Matōs-Masey and Vows of revolution / מטות־מסעי און נדרים פֿון רעוואָלוציע

This is a weekly series

of parsha dvarim (Tōrah commentaries) written by a frum, atheist, transsexual anarchist, with guest posts from comrades. It's crucial in these times that we resist the narrative that Zionism owns Judaism. Our texts are rich—sometimes opaque, but absolutely teeming with wisdom and fierce debate. It's the work of each generation to extricate meaning from our cultural and religious inheritance. I aim to offer comment which is true to the pshat (i.e. engages with the plain meaning of the text, especially when it's difficult) and uses Tōrah like a light to reflect on our modern times.

An appeal

My friend Kamal needs help to leave Gaza. He is trying to immigrate to Greece to search for his missing son, who in desperation took a small and dangerous lifeboat across the Mediterranean. Please donate what you can.

Content note

Genocide in Palestine; misogyny; mentions of ICE raids and Texas floods.

A guest dvar by Rena Yehuda Newman

If a thousand years is a day in creation, then the year 5785 is Friday afternoon on the clock of the world – when everything is at its most chaotic, just before Shabbos.

In granular time, we’re about to enter into the Nine Days, the most intense period of mourning on the Jewish calendar ahead of T’sha b’Av, the fast day lamenting the Roman empire’s destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. In the dead heat of the summer, we see with desperation that the world is on fire. In this moment, our annual observance is hardly a metaphor: in the wake of climate disasters like the Texas floods that killed 120 people, fatal ICE raids on farms, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, we do not need to conjure grief in the spirit of the holiday. It’s everywhere already. 

Three years ago, in this same part of Tammuz/July ahead of T’sha b’Av, a comrade and acquaintance of mine named Avinoam Stillman gave over a piece of Torah at a Shabbos meal in Berlin that has moved me ever since: our grief at the destruction of the temple isn’t just about the loss of a physical site, but the loss of a series and quality of human relationships that were only possible because of the vows and oaths made there. Yet, when I asked him about this teaching a year later, he could not recall nor cite it. It was a moment of ruach hakodesh — a moment of divine insight, and it has echoed outward into my understanding of what it means to bring moshiach and olam haboh, the world to come.

This week’s double parsha is Matos-Masey

which includes the death of Aharon, inheritance laws, the creation of “Cities of Refuge” for those who commit manslaughter and fear retribution, and lengthy descriptions of the military plans of the Israelites against the Midianites, spurred by Hashem’s explicit invocation to smash the idols of and violently dispossess the tribes who dwell in Canaan. This militaristic double-parsha ends with the daughters of Tzelophechod inheriting their fathers’ land, and begins with discussion about oaths and vows.

Bmidbar 30:3 (Misha Holleb)

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The Torah describes oaths and vows as taking on voluntary obligations using a verbal contract. Vows (נדרים, “nedarim”) and oaths (שבועות, “shavuos”) are often used interchangeably, with the former usually involving forbidding an object to oneself (“blackberries are like a sacrifice to me, and so I give them up to Hashem”), wherein the latter, one forbids themselves to the object (“I swear, I will not eat blackberries”). Unlike mitzvos, which are mandatory, both vows and oaths are elective, from a place of holy desire. 

Today, our most famous vows and oaths involve the state.

We’re most familiar with the concept of wedding vows — indeed, the most socially acceptable, legible, and legal form of commitment is through monogamous marriage. Other oaths include when a serviceperson enlists in the military, when politicians swear oaths of office, and when a witness testifying swears to the court to tell the truth. What a sign of galus, of exile, that the only loyalties we know how to pronounce are to the state, not people!

However, there was a time when all kinds of vows and oaths were common, going beyond forbidding ourselves and toward committing ourselves. Oaths are very free form in Tanakh: they could be made anywhere and to anyone. They could fit individual relationships as uniquely as the people inside of them. 

Oaths and vows could be about committing to an action, person, or lifestyle, like the Nazirite vow, or Hannah’s vow to commit her child to G-d’s service if she was granted the gift of a son. Importantly, vows and oaths also described unique relationships between people, like that of David and Jonathan, two biblical heroes who were so in love that they needed to take an oath about it — not as gay marriage or either of them as property to be exchanged, but as a commitment to protect one another from harm. When one person, or two people, or multiple people wanted to commit to something, or to each other, vows and oaths were the way of consecrating that desire.