Shalom Friends;
This week, our Parshat HaShevua Parshat is being sponsored by Pesach and Ann Chapler of Ramat Beit Shemesh dedicated for both continued recovery for Yishaya Shalom ben Malka Gittel (Yishaya Blass) and for a total, complete refuah shleima for Chaim Yechiel ben Malka (Howard Rothman). To the Chapler family, many thanks for your sponsorship and for your continued kindnesses and good wishes.
You can celebrate a Simcha — a birth, a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, a Chassuna or other Simcha event in your life, or commemorate Yahrtzeit of a loved one, or for whatever other reason by sponsoring a Parshat HaShevua.
Please forward to your relatives and friends and encourage them to sponsor a Parshat HaShevua. And please be in contact with me with any questions, or for further details.
Best Regards,
Moshe Burt
olehchadash@yahoo.com
skype: mark.burt3
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Parsha Ki Teitsei teaches numerous Mitzvot such as; returning lost items to their rightful owners, loaning money to one’s fellow Jew free from interest, what one is permitted to or prohibited from taking from another Jew as loan security, the laws of Shatnes (wool and linen together), Tzitzit, and dealing fairly and truthfully with one’s fellow Jews in business. We also learn of Mitzvot such as sending a mother bird away before taking the young or the eggs and helping one’s fellow Jew load and unload a burden, fencing in a roof area and not harnessing together different species of animals on the same yoke.
Our parsha also contains a posuk (Sefer Devarim, Perek 22, posuk 5) regarding male and female garb and the prohibition against cross-dressing, considered by Hashem as “an abomination.” This prohibition relates closely to Parshat Acharei Mos in Sefer Vayikra. There, Torah teaches (Sefer Vayikra, chapter 18, posukim 22-23):
“You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, it is an abomination. Do not lie with any animal to be contaminated with it; a woman shall not stand before an animal for mating, it is a perversion.”
Rashi comments on the word “abomination” in the Artscroll Stone Chumash, Sefer Vayikra, chapter 18, posuk 22:
An abomination. None of the relationships given above [in Sefer Vayikra, chapter 18, posukim 6-20] are described with this term of disgust, because they involve normal activity, though with prohibited mates. Homosexuality [same gender] [and bestiality], however is unnatural and therefore abominable.
Rabbi Henach Leibowitz, in his sefer “Majesty of Man”, comments on the state of our society today, something we may all know, but maybe don’t yet sufficiently internalize:
…Conduct once considered unthinkable is now commonplace. Acts of immorality, vulgarity… which Torah defines as abominations and only a generation ago were considered unimaginable, are now paraded openly without shame.
Do we realize the effect our environment has on us? Our neshamas are holy and pure, created in Hashem’s image and instilled with the sensitivity of the Torah’s moral standards.
Such abominations as discussed above seem today to be “the new norms”, the new “civil rights”, the new “morality” in the Western world, and in Israel as well. In Israel, it seems that the new political “darlings” of the “right” who purport to support and fight for the Land of Israel are the very ones lobbying for aid and supporting these perversions against the name of Hashem.
Referring back to Sefer Devarim, Perek 22, posuk 5, Rabbi Zelig Pliskin, in his sefer “Growth Through Torah” (page 439), cites Torah stating prohibitions regarding male and female garb and provides an interesting commentary:
“A woman shall not wear the garments of a man, and a man shall not wear a dress of a woman. For it is an abomination of the Almighty, your G’d, all who do these things.”
Targum Yonoson states that the garments of man include tzitzis and tefillin. Rabbi Chayim Shmuelevitz commented on this that we see the principle that each person has his own mission in life. The same thing that for one person is “holy of holies,” for another person who does a similar thing, but is is not his life’s task, it is an abomination. Each person should feel joy in carrying out his life’s mission and should not try to do things he was not meant to do.
It seems to this author that what R’ Chayim Shmuelevitz is saying or indicating here is that the genders each have their respective life’s missions. And it seems to this author that abominable experimentation by each gender donning the others’ garb, and imitating the others’ mannerisms and tendencies has been portrayed, promulgated and propagandized by the “social scientists”, the media, the “intelligencia” as chemical disorders or imbalances, mutations or deficiencies in genetic makeup such as to indoctrinate and justify these as legitimate and worthy of equality, if not more, with the two genders rather than to present them for what they are: abominations.
Finally, this author finds it more than ironic that the very “women of the wall” who upset the Kedusha of the Kotel by donning tzitzis and tefillin are, more often than not, among the same ones who promulgate “land for peace (piece)” and same-gender equality in all of it’s aspects — such as cross-dressing, relationships, etc.
May we, the B’nai Yisrael be zocha that our brethren — the refugee families from Gush Katif be permanently settled and be made totally whole — be totally restituted for all that was stolen from them at leftist-agendized, supreme court legalized gunpoint, that our dear brethren Jonathan Pollard and Sholom Rubashkin, as well as the MIAs be liberated alive and returned to us in ways befitting Al Kiddush Hashem, as should the remains of the two chayalim from last summer’s Gaza war. May we have the courage and strength to stand up and physically prevent the possibility of Chas V’Challila any future eviction of Jews from their homes and the handing of any piece of Jewish land over to anyone, let alone to enemies sworn to Israel’s and Judaism’s destruction and eradication. May we fulfill Hashem’s blueprint of B’nai Yisrael as a Unique people — an Am Segula, not to be reckoned with as with “the nations” and may we be zocha to see the Moshiach, the Ge’ula Shlaima, as Dov Shurin sings; “Ki Karov Yom Hashem V’Kol HaGoyim”, the Ultimate Redemption, bimhayrah b’yamainu — speedily, in our time”, — Achshav, Chik Chuk, Miyad, Etmol!!
Good Shabbos!
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Moshe Burt is an Oleh, writer and commentator on news and events in Eretz Yisrael. He is the founder and director of The Sefer Torah Recycling Network and lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh, Israel.
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