Dvar Torah on Parshat Matot

This week’s first parsha, Matot – we also read the following one, Masa’ay – begins with laws pertaining to making and breaking oaths. This is an area of Jewish law that is pretty much out of commission today, as we do not make oaths the way they used to. The Torah is talking about things like getting mad at someone and swearing to never speak to or eat with them again, or swearing to never do a certain thing, using God’s name in the process. These oaths are taken very seriously by the Halacha, and one must keep them. However, there are mechanisms for nullifying these oaths. Our parsha talks about the way that fathers and husbands can nullify the oaths of their daughters or wives, and free them from their verbal obligation.

For some reason, the parsha frames these laws with this opening statement: “And Moshe spoke to the heads of the tribes of the People of Israel, saying: this is the thing that God has commanded.” Why does the Torah tell us, rather unusually, that these laws were addressed to the “heads of the tribes”? Why not use the much more common “and Moshe spoke to the people of Israel, saying…”?

The laws of fathers and husbands being able to nullify, or, by withholding their nullification, uphold, the oaths of their daughters or wives, is one example of how a patriarchal society is arranged: fathers and husbands are, at least to some degree, in charge of their women-folk. Now, we all know that this was the way, more or less, that the world was always run – and is still run, outside of the much of the modern, democratic, liberal west. There is a clear hierarchy, and men, unfettered by pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, and all that goes along with all that, as well as being generally taller, heavier, and stronger, were – and in many societies still are – in charge of things. Jewish law has, for millennia, mitigated this situation, by, for example, enabling women to own property and have certain economic and personal rights within a marriage, but only modern feminism has really begun to challenge and change it.

I think the prefatory verse – “And Moshe spoke to the heads of the tribes of Israel”, serves as a way to remind us that we are dealing with a generally hierarchal society. There are tribes, with a clear chain of command – they are “headed” by someone - and this hierarchal arrangement extends all the way down to the individual family unit, where husbands and fathers are in charge.

The question is: why do we need to be reminded of the essentially hierarchal nature of the nation in the context of keeping our word, being truthful, and living up to what we say? What is the connection between living in a stratified, patriarchal society and telling the truth?

Well, let’s see. Why is it a value to be truthful? Why is it important to live up to what we say, behave as we promise we will, and be faithful to our word? I think it is all about relationships. We create our relationships with speech. When I am being untruthful, I am betraying a relationship; I am being untruthful to someone. At base, we begin our lives being truthful – or not – to our parents, our siblings and friends, to God. Failure to live up to what we say, to be honest about what we tell others,  destroys these basic relationships, by making it impossible to really know who it is one is relating to. If I can not believe what someone has told me he did or did not do, or will or will not do, then I can not really have a relationship with that person; I don’t know him or her. Truth is about being loyal to the people to whom I owe loyalty, being honest with people to whom I owe honesty.

In a hierarchal world, it is very clear to whom I owe this honesty, to whom I am speaking when I say things, which is why the Torah places the laws pertaining to oaths in the context of that kind of world and those kinds of relationships. (This is why we still “swear to God” or “by my something-that-means-a-lot-to-me – we understand that telling the truth is about loyalty to something or someone that we respect, and owe loyalty to.) Today, many of us live in a world where we do not – certainly not as much as we used to - owe allegiance to those higher up the ladder than we are. Most of our interactions are between equals (not all; there are still bosses, big shots, people in charge, but there are many more egalitarian relationships than there used to be, especially between the genders). The question is: what does that do to the value of being honest? If I don’t “owe you” being true to my word, what guarantees that I will be? As individuals are more and more in charge of their own lives, they are also freer to create their own narratives, their own realities, and spin their personal stories as they like. The burden of there being someone who is officially in charge of me, and to whom I therefore owe the allegiance of being truthful, is no longer upon us, as it was in the more hierarchal world of the past.

Our places in the world are not as fixed as they once were. It is no longer clear to whom, exactly, I am being disloyal when I lie, or when I fail to live up to my word. In the modern world we are in charge of ourselves, and we tend to freely choose our relationships. Even the interaction between parents and children, and certainly those between husbands and wives, are more egalitarian than they traditionally were. This new kind of society challenges us to find reasons not rooted in the loyalties and obligations inherent in a hierarchy, but perhaps in relationships which are more loving and inherently open, or in the notion of being honest to ourselves, to speak honestly and truthfully, to live up to our word, even though, as freer people,  we may not technically have to. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix