Shabbat Parashat Ki Teitzei - 5786

Shabbat Parashat Ki Teitzei - 5786

Rabbi Hal Miller

  There shall not be a kli-gever on a woman nor shall a man wear a simlat-ishah

  for anyone who does so is an abomination to Hashem your God.  [Devarim 22:5]

What are kli-gever and simlat-ishah, and why should cross-dressing be an abomination?

Gever means man, mighty, hero or overpower. Kli means vessel, tool or instrument. As a combined word, kli-milchamah means an instrument of war, or weapon, and kli-gever can mean something very similar, or as Onkelos translates it, a piece of men's armament. It certainly refers to some item considered pertinent to a man. Simlat means a dress, as is worn by women, and simlat-ishah makes that more specific to women. Thus our verse is prohibiting men from wearing women's dresses and women from wearing some item specific to men, possibly to do with war, possibly other things as well.

The Gemara Shabbat [94b] understands our verse as prohibiting women from going out with weapons. Targum Yonatan explains that Yael killed Sisero with a tent peg instead of a sword based on this verse. The same Gemara (and Makkot 20b) prohibits men from pulling out white hairs from among dark, as this is a cosmetic practice of women, and likens it to dressing like a woman. From Nazir [59a] we see a prohibition for a man to shave areas of his body that a woman would typically shave so that he not "beautify himself with the embellishments of a woman". According to this, the prohibition is not a clothing issue, but a matter of acknowledging that God made each of us in the way He desired and it is not for us to try to change His decision.

Rashi and others limit the prohibitions to cases of potential licentiousness, citing Nazir that a woman would try to "resemble a man in order to go out among the men" or "a man wear a dress of a woman to go sit among the women". In both cases Rashi understands the prohibition to apply where the individual was looking for a sexual encounter or other abomination. Rashbam limits the prohibition to where one is trying to seduce another. Rav Hirsch cites R'Eliezer ben Yaakov as the halacha that a woman may not go out with weapons and a man may not primp himself for beauty. He says the prohibition has nothing to do with disguising one's gender, rather to do with the nature of the genders.

It seems the prohibition is centered around purpose. Onkelos translates ki toavat hashem as "remote from God". Nazir [59a] seems to agree with this, translating the phrase as abomination, but noting that there is no actual abomination here, rather the prohibition is for separating the genders. Rashi also reads the verse as forbidding the wearing only of an item which would lead to an abomination rather than being an abomination itself.. Rav Hirsch defines it as forbidden only if done for immoral purposes. Rav Moshe Feinstein is a bit more inclusive and more like Rashi that wherever the Torah uses the word abomination it is building a fence to ensure that we keep far away from "temptation out of fear of possibly sinning." Although under some of these opinions a given situation may be ruled one way and under other opinions ruled the other way, the key seems to be the preservation of human dignity in the way God made us, thus acceptance of God's decrees.