Weekly Dvar Torah: Don’t Defeat Your Enemy—Recruit Him

“When you go out to war against your enemies, and G-d will deliver him into your hand, and you will take his captives.”

This week’s Parsha, “Ki Seitzei”, begins with a war.

Chassidus reads these words much closer to home. This is the war every Jew enters from the moment the Neshama comes down into the body.

Every Jew has two souls. The G-dly soul, a part of G-d above, wants G-dliness, Torah, Mitzvos, holiness, and closeness to Hashem. The animal soul is interested in this world. It wants to eat, sleep, enjoy itself, and satisfy its desires.

So the battle begins.

Sometimes the Neshama wins. Sometimes the animal soul wins. That is why the Torah says, Ki Seitzei Lamilchamah—when you go out to war. Life is the battlefield.

But the Torah reassures us: Al Oyvecha—against, literally above, your enemy.

The animal soul may be loud and persistent, but it is not the real you. The essence of a Jew is the Neshama, the spark of G-d within him. You begin the battle already standing above the enemy.

And Hashem promises: Unesano Hashem Elokecha Beyadecha—G-d will deliver him into your hand.

But what does victory mean?

Normally, defeating an enemy means eliminating him. But that is not the Jewish objective.

We don’t want to destroy the animal soul.

We want to capture it.

We want yesterday’s enemy to become tomorrow’s ally.

This takes us directly to another seemingly unrelated law in our Parsha. The Torah speaks about a man with two wives, “one beloved and one despised.” Surprisingly, the firstborn belongs specifically to the despised wife, and the Torah insists that he retain all the rights of the firstborn.

These two wives represent the two souls.

The G-dly soul is beloved. It recognizes Hashem and longs to fulfill His will. The animal soul is the despised one. It sees the food, the money, the physical world, but not the G-dliness concealed within it.

And yet the firstborn belongs to the despised one.

Because there is something the animal soul can accomplish that the G-dly soul cannot.

Hashem deliberately created a physical world where His presence is concealed, and an animal soul that naturally feels at home in that world. Then He gave the G-dly soul a mission:

Don’t destroy the animal soul.

Transform it.

Take its passion for material pleasure and make it passionate about a Mitzvah. Take its stubbornness and make it stubborn for Yiddishkeit. Harness its energy to Torah, Tzedakah, helping another Jew, and serving Hashem.

The G-dly soul never had to be convinced that Hashem exists. It came from there. It remembers home.

But when the animal soul, living comfortably in a world that conceals Hashem, turns around and says, “I too want Hashem”—the enemy has changed sides.

And perhaps that explains why we read this Parsha during Elul.

Elul is the month of Teshuvah. But Teshuvah does not simply mean repentance. Teshuvah means return.

The Neshama came from G-d and was sent on a journey into a physical body and a material world. Throughout that journey, it yearns for home. Sometimes we hear that yearning; sometimes the animal soul drowns it out.

So Hashem gives us Elul.

Thirty days.

Remarkably, our Parsha also speaks about a captive who is given thirty days before entering her new life.

For thirty days we stop and think. The body begins to ask: Where does my life come from? Without the Neshama, what am I? What gives meaning to my eating, sleeping, working, earning, and living?

The animal soul begins to discover that the Neshama is its life.

That is Teshuvah: returning the Jew to his true self, and returning the animal soul, with all its enormous energy and passion, to the purpose for which Hashem created it.

Now we can understand Veshavisa Shivyo—“and you will capture his captives.”

The animal soul has been taking captives all year. Food that could have been elevated became merely pleasure. Money that could have become Tzedakah became an end in itself. Time and energy that could have been used for holiness went elsewhere.

Now we take them back.

We eat and use the energy for a Mitzvah. We earn and use the money for Tzedakah and a Jewish home. We take the physical world and reveal the G-dliness hiding within it.

And suddenly we discover that the ultimate purpose was never for two souls to fight forever.

The greatest victory is not when your enemy lies defeated at your feet.

The greatest victory is when yesterday’s enemy stands beside you, fighting on your side.

That is Elul.

We enter with two voices struggling inside us. We want to arrive at Rosh Hashanah with both voices saying the same thing:

Hashem is our King.

The Neshama says it because that is what it always wanted.

And the animal soul says it because it has finally discovered what it really wanted too.

This is a war we were born to win—not by destroying the enemy, but by transforming him.

And when the animal soul joins the Neshama in serving Hashem, the battle has fulfilled its purpose, the captive has come home, and the physical world becomes the dwelling place for G-d it was created to be.

That is the ultimate victory of Moshiach, when the entire world will recognize the G-dliness that was there all along.

Have a Victorious Shabbos,
Gut Shabbos

Rabbi Yosef Katzman