I was hesitant to put this in the Torah Thoughts blog, so here it is.

Parshat Ki Seitzei

In this weeks parsha we have the Torah allowing us in battle to take the "captive woman" as a wife. The Torah gives some of the technical details of how he has to make her spend a month looking decrepit, such as letting her nails grow, shaving her head, crying over her family in the entrance of the house, etc.

Rashi says She should look ugly with all this crying so that he will look at her and compare her to the Jewish girl and see how the Jewish women make themselves beautiful and "made up" and this man will then likely abandon the captive woman and marry a Jewish woman.

We see from this Rashi that Jewish women are supposed to beautify themselves so Jewish men will be attracted to them and not be swayed by foreign beauty.

In many frum communities, we have developed the style that girls/women should not dress attractively. They think that by doing so it is not tzniusdig and is therefore inappropriate. So they dress bland and frumpy and shlubby.

Yet the Torah here tells us that Jewish women are meant to be beautiful and to appear beautiful. By doing so, they keep the Jewish men attracted to them rather than to others.