Parashat Ki Tetze contains more mitzvot than any other Torah portion, and this shiur will focus on three of them. We will see how the commands to help load and unload animals relates to helping drivers in distress; we will see how the Torah's rules on fugitive slaves relate to both the Ancient Near East and 19th-century America; finally, we will examine how heter iska addresses concerns of charging interest for Jewish bankers and borrowers.
Two ideals clash in Ki Tetze: one is the moral concern for the woman captive; the other is the aversion to marriage to a non-Jewish woman which may, as we know, lead to moral degeneration over time. The Halakha comes to establish the proper balance between these two ideals.
The law that "You shall cut off her hand" that appears in our parasha (25:12) is similar to the law of "An eye for an eye ... (Shemot 21:24-25). The similarity between the two laws lies in the fact that in both cases the plain meaning of the text in the Written Law indicates corporal punishment for maiming or wounding another person, while the Oral Law establishes that the offender pays only a monetary fine, with no corporal punishment administered.
In this shiur, we will discuss the enigmatic law of the eishet yefat to'ar, the non-Jewish female prisoner of war. Is this the concluding section of the unit regarding the laws of war, or is it the opening section of a new unit? We will see that the views of the Rishonim regarding the purpose of this law reflect different views of its literary placement.
