Vows, Values, & You

From This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, by Alan Lew

"Parashat Matot deals with ... the case in which a woman makes a vow she can't keep because she is living under the power of a man -- either her husband or her father -- who won't let her keep it. The Torah's remedy in such a case is to forgive the woman for not keeping her vow.

"This is an interesting passage for a number of reasons... (p. 198). But all this operates on another level as well. This I learned from the commentaries of Ibn Gikitilla, the great medieval Spanish Kabalist (p. 199)... The woman in question here, according to Gikitilla, was not an actual person, but rather the neshamah -- the soul, the feminine representation of the will of God, the tzelem elohim, the image of God that resides deep in every human soul. The man whose power it lives under is the yeter hara- the evil impulse- which often prevents the neshamah from making its will manifest. ...

"[This] tells us that action really does spring from a kind of inner speech, the language we use to define the world to ourselves. Like God, each of us participates in the creation of the world. Blessed be He who speaks and the world comes into being, we say of God in our liturgy every morning. But it applies to us as well. We also speak and bring the world into being. The world presents us with a great chaos of information. Our speech encourages us to select certain possibilities out of this chaos and to discard others. Not only that, but this deep inner speech that precedes action is always well intentioned, always comes from the neshamah, that deep inner echo of the word of God.

"But this deep inner voice often fails to make it to the surface of the world in the form of action because of the tumultuous whirlwind of impulses it encounters between the heart and the world. This, in fact, is what Gikitlla identifies as the yetzer hara, that complex of impulses and dysfunctions that so often prevents us from doing what we know we should do" (p. 200).

From Covenant & Conversation-Keeping Our Word, מטות, Matot • 5771, 5776

"...So seriously does Judaism treat verbal undertakings that one act of annulment, Kol Nidrei, takes place at the start of the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur.

"The superficial reason for the law of vows appearing here is that the previous section of the Torah dealt with communal sacrifices. Individuals also brought sacrifices, sometimes because they were bound to do so but at other times because they voluntarily chose to do so. Hence the laws of voluntary undertakings.

"But there is a deeper reason. The Israelites were nearing the land. They were about to construct a society unlike any other. It was to be a free society based on a covenant between the people and God. The rule of law was to be secured not by the use of force but by people honouring their moral commitments, their voluntary undertaking to God that what He commanded, they would do.

"A covenantal society is one in which words are holy, sacrosanct. This is the principle at the heart of Judaism as a code of collective freedom, a constitution of liberty.

..."When we bind ourselves by words we are using language not to describe but to create – to create an orderly future out of the chaos of human instincts and desires. What makes humans unique is not just the use of language. Other animals use forms of language...What is unique to humans is that we use language to bind our own future behaviour so that we can form with other human beings bonds of mutuality and trust."