The long list of Mitzvot continues this week. Among them are the rules to be read prior to the engagement of an overwhelming enemy:
2. And it shall be, when you have come near the battle, that the priest shall approach and speak to the people, 3. And shall say to them, Hear, O Israel, you approach this day to battle against your enemies; let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, nor be you terrified because of them; 4. For the Lord your God is he who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.
After this speech, another is given, disqualifying some for service:
5. And the officers shall speak to the people, saying, What man is there who has built a new house, and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicates it. 6. And what man is he who has planted a vineyard, and has not yet eaten of it? Let him also go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man eats of it. 7. And what man is there who has betrothed a wife, and has not taken her? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man takes her. 8. And the officers shall speak further to the people, and they shall say, What man is there who is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return to his house, lest his brothers’ heart faint as well as his heart.
When I read this last week, I read an interesting commentary in the Second edition Plaut Torah commentary about the need to keep people with anxiety out of the troops, so as not to sabotage the cause. Again these are soldiers who are up against seemingly overwhelming odds, enemy troops with not just infantry, but mounted soldiers. Targum pseudo-Jonathan calls the enemy “proud and powerful peoples.” Unfortunately when I sat down to write this, I didn’t have my copy of the second edition Plaut handy. So I started digging in the more classical commentaries, seeing if anyone else said anything. It turns out they all agree with the commentary given by the Mishnah and Talmud on the subject. There are two opinions, one from Rabbi Akiba, and one from Rabbi Yosi of the Galilee.
R. Yosi had the more predominant opinion, to the point that the Targums, Maimonides and Rashi all agree with him, based on the last case:
R. Jose the Galilean says: ‘fearful and fainthearted’ alludes to one who is afraid because of the transgressions he had committed; therefore the Torah connected all these with him that he may return home on their account. [Sotah 44a]
The person leaving the army committed some sin. There three other cases were really excuses to get this guy out of the army. The Aramaic translations, the Targums add that there can be cases where a transgression might be about houses fields or marriage, such as a forgetting to post a mezuzah on a new house before going to war (Ps-J). But why is the fearful and fainthearted so dangerous?
Rashi and Maimonides turn to Akiba’s literal approach:
R. Akiba says: ‘fearful and fainthearted’ is to be understood literally viz., he is unable to stand in the battle-ranks and see a drawn sword.
As Rashi explains
He should return lest he die, for if he does not listen to the words of the priest, he deserves to die.
The priest anointed for battle just said that there is nothing to worry about. The guy who didn’t heed that according to Maimonides “does not properly trust in God” and therefore he won’t be protected in the war. In the heat of battle his faithlessness might spread to the rest of the troops, and that is fatal for the entire army. Yet such a fearful person might also be afraid to leave the army due to his embarrassment. R. Yosi of the Galilee’s thus explains that the other three reasons give him a cover to leave without the embarrassment of being labeled a coward.
Thinking about it, cowardice might be fatal even before battle, for the Torah continues:
When you come near a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace to it.[Deut 20:10]
There is disagreement between the medieval French commentator R. Solomon b. Isaac better known as Rashi and the later Sephardic commentator Moses Maimonides, who is sometimes known as the Rambam. Both debated as to whether this is limited to discretionary wars or was for any war. Rashi, basing his opinion on the Talmud, believe only discretionary wars, and Rambam disagrees. However in light of the pronouncements above to the troops, I wonder if both misses an important point, the one the second edition of the Plaut commentary might have been hinting at.
Coming up to enemy troops or fortifications and asking for peace is not easy nor does it seem very wise. However if done with complete confidence one might just get way with it. Anyone with that much confidence must know something we don’t might be one thought running through the enemy’s mind. Yet, if there is any doubt, the opposition will see it. The one soldier with the lack of faith can spread faithlessness like a disease, and it will be visible. The enemy will exploit that weakness, attack and despite assurances from the priest anointed for battle, the bloodshed begins.
These thoughts of bloodshed are not particularly exciting. However the blood shed that I see like this happens on a mental and emotional level all the time. It is on the minds of a majority of single men who want to retreat from the field of battle either through excuses or fear. And that battle field is the world of dating.
At a simplistic level, this shouldn’t be very hard. A guy walks up to a woman, says hello and asks her out on a date. They go out on a date or two, and might find they do not like each other enough and so go their separate ways. If they like each other, then things get closer, and hopefully lead to a committed intimate relationship.
Yet a possibility of a breakup always looms. The dealing with breakup and rejection is only one of many emotional problems which make dating even more difficult than this simple model above and turns it into a battle ground. There are a variety of sources for this setup, all mixed together. One core element is a consumerist society telling us that buying a certain product will make us successful in romance. Of course the sports car, lipstick or deodorant doesn’t help. Indeed to sell the maximum amount of product, the product must be set up to fail, so more will be bought. In reality only the promise of success is sold in order to keep people buying more products.
They system in order to work requires a built in failure. The one targeted to create the failure is women, who when they wonder why they seem not to get a man, will be told to buy new products. That failure comes from requirements of what a man should be, and many of those requirements come from the same places selling the goods. Furthermore, women are looking to avoid men who might harm them that have something disturbing about their personalities which make them creepy.
In our society, we have been set up that women have virtually every opportunity to reject men, and men have to spend their entire relationship making sure they don’t. It is like the battle situations mentioned in this portion. Women have all the weapons and soldiers to fight a war, men don’t. Women have all the defenses too, all the walled cities. While physically women may not be as capable as defending themselves, there are societal norms, and emotional and mental models which defend women far more than men. For a woman in the dating world, the guy who can get through all those defenses is a valuable partner. But most men cannot, indeed they have been programmed to fail. Granted, once things become a relationship the game is very different, but getting that far is not easy from men. Often women thus stay lonely or give up and settle for something less than what they really deserve.
Men know they are set up to fail. It is just like a small army walking up to a walled, heavily fortified city. Fear is going to be in those soldiers minds. Approach anxiety looms, the fear of getting defeated with not only a rejection, but a slap on the face, a drink thrown at them, or even a jealous boyfriend or overprotective relative coming around the corner to beat the pulp out of them. All of those hurt the man, and often the anxiety will be so strong as he will not approach. Besides my own experiences with this, I’ve heard story after story of the choking effect of approach anxiety. But that is only the beginning, as the performance anxiety of not getting rejected after that point is always there for the man.
There is of course a way out of this: declare peace. The Torah in our portion gives this as the first thing one must do when approaching a city. In the classic text on strategy The Art of War 6th century BCE general Sun-Tzu believe that waging peace is the best war, the one with no casualties on either side. But how does one wage peace? With confidence, which really no one ever really expects. In terms of combat, there is a remarkable statement made by Moses in the Midrash about walled cites and open camps:
How can you tell their strength? If they dwell in camps, they are strong, for they rely on their own strength. If they dwell in strongholds they are feeble and their hearts are timid. [Numbers Rabbah XVI:12]
The people who don’t need defenses, and don’t look defensive when they approach and ask for peace are perceived as incredibly strong. The key element women are looking for in men is strength. Masculinity and internal strength are so associated with each other there is even a word for courage relating to the male genitals. It does take balls of steel to approach women sometimes, but confidence is the one thing that short circuits the whole game. An army approaching a city can be terrifying if they have the confidence to win. The high priest’s message was critical. As those medieval scholars Rashi and Maimonides said, only those who believed in the miracle of going into battle and coming out unharmed were unharmed. Anyone without that kind of faith dies. Anyone around who could create doubt would be detected by the opponent.
All excuses and all fear needs to be removed from the front lines. I’m with Akiba here and take things literally. Thinking about anything but the engagement ahead could be fatal not just to the person who is distracted, but to the entire army. Fear of attacking and fear of defending will also cause people to lose heart in the ranks. In that critical moment when we wage peace, we must look completely confident. I really don’t know if this really works in war, but in the battlefields of relationships, it is a critical lesson.
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