Torah for the Table Parshat Mattot-Mas’ei Prepared by Eliezer Diamond This week we read a double portion, Mattot-Mas’ei:

Mattot (Numbers 30:2-32:42) contains one legal unit and two narratives (each of which contain legal material as well):

A. Numbers 30:2-17: canceling vows and oaths

1. This portion begins with a legal section outlining the laws of oaths and vows, focusing mainly on the rights of men to cancel vows made by their wives and daughters. The rabbis limited the right of husbands to cancel their wives’ vows to those that involved extreme ascetic restrictions or that would have a material effect on the marital relationship.

2. The assumes that other than in these cases a vow is not subject to annulment. Thus, the chieftain Jepthah famously vows to offer to God whatever greets him upon his return from battle; the greeter turns out to be his daughter; see Judges 11:10-40. Though her ultimate fate is not clear, there is no suggestion that Jepthah could avert a tragic fate for his daughter by annulling his vow. It is only in the rabbinic period that annulment, to be performed by a sage after establishing that a vow was made without taking all of its possible consequences into account, is accepted as a legitimate means of undoing vows.

B. Numbers 31

1. God commands the people of Israel to avenge the death and shame brought upon them by the Midianites. The people raise an army and attack the Midianites, killing all the adult males, the five kings of and . The women and children are left alive. Discovering this, becomes angry and declares that all the male children and any woman who is not a virgin should be slain; only women who had never had sexual relations were to be spared. Apparently, all males, even children, were to be seen as potential antagonists, and the group of women who were not virgins would have included the very women who were seen as having seduced Israelite men into the worship of .

2. Any combatants who had come into contact with the dead had to remain outside the camp until they had undergone a process of purification. The spoils also required a purification process before they could be handled and used. It is this latter requirement that the rabbis claimed as a basis for the requirement that all utensils made of metal and glass (and,

1

according to some, other materials as well) acquired from or manufactured by gentiles need to be immersed in a miqveh before use.

3. The spoils were divided equally among the soldiers and the rest of the people. However, the combatants were required to donate a relatively small portion of the booty to the priest while the rest of the community had to make a more substantial donation to the Levites.

4. Interestingly, after discovering that not a single one of their men had died in battle the commanders and officers make an additional gift to God. The soldiers themselves, however, chose not to do so.

C. Numbers 32

1. The tribes of Reuben and Gad (and, according to one of the traditions included in the narrative, half the tribe of Menashe) ask to be permitted to claim the lands of the Transjordan as their inheritance, this land being particularly well suited for raising sheep. Moses accuses them of following in the ways of the spies, spurning the divinely of and abandoning their fellow who would be going to war shortly to take possession of it. The Reubenites and Gaddites then commit themselves to crossing the Jordan to aid their fellow Israelites in the battles of conquest, only then returning to their wives, children and sheep on the other side of the river. Moses is mollified, but he makes sure to instruct Joshua, Eleazar and the communal elders that the Transjordan is to be regarded as the rightful inheritance of Reuben, Gad and the half-tribe of Menashe only if they join in the campaign of conquest.

2. In the rabbinic period some of the sages viewed this narrative as a binding precedent for how conditions need to be formulated in legal contexts. In particular, it was noted that Moses’ granting of the Transjordan is formulated in both the positive and the negative: if Reuben and Gad crossed the Jordan to fight they would inherit the Jordan; if they do not, they could only claim an inheritance in Canaan itself – for which, presumably, they would have had to fight unaided. As a consequence, some sages held that only a conditional statement formulated in both the positive and the negative can affect whether a transaction is valid. Otherwise, once the transaction takes place it has legal force even though one or both of the parties intended it to be valid only upon the fulfillment a particular condition.

Mas’ei (Numbers 33-36) A. Mas’ei begins with a retrospective itinerary of the Israelite encampments during their sojourn from Egypt to the steppes of (Numbers 33:1-49). A special cantillation tune is used for part of this list, probably simply to reduce the degree of boredom experienced by the listener when hearing “They traveled from A and encamped in B; they traveled from B and encamped in C etc.” Fun fact: my brother lives in a neighborhood in Jerusalem in which many of the streets are named after the encampments mentioned in Mas’ei.

2

B. In preparation for outlining the process to be used for apportioning the land among the tribes, God warns Moses that the people must be diligent about eradicating idols and idolatry from all of the lands they conquer (Numbers 33:50-56) C. We are then given a (highly idealized) delineation of the borders of the land that the Israelites are to inherit (Numbers 34:1-12). D. The actual apportionment of the land is to be done by means of lots which are to be administered by Joshua, Eleazar and the nesi’im or chieftains of each tribe (Numbers 34:13- 29). The exact details of this process are not provided and not surprisingly there is much discussion of and debate about these details in the Talmud and in subsequent biblical and legal commentaries. E. The Torah now turns to those who are not included in the apportionment – the Levites (Numbers 35:1-8). They are granted 48 cities whose exact contours are meticulously laid out, with land outside the city set aside for both agriculture and grazing – an early example of urban planning. F. Another of cities to be set aside ore the cities of refuge, to which someone guilty of involuntary manslaughter can flee to be protected from the vengeance of the “blood-redeemer”, a relative of the slain who is seeking vengeance for the deceased and the deceased’s family (Numbers 35:9-34). A definition of voluntary and involuntary murder, a requirement of two witnesses to convict and execute a murderer, and a prohibition against accepting monetary compensation from a murderer in place of his execution – a common practice in the – are also included. G. Finally, the elders of the Gileadite clan of the tribe of Menashe lodge a complaint with Moses (Numbers 36:1-12). Because the daughters of their deceased kinsman Zelophehad have been granted an inheritance, they may, through marriage to men from other tribes, cause their inheritance to pass into the hands of those tribes, thereby diminishing the inheritance of the tribe of Menashe. Moses acknowledges the rightness of their claim – as he had done with that of Zelophehad’s daughters – and after consultation with God advises that the daughters are to marry only men from the tribe of Menashe so that their inheritance stays in the family, so to speak. The rabbis regarded this as a hora’at sha’ah, a ruling meant only for this particular circumstance, and did not assume any general requirement of women inheriting land to marry only members of their own tribe. H. The ends with the following declaration: “These are the commandments and regulations that the Lord enjoined upon the Israelites, through Moses, on the steppes of Moab, at the Jordan near ” (Numbers 36:13).

But wait...there’s more!

3

JTS Torah Commentary

Parashat Mattot 5774 By Rabbi Eliezer Diamond | Rabbi Judah Nadich Associate Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics

Are words important? This is a question that bedevils us as human beings. It is largely the ability to speak that distinguishes us from the rest of the animal world. By speech I do not mean the mere ability to communicate information; we know that other animals are capable of this feat, each in its own way. I mean the ability to speak of past and future, the ability to imagine and conceptualize, and the capacity to employ words as, using a term coined by philosopher J. L. Austin, performative utterances. This means that our words serve not merely as description or as evidence; they also serve as instruments of action. Think, for example, of the groom or bride at a wedding who says, "I do." These words are not only testimony to the desire to be married; in part they create the marriage. The same is true of the words "Harei at mequedeshet li”, “Behold you are betrothed to me”, recited by the groom to the bride at a Jewish wedding before placing the ring on her finger. Another form of performative utterance is a vow whereby one commits oneself to engage in or refrain from one or more actions. This week’s Torah portion twice touches on the question of the power – and limits – of words as performative utterances.

In biblical Israel women were largely under the control of their fathers and husbands. Because of the powerful and binding nature of vows a daughter or wife might make a vow as a means of escaping that control. In this week’s Torah portion, we are told, apparently in response to such a concern, that a father or husband may cancel his daughter’s/wife’s vows. This admittedly oppressive law ironically served as the basis for a rabbinic innovation that reduced the power of vows significantly. The institution of hatarat nedarim, literally “the unbinding of vows”, allows a sage to annul vows. To do so he must determine that the person taking the vow had a faulty or incomplete understanding of the vow’s consequences at the time he took it, rendering the vow a mistaken and therefore invalid commitment. Having so determined the sage declares “Mutar lakh”, “You are unbound”. One utterance has the power to undo the effectiveness of the other.

Later in the Torah portion, the tribes of Gad and Reuven express their desire to settle on the eastern bank of the Jordan, in the land captured from Sihon, the Amorite, and Og, king of the Bashan, rather than in the land of Canaan. After overcoming his initial anger, Moses grants the land to them conditionally. If they join their brothers in conquering the land of Canaan, they will be granted the land they seek. However, if they fail to do so, they will forfeit the land to the east of the Jordan. The rabbis utilize this narrative as the template for the proper formulation of a conditional statement. For example, one of the requirements for formulating a valid condition according to Jewish law is that it be tenai kaful, a “doubled condition”, meaning that it must be stated in both the positive and the negative. Thus, for example, if I say, “If it does not rain tomorrow then I will not donate $100 to charity, but if it does rain tomorrow, then I will donate $100 to charity,” and it rains the next day, I am obligated to donate the $100. However, if I say merely, “If it rains tomorrow, I will donate $100 to charity,” I am obligated to make the donation even if it does not rain.

4

Now we can explain this technically: Jewish law determines that stating “if” does not qualify my obligation. Only if I state “if and only if”—by formulating my condition in both the positive and the negative—does the condition qualify the statement and its implicit condition. Still, the law is troubling. The intent of the person who made the vow is clear; he only intended it to have force if the condition was fulfilled. Why then is he obligated nonetheless? The answer lies in the power of words. This person’s words, as currently formulated, create an obligation whether he intended it or not. Only a properly formulated condition can prevent that obligation from taking effect. Because this person failed to state such a condition, his words have obligated him. Here we find words having a power of their own, independent of the intentions of the person who uttered them.

We are now in the midst of the three weeks preceding the Ninth Day of Av, the day on which, tradition tells us, the First and Second Temples were destroyed. In traditional liturgy the trauma of the destruction of the Temples permeates every page of the prayer book. For many of us, whose feelings about the sacrificial cult are at best ambiguous, this loss is experienced lightly, if at all. It is the Musaf service as it is formulated by Mordechai Kaplan in the Reconstructionist siddur that helps us understand the significance of these events for all of us regardless of our theological convictions. It may well be, says Kaplan, that we find the sacrificial system foreign and even repulsive. We must not forget, however, that when our ancestors brought sacrifices, they brought the sheep, cattle, wine, oil, and flour that they had so laboriously raised and produced over the course of the year and offered them as gifts to God. To use the contemporary vernacular, they put their money where their mouths were. In our synagogues we offer God only words. Of what value are these when measured against the actions of our ancestors? We are confronted once again with the question of whether words matter.

At no time are the absence of the Temple and the inadequacy of words felt more strongly than on Yom Kippur. When the Temple stood our sins were forgiven through the offerings brought and confessions made by the High Priest. We can only guess at the cathartic power of the ritual of the scapegoat, in which the burden of sinfulness could symbolically be cast off and one could imagine one’s sins disappearing into the wilderness never to return. No words could possibly equal the power and majesty of the Temple rites.

The Yom Kippur liturgy responds to this challenge in a number of ways. First, to an extent unknown elsewhere in the liturgy, we re-create the Temple service itself. For a brief time, the prayer leader becomes the high priest, and we are the people of Israel gathered in the Temple courtyard. For the only time during the year we prostrate ourselves before God as our ancestors did in the Temple. Second, we recite the martyrology, reminding God that, unfortunately, sacrifice continues after the Temple’s destruction in the form of martyrdom. Third, we emphasize the thirteen merciful attributes of God. According to rabbinic tradition, God taught these attributes to Moses by taking on the role of a prayer leader and reciting them. Moreover, God promised Moses that if, in times of adversity, the people recited these attributes before God, God would be “reminded” of God’s merciful nature and forgive the people.

5

And, finally, there is Kol Nidre. In the end, whether it is recollecting the Temple service, reciting the martyrology, or declaring the thirteen attributes of God’s merciful nature, we are still in the realm of words and words only. Is this nothing more than a pale reflection of the world of action and consequence? Hence, Kol Nidre, which is – at least in its original formulation – a formula for hatarat nedarim. Before we begin to pray, we recite a formula reminding us that words have power; they both create and nullify obligations. Our prayers are not meaningless; words count.

But the symbolism of Kol Nidre is double-edged. Unlike actions, verbal commitments can be undone. Our prayers do have power, but only if we mean them, only if we act upon them. On Yom Kippur and all other days, prayers are a beginning, not an end. They lead us to reflection and self-assessment. They help us chart a course of action to be followed once our prayers are concluded. Our prayers are pledges that should be honored and not cancelled.

Are words important? The answer lies with those who use them; the answer lies with us.

The publication and distribution of the JTS Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee and Harold (z”l) Hassenfeld.

6