Ki Tetse (כי תצא — “when you go out”)
Devarim / Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19 • Yeshayahu / Isaiah 54:1–10
Moshe sets out laws governing communal life: the conduct of war, respect for others, protection of the vulnerable, and justice and honesty in human relationships. The haftara is a message of consolation addressed to Zion: after rupture come return, rebuilding, and renewal.
Deuteronomy 23:10
כִּי־תֵצֵא מַחֲנֶה עַל־אֹיְבֶיךָ וְנִשְׁמַרְתָּ מִכֹּל דָּבָר רָע
“When you go out as a camp against your enemies, guard yourself from every evil thing.”
The idea of establishing a new talmudic academy in Yavneh dates back to 1913, when Rav Avraham Itzhak HaCohen Kook proposed purchasing the historical lands of Yavneh in order to build an agricultural settlement and a yeshiva there.[1] The project was carried by the Mizrahi[2] movement, but construction of the main building was completed only in the late 1940s. Yeshivat Kerem BeYavneh[3] finally opened in 1953 under the leadership of Rav Chaim Yaakov Goldvicht.[4]
In its early years, the institution functioned as a classic yeshiva, without any particular military framework.[5] It was only in 1965 that the hesder[6] program — the “arrangement,” combining intensive Torah study with military service — was formally established.
A military camp is not a space where rules cease to apply. In Israeli military ethics, this requirement is expressed in the notion of Tohar HaNeshek,[7] the “purity of arms,” which holds that the use of force must remain subject to moral limits.
The Kerem BeYavneh campus consists of study and residential buildings surrounded by a wide expanse of greenery. The Beit Midrash forms the heart of the yeshiva’s life. The buildings are set within a landscape of gardens, trees, and agricultural fields.
[1] According to talmudic tradition, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai established a center of study there after the destruction of the Second Temple.
[2] The lands of Yavneh were purchased in 1940 through the joint initiative of Rav Meir Berlin (Bar‑Ilan), president of the Mizrahi movement, and Menahem Ussishkin, head of the Jewish National Fund. Construction of the main building, designed by architect Meir Ben‑Ouri, began in 1946.
[3] The name Kerem BeYavneh (the vineyard of Yavneh) predates the modern yeshiva: it appears in the Mishnah (Eduyot 2:4; Ketubot 4:6). The Jerusalem Talmud (Ketubot 4:1) explains that it was not a literal vineyard, but sages seated in rows “like a vineyard.”
[4] Rav Chaim Yaakov Goldvicht (1925–1995), trained at the Etz Chayim yeshiva in Jerusalem and close to the Chazon Ish and the Brisker Rav, led Kerem BeYavneh for nearly forty years. In 1991, he received the Israel Prize on behalf of the hesder yeshiva movement.
[5] The yeshiva was founded in 1953 by a group drawn from the Gahalat nucleus (גח״לת, acronym of Garin Ḥaloutsi Lohem Torani), a core of highly committed religious youth with strong religious discipline, composed of alumni of the Bnei Akiva yeshiva of Kfar HaRo’e. Rav Goldvicht became the first Rosh Yeshiva after consulting his teacher, the Chazon Ish.
[6] The hesder program combines intensive Torah study with military service. The Nahal Torani framework was formalized in 1965, two years before the Six‑Day War — making Kerem BeYavneh the first yeshiva of this type, later nicknamed “the mother of the hesder yeshivot.”
[7] The term Tohar HaNeshek belongs to the vocabulary of Israeli military ethics and was later integrated into the formal ethical code of the IDF, Ruach Tzahal (רוח צה״ל). In Jewish sources, Maimonides links the requirement of sanctity in the military camp (Deuteronomy 23:15) to moral limits in the conduct of war (Guide for the Perplexed III:41). Questions of distinguishing combatants from civilians, proportionality, and limits on violence are the subject of military, legal, and halakhic debate. Some see continuity with a Jewish conception of war; others highlight tensions with certain categories of classical halakha.