and reduce harm to ourselves and others, improve, and perhaps even fix much of what is broken; on the contrary, the laws of our people are here to help us along with these very difficult tasks.
Likewise, we should not write off the people in our lives who have failed and sinned in ways large and small. Rather, we should strive to forgive them when they have harmed us and invite them back to a life of Torah which is healing for all parties.
