Mattot-Massei
A man dies and heads toward the proverbial pearly gates. He is met along the way and told he is being given a choice between spending eternity in Heaven or in Hell. His first instinct is to choose heaven, but the messenger tells him things are not necessarily what he had been taught to believe, and he should check out each place for a day before deciding. He says let’s see what Hell is like. He is whisked down in a celestial elevator, the doors open and he is confronted by a luxurious country club. There are golf and tennis (and even pickleball) and an incredibly sumptuous buffet and everyone is in party mode.
He checks out Heaven and it is quiet, tranquil and pleasant with angels resting on fluffy clouds playing harps and comfortable quarters and food for the people. He says this is nice but a bit dull. Hell was great and that is what I choose. Back down goes the elevator and the doors open on complete desolation. It is hot and bare. There are only scraps of stale food to eat and the people look miserable. He says this is not what I was shown yesterday, what happened. The answer: yesterday you saw the campaign promises; this is reality!
Ah!! Promises and reality. In too much of today’s business and political world they are often miles apart. Not so for the Israelite people. The first parsha of this week’s double Torah reading, Mattot, begins with rules concerning vows, nederim. We are told “If someone makes a vow to God or takes an oath imposing an obligation on themselves, they shall not break their pledge, thy must carry out all that has crossed their lips. (Num 30:3) The rest of the chapter goes on to deal with various situations concerning women. When a woman makes a vow, the father of a single woman living alone or the husband of a married woman can nullify her vow, but ONLY on the day he learns of it. Beyond that time the vow stands and if he tries to nullify it after that first day then the guilt for non-fulfillment is HIS. This nullification ability seems absurd and unfair by modern standards, but this was a patriarchal society where women were completely financially dependent on their fathers or husbands so the goods of actions they promised were not their own to give. Divorced or widowed women are bound by their vows according to verse ten. They are independent agents.
Again, a man’s vows must be carried out, and a woman’s vow is also binding after the first day her father or husband learns of it. Vows, promises are important. Both Rashi and Ibn Ezra, among the best known of the medieval commentators, touch on the phrase in the verse “they shall not break their pledge.” The verb used for break Yud-Hay-Lamed, YAHAL, they point out, is related to the noun hillul, desecration, as we would describe a vile deed as a Hillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s Name.
The commentators I saw referred mostly to vows to GOD, but as the verse also says “or takes an oath imposing an obligation on themselves…” I would see the seriousness and binding nature of the oath to apply to promises made to other people also. After all, in how many different TV shows, movies or novels has a character said things along the lines of “you have my word” or “my word is my bond”? Keeping promises is so important in the biblical idiom that toward the end of P’sukei D’zimra, our preliminary prayers each morning, we recite a passage from chapter 9 of the prophetic book Nechemia which says “…you made a covenant, (that is a promise) with him (Abraham) to give the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the Girgashite-to give it to his descendants. AND YOU KEPT YOUR WORD for you are righteous. So, if keeping a promise is that much a part of the essence of God’s righteousness how much then is it incumbent upon us?
We make all sorts of promises. When we marry there is, explicit and implicit, the promise of fidelity and faithfulness, and society looks upon violations of that vow very harshly. Securing a loan involves a promise to repay. We make monetary pledges to charity; we promise to do someone a favor. A worker taking on a job commits to the quality, completeness and timeliness of their work just as the employer promises to pay them the contracted compensation. Accepting a kashrut hecksher on the food we buy or eat is an act of faith in the implied promise of the seller or the certifying authority. We take the power of a promise so seriously that when we propose to do something and aren’t sure we can follow through, we add the word “b’lie neder” “not an oath.” Heck, we even start the Yom Kippur services with Kol Nidre which preemptively annul al the vows we are going to make in the coming year (but only those to God not to other people).
I find it interesting that this parsha begins with rules about promises and ends with a promise. The tribes of Reuven, Gad, and half of Menashe, in return for being allowed to settle East of the Jordan River, promise to serve as advance shock-troops as the Israelites enter and conquer Canaan. Joshua holds them to that promise by the way.
When my Uncle David, of blessed memory, passed away some years ago, part of my eulogy was to say: “when Uncle David said he was going to do something, you knew it was going to happen.” That was, and continues to be, a very high compliment. May we all be worthy of being praised in this way. A promise is a promise is a promise.
Shabbat Shalom
