"The Torah permitted the marriage with the אשת יפת תואר only in order to help the soldier in question cope with his evil urge." There are many things which have been permitted: Not because they are objectively permissible, i.e. desirable for us to enjoy, but because, were the Torah to forbid these things altogether, we might well become guilty of far greater transgressions. For example: it is better to eat an animal which has first been slaughtered though the blade of the knife may have been nicked, than to eat an animal which has died without the benefit of ritual slaughter altogether. Anyone who has some common sense will appreciate that just because the Torah appears to have made a concession to the fact that we are not angels and suffer from an evil urge, this is no reason to avail ourselves of any or all of these "concessions" to our moral weakness. The latter principle is known as קדש עצמך במותר לך, "demonstrate your attempt to sanctify yourself by abstaining from matter which is technically permissible."

Rabbi Menachem HaBavli phrases it thus: "One should not eat in the manner of a glutton because the Torah ordered that a בן סורר ומורה be stoned to death. Do not eat the kind of food which leads to an increase in the amount of blood. [I believe we have to understand this in terms of the ancient belief that bloodletting, i.e. removal of excess blood, was a remedy for a variety of bodily dysfunctions. Ed.] Permissible food and drink intake act like leaven acts in a dough, i.e. it adds bulk and power to the forces of the יצר הרע, the evil urge. Immersion in Torah study acts as leaven for the יצר הטוב, the urge to be good. The Torah penetrates to the depth of our subconscious mind, wanting us to die in a state of innocence, hence the apparently cruel penalty for the בן סורר ומורה. The legislation of the wayward son was never enacted in practice since the halachic details connected with it make it almost impossible to meet all the required conditions. The nearest actual example we have of a similar incidence is Absalom, the son of a marriage between David and a יפת תואר. He rebelled against his father as an adult and died guilty. [Had he been executed at the tender age of 13+, as provided for in the case of the בן סורר ומורה, he would have died innocent. Ed.]

לא תוכל להתעלם . One is forbidden to ignore lost objects, but has to pick them up and make every effort to locate the owner for a simple reason. If the Torah already displays such concern about the restoring of mere property to its owner, how much more concern does it feel about saving the soul of a person from becoming "lost." In this respect everyone of us is a guarantor. G–d reserves the option to exact payment from anyone of us just as the lender has the option to be repaid by the guarantor of the loan or by the debtor himself. This is the reason why the Torah selected the term השבת אבדה rather than החזרת אבדה. The term is to remind us of our obligation to do everything in our power to see that a Jew who has strayed from the path of Torah should do תשובה. We cannot ignore this obligation. The commandment is considered so important that public announcementts about the lost object may even be made on the Sabbath. There is an additional aspect to the negative part of this commandment. Failure to return found objects to their owners impedes the arrival of the Redemption. Thus far the comment of Rabbi Menachem Habavli on this מצוה.

לא יהיה כלי גבר על אשה ולא ילבש גבר שמלת אשה . Rabbi Menachem HaBavli claims that this prohibition is designed to prevent opportunities for marital infidelity. The wearing of clothes of the opposite sex leads to sexual arousal and makes it more difficult to resist such temptation. I have found it written somewhere that if a midwife wraps a newborn baby boy in clothes once worn by a girl, that boy will grow up and become a womanizer. If the reverse occurs the girl is likely to become a prostitute. It is essential therefore to wrap a baby in a new garment, one that does not yet exude the residue of either a male or female who has worn it. This teaches that garments have a "personality" of their own. Garments worn by women transfer some femininity to a male who wears them and vice versa. In addition to this it is unseemly for a man who has been created by G–d as a member of the "stronger" sex to don garments of the "weaker" sex and thus indicate dissatisfaction with G–d's decision to put his soul in the body of a male.

ועשית מעקה לגגך . The allegorical meaning of making such a railing may be that one has to set limits to one's pride. The roof is the highest point of the house, and symbolizes pride; the railing represents a restriction on one's pride.

מוצא שפתיך תשמור ועשית כאשר נדרת לה' אלוקיך . This verse contains an allusion to the oath of loyalty to the Torah each soul is made to swear by the angel who taught it that same Torah while still in the mother's womb (Niddah 30b). The phrasing "keep your promise," presupposes that everyone has taken such a vow.

לא יוכל בעלה הראשון לשוב לקחתה . On the prohibition to take back a wife one has divorced if she had remarried in the interval: There may be an allusion here to the soul which has been reincarnated in an inferior body as a penalty for having committed serious sins in a previous incarnation. Such a soul has a chance to rehabilitate itself and its previous life only as long as it is within the body to which it has been re-assigned. If it fails to exploit this second chance, לא יוכל בעלה הראשון לשוב לקחתה, her first husband, i.e. the body it inhabited originally, cannot reunite with this soul [at he time of the resurrection. Ed.]

זכור את אשר עשה ה' אלוקיך למרים . This is a dire warning not to make derogatory remarks about other people. The commandment to remember daily how even Miriam was punished surely underlines the importance the Torah places on this.

זכור את אשר עשה לך עמלק … לא תשכח . I have found that the Torah divides this commandment into two halves. When the Jewish people are politically independent and strong, the part of the commandment we are obligated to fulfill is "to wipe out the memory of Amalek." When we are politically impotent we must still fulfill the part of the commandment which bids us "not to forget." One performs this part by cursing the name of Amalek and what that nation stands for.