Anyone who has become engaged to a woman but not yet married her, or who has built a house but not yet moved into it, or who has planted a vineyard but not yet harvested even the first grapes, or even anyone too timid to fight — all of these do not go out to war, according to our parasha. In contemporary Israel, however, all those do go to war.
In the same parasha we find the command to allow not one person among the Canaanites to remain alive — something hard to speak about and impossible to explain. At the same time, we are told to spare the fruit trees in war, for “the fruit tree is a person.”
All this in the same parasha! Almost in the same breath. War is difficult and chaotic. The Torah leaves to us the task of interpretation.
“Justice, justice you shall pursue, so that you may live and take hold of the land…” — that too is in our parasha. Our parasha teaches us that justice must be pursued in a just manner, even in wartime. That is the Torah we bear at this hour: to fight for our existence, for those of us held hostage, for our future — taking care all the while to ensure that our own ways are just.
