This week’s portion, Ki-Teitzei, contains more commandments than any other Torah portion. As the nation prepares to enter the Land and establish an exemplary society, the Torah constructs a socio-moral constitution for everyday life. Surprisingly, the Torah frames these profound covenantal laws regarding family, economics, and social norms entirely within the harsh context of war. The portion opens with, "When you go out to war…" (Deut. 21:10), and concludes with the existential battle against Amalek.
Focusing on one specific sequence in the middle reveals much about the Torah's larger vision. The text juxtaposes three seemingly unrelated laws: protecting an escaped slave, the prohibition of female and male prostitutes (Kedesha and Kadesh), and the prohibition against charging interest to a fellow Israelite (Deut. 23:16-20). What is the prohibition of prostitution doing sandwiched between the laws of an escaped slave and financial interest? We can suggest three distinct but complementary readings.
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Maimonides views the prohibition of prostitution as a standalone principle focusing on the individual and his close circles. He explains that prostitution is forbidden because it destroys family lineage, bringing children into the world disconnected from any normative family context or sense of belonging. Furthermore, it leads to a complete subjugation to lust. Pragmatically, multiple men fighting over a single woman inevitably leads to fierce disputes and bloodshed, threatening local stability.
Nachmanides takes a different approach. Focusing on the phrasing "from the daughters of Israel" and "from the sons of Israel" in the verse that prohibits prostitution, he explains this is a directive for societal leadership, the courts, to maintain normative standards. Here, the prohibition connects directly to the subsequent law against charging interest. The Torah envisions a covenantal society of fraternity. Economic relationships within Israel are between brothers, not strangers. It is strictly forbidden to exploit another’s financial distress for profit, just as it is forbidden to turn a human body into a commercial commodity. Both interest and prostitution are economies of exploitation, inherently flawed even with mutual consent. The Torah is establishing a sweeping moral judgment on the character of the entire society.
A third reading connects the prohibition of prostitution to the preceding verses regarding the escaped slave and the military camp. Commentators explain that this slave has escaped from the enemy’s camp into ours during wartime. Within the ethics of war, the Torah dictates that we cannot treat a human being seeking refuge as mere property to be returned. The sanctity of the "holy camp" requires preserving human liberty and protecting the vulnerable.
Consequently, prostitution is tied to this military context. During war, moral boundaries blur, and using sex to seduce military or political leaders or to break enemy morale can become an illicit and immoral tactic. The Torah outright rejects this: the end does not justify the means. Harnessing human degradation for military victory desecrates the holy camp. True resolution and peace are impossible if we do not first know how to treat individuals with fundamental dignity, recognizing their distinct identity rather than viewing them as a resource.
These three readings are not contradictory; they form overlapping circles around one core question: what happens when physical bodies, money, and power are utilized to reduce another human being into a mere means to an end?
This vital question applies directly to our own soldiers. In the Torah’s eyes, soldiers are never just a national resource to be endlessly depleted or merely compensated. They are human beings sacrificing their time, bodies, and family lives for the collective good. By weaving everyday civilian norms into the rigid framework of war, the Torah acknowledges the immense psychological dissonance soldiers face, constantly transitioning between two contrasting frequencies of existence. At the front line, a soldier must suppress personal autonomy, adhere to strict discipline, and employ violence. Immediately afterward, they return to the home front, remove their uniform, and re-engage in the gentle, constructive acts of building a family and routine. Both military service and building a home and family are paramount covenantal commandments. This psychological whiplash threatens to erode the individual's soul and fracture society.
However, the Torah does not merely attempt to shield civilian life from war; it seeks to transform the danger itself into a catalyst for moral elevation. Tellingly, the law of the military camp sits at the very center of the parsha, signaling that war is not merely a framework to survive, but a powerful amplifier. Left unchecked, it can easily amplify lawlessness, violence, coercive power, unchecked desire, and loss of restraint - forces that can later resurface in civilian life. Yet the Torah insists that through its unique challenges of humanity in extreme situations, the camp must instead become a place of fraternity and holiness: "for the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp... therefore your camp must be holy" (Deut. 23:14-15), an echo, in fact, of humanity's first encounter with the Divine, walking in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:8).
The ultimate question, then, is not whether war will leave a mark, but what kind of mark it will leave. The Torah's vision is that this extreme reality can spark moral expansion rather than moral collapse. A soldier returning home should not be desensitized to suffering. Instead, through the powerful fraternity forged in combat, he should become more sensitive to the needs of others. He returns not as a private individual seeking to advance his own interests, but as part of a covenantal society of fraternity, bound by unbreakable solidarity and mutual care.