I received a package in the mail this week which filled with terror when I opened it and saw what was inside. I opened the large white envelope and out…slipped…the Ezras Torah Luach for 5777 which begins in only a few more weeks. I’m not quite ready for a new calendar, I’m not ready yet for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But, there’s actually a hint of Yom Kippur right at the beginning of the Torah portion this morning:
אִיש֩ כִֽי־יִדֹ֨ר נֶ֜דר לַֽה׳ אֽו־הִשָ֤בַע שְבֻעָה֙ לֶאְסֹ֤ר אִסָר֙ עַל־נַפְש֔ו ל֥א יַחֵ֖ל דְבָר֑ו כְכָל־הַיֹצֵ֥א מִפִ֖יו יַעֲשֶֽה׃
“If a man makes a vow to the LORD or takes an oath imposing an obligation on himself, he shall not break his pledge; he must carry out all that has crossed his lips.”
The Torah is introducing a system of voluntary vows and oaths and obligations that we have the capacity to create for ourselves, and that, once enacted, have the status of a Torah obligation. A properly executed vow or oath becomes very much a Torah obligation. ל֥א יַחֵ֖ל דְבָר֑ו כְכָל־הַיֹצֵ֥א מִפִ֖יו יַעֲשֶֽה he shall not break his pledge; he must carry out all that has crossed his lips.
These verses at the beginning of our parasha this week are the source for the Kol Nidrei prayer that we recite right as Yom Kippur begins. Nedarim, Shevu’ot, Issarim, vows, oaths, and imposed obligations are the topics of these verses and the Kol Nidre ceremony in which we declare our regret for the vows those voluntary religious obligations that we may have somehow accepted during the year.
In the Torah, there is another method to annul vows, but this method, the Torah makes quite clear, is only available to some people:
וְאִם־הָי֤ו תִֽהְיֶה֙ לְאִ֔יש ונְדר֖יהָ עָלֶ֑יהָ א֚ו מִבְטָ֣א שְפָתֶ֔יהָ אֲשֶ֥ר אָסְר֖ה עַל־נַפְשָֽה׃
וְשָמַ֥ע אִישָ֛ה בְי֥ום שָמְע֖ו וְהֶחֱר֣יש לָ֑ה וְק֣מו נְדר֗יהָ וֶֽאֱסָר֛הָ אֲשֶר־אָסְר֥ה עַל־נַפְשָ֖ה יָקֽמו׃ וְ֠אִם בְי֨ום שְמֹ֣עַ אִישָה֮ יָנִ֣יא אותָה֒ וְהֵפֵ֗ר אֶת־נִדרה֙ אֲשֶ֣ר עָלֶ֔יהָ וְאֵת֙ מִבְטָ֣א שְפָתֶ֔יהָ אֲשֶ֥ר אָסְר֖ה עַל־נַפְשָ֑ה וָ֖ה׳ יִֽסְלַֽח־לָֽה׃
“If she should marry while her vow or the commitment to which she bound herself is still in force, and her husband learns of it and offers no objection on the day he finds out, her vows shall stand and her self-imposed obligations shall stand. But if her husband restrains her on the day that he learns of it, he thereby annuls her vow which was in force or the commitment to which she bound herself; and the LORD will forgive her.”
The Torah explains that father’s can nullify vows made by their adolescent daughters. And, more dramatically, husbands are allowed to nullify vows made by their wives. Now, there are limits to the vows that a husband can nullify. First, he is only able to nullify vows that impact the marriage:
כָל־נֵ֛דר וְכָל־שְבֻעַ֥ת אִסָ֖ר לְעַנֹ֣ת נָ֑פֶש אִישָ֥ה יְקימֶ֖נו וְאִישָ֥ה יְפֵרֽנו׃
Every vow and every sworn obligation of self-denial may be upheld by her husband or annulled by her husband.
The Torah allows men to annul the vows of their wives only when their wives make vows that impact the marriage but not vows and oaths and obligations that effect her alone. Furthermore, the husband only has one day to annul his wife’s vow. He can’t decide after a week that her new religious obligations are a burden he cannot abide.
And so, even though the Torah empowers men with veto power over their wives, that power is not total. Women are able to use oaths and vows and other voluntary obligations to create additional order in their lives and for religious growth, just as men. However, their husbands can prevent those vows from harming their marriage.
Personally, I am not bothered that husbands can veto their wife’s vows. I’m bothered that there does not seem to be any corresponding way for wives to veto their husband’s vows. How can God’s Torah contain such a unbalanced endorsement of patriarchy and male-dominated families?
Rambam, Maimonides, as he so often does, points the way towards a solution. In a famous passage from his Guide for the Perplexed, Rambam explains that all of the animal sacrifices in the Torah, the entire system of korbanot which dominate half of the Torah, are only in the Torah because our ancient Israelite ancestors would not have respected the Torah had it not included animal sacrifices. God does not need animal sacrifices and korbanot are not a refined way of worship, but the Torah is not only eternal, it was also meant to be relevant and accepted to our more primitive ancestors.
In this way, patriarchy in the Torah represents, not God’s ideal vision for society, but a concession to a primitive worldview shared by our ancestors and shared by the rest of the Ancient Near East. A fundamentally patriarchal society was a necessary concession to the limits of what our ancestors could imagine and comprehend, just like animal sacrifices were a concession to the way every religion functioned in the Ancient Near East.
Is this satisfying? Not entirely. Professor Daniel Rhynhold, a professor at Yeshiva University and author of the “Introduction to Medieval Jewish Philosophy” has written
The problem is that according to Maimonides the commandments are part of an eternal and absolute law. But we cannot explain why it was rational for God to command the sacrificial cults as part of an eternal law. The teleological explanations only rationalize the commandments for as long as they serve the ends they were designed to serve and that time has passed… In the final analysis at a purely philosophical level, Maimonides’ rationalization makes it just as difficult to understand why it was rational for God to command these laws for eternity as it does to understand why one ought to perform them.
In other words, we don’t need to be concerned about the content of what God revealed in the Torah, but we are left wondering why the mitzvot were given for eternity as immutable law.
Fortunately, the Torah is only the beginning of the story. The oral Torah, as we find in the Mishnah, introduces some new information:
The Mishnah, in Massechet Ketubot, to take one example out of several, describes the impact of a husband’s vow that negatively impacts his wife:
המדיר את אשתו שלא תטעום אחד מכל הפירות. יוציא ויתן כתובה
“One who makes a vow to deny his wife any kind of fruit…she can complain to the court and the court will give the husband the option of annulling his vow, or divorcing his wife, and accepting full fault.”
It appears as though the Mishnah, the Oral Torah, fills in a lacuna that exists in the Written Torah and provides some measure of balance to Jewish marriages by providing recourse to wives when their husbands make capricious or burdensome vows.
So what do we make of this? It seems Jewish law has ended up in a place where men and women are almost equally protected from rash and intrusive vows made by their spouses. And, the Talmud eventually concludes that the entire rubric of vows are too risky altogether. Rabbi Nathan teaches: If a man makes a vow, it is as though he built an unauthorized altar. And if he keeps his vow, it’s as if he offered a sacrifice on this unauthorized altar. As Rabbi Nathan’s opinion becomes dominant, the entire system of oaths, and vows falls by the wayside of halakhic life. Here is one piece of halakhic gender-discrimination that we can set aside – case closed.
Or is it? How do we incorporate our recognition of a process of progress into a belief that our Torah is a Divine gift? By what right, do we dare to sit in judgment of God’s Torah and suggest improvements. One theology of halakhic progress can be found in the writings of the Maharal, one of the great Talmudic scholars and Jewish thinkers of the 16th century.
If you remember nothing else of what I say this morning, remember this: The Maharal did not create a Golem. The earliest legends ascribing the Golem to the Maharal date from a German novel published in 1834, centuries after the Maharal lived and taught and wrote. There is something so tragic about a great man’s accomplishments being overshadowed by a legend. And, the legend is trivial. Even if he did make a Golem, who cares? Someone once told the Kotzker Rebbe that a wonder-worker rabbi in a neighboring town had the power to make a golem. The Koktzker responded, “Feh! To make a golem is nothing. To make a mensch is hard.”
So, what did the Maharal say? Among other things he said this:
הלא כאשר תתבוננו במעשה השם יתברך, שכל אשר נברא צריך תקון ועשייה. הרי החטים צריכים תקון לעשות אותם כדי שיהיו מתוקנים לאדם, ולא נבראו מן השם יתברך שיהיו חטים גמורים. ומפני כי התורה ניתנה מן השם יתברך על ידי הנביא, כמו שפועל השכל פעולת השכל יותר גדול מן הנבואה, שכך אמרו ז”ל ‘חכם עדיף מנביא’. ולכך החכמים הם הם תיקון והשלמה אל התורה. ואף שנתנה בסיני על ידי משה, שהיה נביא יי, מכל מקום מצד החכמה, שהיא גדולה מן הנבואה, השלמת התורה על ידי .השכל, שהוא מברר הכל
וכך התורה באה לעולם כמו שבאו לעולם כל הדברים הטבעיים, שלא באו לעולם מבוררים לגמרי, רק … כי האדם השכלי צריך לברר אותם.
“When you investigate the acts of God, one finds that all that God has created requires repair and further action. Wheat needs a tikkun in order for it to be ready for human consumption and God did not create wheat that is complete. And since the Torah was given by God through prophecy, and the work of the intellect is greater than the power of prophecy, as our Rabbis taught, “a sage is greater than a prophet.” Therefore, the Sages are the repair and completion of the Torah. Even though the Torah was given on Sinai through Moshe, and Moshe was a prophet of God, nonetheless, from the perspective of wisdom, which is greater than prophecy, the Torah was completed through the application of human reason which then clarifies everything. For the Torah came into the world like all other natural things, not fully clarified. It was left for human reason to clarify.”
Maharal reminds us that the process of perfecting the Torah is not a negation of the Torah’s Divine origin but part and parcel of what it means to receive any gift from God. We are surrounded by Divine gifts, and we are empowered and called upon to refine, process, and complete those gifts, including the most precious gift of all.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 