When 613 Might Not Be Enough

G-d has given us 613 commandments on literally every subject that mankind might encounter. They keep the Jews very busy.

Some of the commandments are universal and don’t need explanation: Thou shalt not steal or kill. Others sound obscure: the prohibition against wearing wool and linen at the same time. Finally, there are a few that seem absurd. Why does G-d care whether we slaughter an animal from the front or the back of his neck? Moses Ben Nachman, known as the Ramban, stresses that G-d can get along very nicely without these commandments. It is man that needs them.

In our weekly Torah portion Ki Teitzei, or “When you will depart,” the commandments relate to numerous scenarios: Man at war, man at home, man and wife, man and son, man and daughter, man and animal, man and his possessions, and man and death. But there is a thread that runs through these commandments, leading us from one set of circumstances to another.

If a man has two wives-one beloved and the other despised-and they bear him sons, the beloved one and the despised one, and the firstborn son is from the despised one. [Deuteronomy 21:15]

The language of the Torah arouses several questions: How does this man have two wives? Did he first have a beloved wife and then decide that if one woman works the other might do him better? Or, that he took two women at the same time because he thought one would keep the other company while he set out to make his first million?

The commentators say the answers lie in the start of the Torah portion: If you go out to war against your enemies, and the Lord, your G-d, will deliver him into your hands, and you take his captives, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman and you desire her, you may take [her] for yourself as a wife. [Deuteronomy 21:10-11]

Menachem Ben Solomon HaMeiri is regarded as one of the greatest Talmudists in medieval Europe. Like most Jews, his life was harsh. He lost his father at an early age. His sons were taken captive to force him to pay an exorbitant ransom. His major works went missing for well over 500 years.

In Ethics of Our Fathers, the Meiri lists seven causes of sin. At the top is lust, whether for money, sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll or all of the above. Those hungering after the pleasures of life no longer care about the means or whether they are permissible. On the contrary, they celebrate their urges.

I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now. I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now. [Queen, 1989]

Raised in Britain in the early 20th Century, Oswald Mosley was the son of an aristocrat. Daddy was a philandering husband and an absentee father who wanted nothing more than to bathe in pleasure. Oswald Jr., known as Tom, grew up a tearaway, expelled from Sandhurst, a predator of girls and women, a reckless pilot. By the time he was 25, Oswald, regarded as irresistible to women, had managed to marry, engage in an affair with his new wife’s sister and even stepmother.

When he was out of bed, Mosley used his considerable charm for politics. In 1918, at age 21, he became a member of the House of Commons. A spellbinding orator, he changed ideologies and parties the way others switched from dress to casual. He began as a conservative, then became an independent, then jumped to the Labor Party and nearly beat future Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for his seat in 1924. Although himself touted as a future premier, Mosely made little headway in Labor and finally quit six years later.

Then things turned ugly.

As late as 1928, Mosely had mocked the rise of fascism in Europe, “black-shirted buffoons, making a cheap imitation of ice cream sellers.” But in 1931, Mosley was trying to return to the halls of power without a major political party, and for that he needed money. He befriended Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Italy, and was soon receiving a stipend. Now, Mosely championed fascism as the cure to Britain’s ills, particularly economic.

When Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, Mosely found a much more powerful patron. Soon, Hitler, close to the sister of Mosely’s second wife, Unity, began pumping money to the upstart British politician. With money came demands, and by 1934 Mosely’s British Union of Fascists aped the Nazis and made anti-Semitism the hallmark of their creed. Mosley led violent marches through Jewish neighborhoods of London and championed the fuhrer’s solution of persecution, expulsion and eventually extermination.

The British tolerated Mosley until the fall of France in May 1940, and then his old nemesis, Winston Churchill, ordered Mosley and his wife interred for the rest of World War II. The prime minister, a relation by marriage, softened the blow and allowed the couple to live together in a hut on prison grounds. Their two sons, however, were taken away.

So, let’s go back to the question of how a man could have two wives — one he loves and the other he hates. Mosley would know the answer to that one: He married the daughter of a wealthy aristocrat for her family’s money and connections to the conservatives. Amid his philandering, he met Diana Mitford, the legendary and “highly ambitious” beauty who like Mosley also married for wealth and social connections. Now Mosley had a first wife he hated and a lover he couldn’t get enough of. In 1934, his first wife suddenly died of what was diagnosed as peritonitis. She was 34, a mother of two. Two years later, Mosley married Diana in Germany at the home of Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels. Hitler was the guest of honor.

The Ramban says the way for man to avoid his fall is by following G-d’s commandments. The commentator says the commandments “remove all of the evil beliefs, inform us of the truth and remind us of G-d all the time.” Today’s evil belief could be communism; tomorrow, Nazism. The ideology changes with the seasons but ultimately is used to cover up man’s evil ambitions.

So, perhaps at the end of the day you can’t have enough divine commandments to repel a world gone wrong.