“If you go to war.” RASHI interpreted that the verse speaks of optional war. We must understand the “optional war” in the work. That is, in a place of commandment or in a place of transgression, it is called “mandatory war,” where a person must observe the Mitzvot [commandments] to do and the Mitzvot not to do. Only in permitted things, the war is “optional.”

The option pertains to the intention, meaning for whose benefit he is observing Torah and Mitzvot, whether this will enhance man’s authority, meaning that his reward will be that his will to receive will be rewarded with delight and pleasure, meaning that he takes everything into his own possession, or his reward is that he can engage in Torah and Mitzvot for the sake of the Creator, which is in order to bestow and he wants everything to go into the singular authority, meaning the authority of the Creator, and wants to cancel his own authority.

This is what RASHI means by “The verse speaks of optional war.” At that time, the verse promises us, “And the Lord your God delivers them into your hands,” meaning that he will have the strength to subdue the Sitra Achra [other side].

Afterward, the verse clarifies the order of the work: “And you see among the captives a beautiful woman,” meaning the soul, which is the quality of bestowal, is in captivity. Before he began the work on the optional, he did not see that man’s soul was captive among the Klipot [shells/peels]. “And you desire her,” meaning to elicit the soul, that his intention will be that he will have the strength to work in order to bestow. This is the meaning of “and you take her for yourself as a wife and bring her into your home.”

As RASHI interpreted, the Torah speaks only against the evil inclination, as our sages said, “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice.” Hence, “Your home” means a place of Torah, as in “In wisdom shall a house be built,” since the evil inclination controls only a heart that is vacant of wisdom, as our sages said, “One does not sin unless a spirit of folly has entered him.”

“She shall shave her head.” The hair on the head is regarded as judgments, for Se’ara [hair] comes from the word Se’ara [storm], which are foreign thoughts that come into the head, and he must cancel all the foreign thoughts he had.

“She shall do her Tzipornaim [nails],” from the [Aramaic] word Tzafra, meaning “day.” “Days” are states in which one was satisfied. “Doing” means that he extolled them, meaning looked at all the days he had been through and found satisfaction in them, and now he sees that it was all nothing but false imagination, since all the measurements were only by what satisfied the will to receive, and how those days pushed him away from the truth.

By this, “She shall remove her gown of captivity,” meaning from the soul, “and dwell in your home,” meaning a home of Israel, and not in her captivity among the Klipot, which is called “Shechina [Divinity] in exile.”