no promises

Don't miss an episode! Subscribe to the Madlik podcast: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts

and Join Madlik on Clubhouse every Thursday at 8:00pm Eastern so you can participate in our weekly live discussion of the Parsha

One day a Jewish man wakes up late for a new job interview. He quickly takes a shower, eats breakfast, and gets into his car. When he finally gets there, he can't find any parking places. He looks and looks, but he just doesn't find one. Finally he prays to God and says, "God if you find me a parking spot, I'll go to synagogue every Saturday morning and I will never lie again."

Two minutes later, he finds a parking spot out of the blue and says, "Never mind God. I found one!"

See: The Interview, by AISH

Jacob Milgrom Numbers (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: JPSA, 1990), 488, thinks that this is the very definition of neder: “Vows are promissory by definition, but they differ from promissory oaths in that they are conditional.” This would not necessarily be true of the Nazirite, however, nor of the various persons dedicated to YHWH with a vow (neder) in Lev.27. It should be noted that in the Talmud these distinctions are thoroughly blurred.

As Jacques Berlinerblau has argued, vows were means of claiming power by marginalized groups. A conditional vow, in particular, offers YHWH an exchange, and may be an attempt to force his hand. Cross-culturally, ascetism is correlated with spiritual power. A woman who takes the initiative to make a vow or to abstain from something thereby puts herself outside patriarchal control. A small indication of this is the insistence that she express herself with the “utterance of her lips” (vv. 7, 9 cf. v.13). Like every verbal articulation, it indicates the presence of a subject.

See: Can a Husband Annul His Wife’s Nazirite Vow? Prof. ​Francis Landy

According to the fine print of the traditional “Rödelheim Machzor”, these words only concern personal vows and intentions. Kol Nidre, it explains in a footnote, is not about annulling actual promises to others, but refers only to the person who says the prayer. More common is the not-much-less apologetic reading of Kol Nidre as an interaction only between man and God – as in this footnote to the prayer: “This utterance relates solely to vows made to God, and in no sense obligations entered into between man and man.” At times the footnote is an actual warning: “We ask our readers not to misunderstand the meaning of this formulation.”

In the Machzor of the Rabbinical Assembly (the rabbinic organization of the Conservative Movement), the footnote simply became part of the English translation: “All vows, renunciations, bans, oaths, formulas of obligation, pledges, and promises that we vow or promise to ourselves and to God.” God, though, is actually not mentioned in the Kol Nidre.

The earliest references to the prayer come from the geonic period (Amram, 9^th century). Already then, there were attempts to abolish the prayer because of its distressing content. Scholars of the “holy academy” had called it a “foolish custom” (מנהג שטות).

Christians have taken Kol Nidre as proof for not trusting Jews swearing an oath. Thus Johann Andreas Eisenmenger states in his Entdecktes Judenthum (“Judaism Unmasked”) from 1700:

Because of such an absolution and remission of an oath, I say that Jews are accused by many of being freed from all false oaths that they swear.

Eisenmenger cites Samuel Friederich Brentz (apparently a convert) who had written:

With regard to their oaths one needs to know that the Jews have a peculiar prayer in which they allow themselves to commit perjury against the Goyim, that is, against the Christians. And this prayer they say with great reverence. (…) its name is Kol Nidre.

Jews were aware of these accusations and the continuing risk of Kol Nidre. Samson Raphael Hirsch, the leading voice of German orthodoxy in the 19^th century, cancelled Kol Nidre during his tenure in Oldenburg, but it reentered the service after a short time. Abraham Geiger, the harbinger of Reform Judaism, rephrased the text: “all my transgressions and the transgressions of this congregation (כל־פשעי ופשעי הקהל הזה): they shall be removed and made null.”

^See: The Significance of Kol Nidre: A Footnote: How a provoking and problematic Aramaic prayer continues to mesmerize so many Jews every Yom Kippur. Prof. René Bloch

Confessions as Preventative Medicine

The combination of repetitive overlapping terms for sin with specific accusations found in the Yom Kippur confessions is a continuation of these ancient Near Eastern confessions. This combination functions as a way of showing the person’s desire to cover any possible sin—whether of the person’s own or of the person’s family—that may be causing the suffering now being experienced.

Similarly, the solemn Kol Nidrei (“all oaths”) service that opens the Yom Kippur ceremonies can be traced back to a similar type of thought. This recitation is meant to annul any vow that a person may have made but forgotten about or found impossible to fulfill. Similar to the confessions, this recitation stems from the concern that sort of vow lies over one’s head and can be responsible for a punishment in the coming year. Here too, these notions find an ancient Near Eastern precedent in the Shurpu incantations, which devote considerable space to various types of unknown – and hence unfulfilled – oaths that may threaten the patient.

As a result, rather surprisingly, medieval Jewish traditions of confessing sins find their closest precedent not in biblical or rabbinic traditions but in Mesopotamian incantations. In the latter context, the confessions served to heal the illness of the supplicant.

See: Confessing Sins You Didn’t Commit Dr. Yitzhaq Feder

What is truth and what is falsehood? When we went to school we were taught that truth is to tell the facts as they occurred and falsehood is to deviate from this. This is true in simple cases, but in life many occasions arise when this simple definition no longer holds good. Sometimes it may be wrong to "tell the truth" about our neighbor, unless overriding purpose and necessity require this. And sometimes it may be necessary to change details, when the plain truth would bring not benefit but injury. In such cases what appears to be true is false, since it produces evil effects; and what appears to be false may help to achieve the truth. We had better define truth as that which is conducive to good and in conformity with the will of the Creator, and falsehood as that which furthers the scheme of the Prince of Falsehood, the power of evil in the world. 1 ELIYAHU E. DESSLER, STRIVE FOR TRUTH 267 (Aryeh Carmell trans., 1978).

See: Lying and Lawyering: Contrasting American and Jewish Law, Steven H. Resnicof, Notre Dame Law Review, Volume 77 Issue 3, Propter Honoris Respectum, Article 7

Second, and more fundamentally, Netanyahu's argument boils down to: [Trust me, I won't abuse my power. In a recent online Q&A, Betzalel Smotrich, the far-right minister of finance, similarly answered a query asking who guarantees that minority rights will be respected in the new system. His
answer was simple and telling: "I do."

Israel's majoritarian nightmare should be a US concern, Natan Sachs, February 23, 2023 Brookings Institute