Ki Teitze,"We Don't Fight Alone"

We Don't Fight Alone

Parashat Ki Teitze begins with the words: “When you go out to war against your enemy…”

We often read this as a command about a physical war. But perhaps there is another battle being described here. The battle that takes place within every human being.

Our soul agrees to leave the purely spiritual world and to enter this more physical one where combined with a body it has a lifetime of work to do. This miraculous coupling of body and soul is given the extraordinary gift of free will: the ability to choose good over evil, connection over disconnection, humility over arrogance, generosity over envy, and holiness over the forces that pull us away from who we have the potential to be.

This world is the place where we have to fight for and choose to do good. Where we create our afterlife.

The battlefield is different for each one of us.

There are things that may not be a struggle for one person at all, while for another they are the place where the real battle is fought. For one person, lighting Shabbat candles may come naturally. One person may find fasting on Yom Kippur easy. For many there is the challenge to control anger, jealousy, the need for power, or the desire for recognition.

Our battlefield is wherever we struggle to become the person our soul knows and wants us to be.

There is another powerful message here: Gd promises to help us go in the direction we choose to go. Whatever we truly want, Gd promises to help us. It is up to us to choose the path toward holiness and goodness and connection. The question we are forced to grapple with is what do I really want?

The Talmud teaches, “In the way a person wishes to go, he is led.” Our choices matter. The direction we choose matters. And we ask Gd to help us succeed in that choice and win the battles that stand in our way.

We do our part. We make the choices. We struggle, fall, get up, and try again. But we also ask Gd to help us in our internal struggles.

We are here in this physical world for a limited time. Our soul has entered a world of challenge and choice, and eventually it will leave this body and return to the spiritual realm.

We take with us our good deeds and whether we chose good when it was difficult. Did we use our time in this world to allow the soul within us to influence our choices?

When the soul leaves this world, may we be able to say: I did everything I could. I fought my battles. I chose good. I reached for Gd. I became the best version of myself that I was capable of becoming.

With much love for a Shabbat shalom

Elissa