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.

The Torah puts women in a tough spot when it comes to taking vows and oaths: the men around her may intervene. Fathers and husbands who learn of their daughter’s or wife’s vow can nullify it. But the text specifies (three times!) that even if her vow or oath is nullified by a man, “Hashem forgives her,” and she is not liable for any unfulfilled promises. Instead, the man who blocks her takes on that liability: “He shall bear her guilt” (Bmidbar 30:16). Whether this is a spiritual or literal liability is unclear, but perhaps the text is acknowledging that vows and oaths interrupted bear the mark of an injustice, and still need to find fulfillment somewhere in the world, even if there’s a change in who is responsible.

The gendered codification of who can make and break vows uncomfortably reflects the unfreedoms of our own society, of who can make good on their word without interference. Hashem forgives the disenfranchised woman of Tanakh when she can’t carry out her word; perhaps Hashem forgives all of us when structural inequalities prevent us from making good on our oaths – but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make them when they matter or work to fulfill them. 

Men interrupting women’s vows is a notable exception to the rules about vows and oaths. Otherwise, they were almost unbreakable: the only way to nullify one’s own vow or oath is to make a sacrifice at the Temple. In its absence, the practice of making vows and oaths atrophied.

Revolutionary commitments

These days, when I look around at who’s practicing non-statist commitment most, it’s people creating a chosen family with intention, and other intimacies enabled by queerness and kink: the bond between a Daddy and boy, a submissive’s “collaring” to a Dominant, the pacts made between a trio of lovers, a commitment to caring for a queer elder as they struggle with their health, even – especially – in stressful, painful, and tumultuous situations. Romance or sex may have everything or nothing to do with any of these relationships, but the defining feature is an explicit choice to stay in each others’ lives and be serious about what it means to take care of one another. Learning to take vows and oaths could elevate these existing relationships to even higher heights.

I also see revolutionary opportunities for binding us to each other in the work of local ICE Rapid Response groups, mutual aid organizations, and people sabotaging the work of genocide by infiltrating weapons manufacturers and filling warplane engines with paint or organized unions of Dockworkers refusing to participate in shipping bombs. Even small acts — like sticker campaigns or something as simple and beautiful as corroding a Tesla truck with tar — can interrupt the fascist status quo in public space. We can do them alone, but we always cover more ground and make the work more sustainable when we do it together.

Behind these public acts of direct action, it’s crucial we build the private ties that bind these activists together: the late night conversations, the jokes shared, the soup brought when one of them is sick. Much like anti-statist queer relationships, it’s this quality of intimate trust that emotionally and spiritually fortifies us to throw wrenches in the gears. There is no shortage of ways that the war machine demoralizes us and makes us afraid. But when we choose to bind ourselves to one another, we are able to act bravely because we know that we have each other’s backs. That bravery can take the form of very public action or behind the scenes support — there are roles for everyone in the work of bringing olam haboh, and relationships which bolster them. Taking a vow or oath is a tool from our tradition that can take these relationships one step further: by explicitly, verbally making vows to our comrades and loved ones, we both activate and sanctify our deepest ability to build reliable, enduring connection that enables us to fight the scourges of fascism, nationalism, and militarism.

This double-parsha, however, centers nationalism and militarism. Immediately following this discussion of vows and oaths, the Torah launches into Hashem’s invocation to violently dispossess the inhabitants of the land. It’s disturbing to read while a so-called Jewish state perpetuates a genocide against other inhabitants of the land. Why does the Torah place vows and oaths directly ahead of Hashem commanding the Israelites to violently strip another people of their home?

It’s a useful tool in biblical exegesis to ask why two seemingly unrelated things are placed side by side: these seemingly disparate ideas may answer for each other. It was militarism, empire, and sinas chinam (baseless hatred) that destroyed the Temple and damaged our vow-making muscle — so restoring our ability to commit to one another is crucial in the fight to destroy militarism, empire, and sinas chinam.

Perhaps it wasn’t the Temple that made our vows and oaths holy, but our sacred commitments to each other that consecrated the Temple. 

Perhaps in order to bring moshiach, the rebuilding of the third Temple, and the revolution to make olam hazeh (the world today) into olam haboh (the world to come), we have to start by restoring our ability to be committed to one another with all the seriousness of a holy oath. 

In the Temple’s absence, we now begin Yom Kippur liturgy with “Kol Nidre”, the nullification of all vows, lest we enter into the new year not having fulfilled them and are liable for things we said callously or without full intention. Maybe this is a way of lowering the bar for entry, without reducing the seriousness of the act. Instead of seeing Kol Nidre as an anxious bandaid for the Temple’s nullifying power, what if we saw this annual reassessment of our obligations as an opportunity to choose each other, again and again? 

This Shabbos, consider if there's an action or someone (or many someones) to whom you want to take a vow or oath.

May we see visions of redemption in our grief this T’sha b’Av, woven together by new vows and oaths: our dedication to one another to save our world from even more destruction.

Rena Yehuda Newman

is a Jewish transgender comix artist, writer, educator, illustrator, and independent publisher living and working in Brooklyn, NY. They are the editor of Deviance Magazine, as well as the Director of the UnYeshiva Certificate Program at Judaism Unbound. They are often in London, UK where their beloved transatlantic husband resides. You can find their zines and publications, including the "Testosterone Survey Zine" and their most recent comix collection "Notes on Nationalism", on their gumroad store.