Getting From the Real to the Ideal
The Journey of Personal Transformation
When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the Lord your G-d has delivered them into your hands, and you have taken them captive, And you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her, and take her for a wife – Then you shall bring her home to your house… … and she remain in your house and weep for her father and mother for a month, and after that …. she shall be your wife. And if you do not want her, you shall send her out on her own; you shall not sell her at all for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, because you “violated” her. (Deut. 21:10-14)
The Torah permits this only as a compromise to the yetzer ha-ra (evil urge). (Talmud Kiddushin 21b)
‘And you shall take her unto you as a wife’ – the Torah only permits this in the context of the yetzer ha-ra (evil urge), for if G-d would not permit her to him, he would marry her anyway despite the prohibition…. (Rashi Deut. 12:10)
Torah does not advocate complete suppression of our negative urges rather it gives us outlets to sublimate them while guiding us to gradually overcome them. Therefore, sometime when we crave, we must satisfy the craving in some way while working towards kicking the habit.
Take a drug addict, for example. There are two approaches to treating the addiction. One method is cold turkey