Matot/Massei

Double Portion this week

All My Vows

The Torah and subsequent rabbinic commentaries are very uneasy about vows. These are not the promises we make to each other or our intention to follow the law, but rather added obligations a person might take on—in the Bible, typically abstention from wine, sex, foods, bathing, or haircutting. Once such a vow is taken, it becomes a sin not to fulfill it. On the evening of Yom Kippur, Jews recite the prayer Kol Nidre, which means All My Vows. In that prayer, we ask for dispensation from unfulfilled vows of this type. In Numbers, a husband is given power over his wife’s vows: “Every vow and every sworn obligation of self-denial may be upheld by her husband or annulled by her husband” (30:15).

Open my womb, and I will give
its first fruits to the Lord,
as if my child were meat or bread.
Spare the ones I love from death;
I’ll cut my hair, abstain from wine,
from raisins, grapes, and, vinegar.
Bring winter rain in its due season,
and I will sing a song of praise
each morning though the ice be hard
upon the pavement, the wool scarf
wet with breath. Send peace to the land,
and I will sacrifice a sheaf
of paper, a record of my life.
These are my promises to G-d,
and I am free as any bird
to enter into or betray them.
Upheld or overruled, my vows,
which I have vowed, I do repent.
They are meaningless as words.

Promised Land

In the final chapter of Numbers, we get a preview of the mercilessness that the Israelites will be expected to practice toward the tribes that reside in the promised land. “When you cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan, you shall dispossess all the inhabitants of the land” (33:51-52).

It’s the unapologetic ruthlessness
that makes us queasy, believing that, for once,
they did as they were told without murmuring,
inserted themselves in the abandoned cities
of their enemies, with no more scruple
than cowbirds laying their eggs in an alien nest.
We must believe that it was right; the text says
G-d required it, and we can glean some reason
in what they are commanded to destroy:
altars and idols, the toys of trifling deities,
excuses to perform a vulgar act,
then lay it, like the sacrifice of entrails,
at the feet of gods. Or did they hear
their G-d decree what they desired? A patch
to claim where they might build sheepfolds
for their flocks, shelter for their children;
a land they might dole out with perfect fairness—
to the many, more; to the small, enough—
in perpetuity. Was it too much to ask?