Right at the beginning of this week’s parasha we learn about the rules regarding vows. Vows made by men must be upheld. Vows made by women… well, that’s a little more complicated.
If a man vow a vow to the Lord, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.
If a woman also vow a vow to the Lord, and bind herself by a bond, being in her father’s house inn her youth; and her father hear her vow, and her bond with which she has bound herself, and her father shall hold his peace at her; then all her vows shall stand, and every bond with which she has bound herself shall stand. But if her father disallow her in the day that he hears; not any of her vows, or of her bonds with which she has bound herself, shall stand: and the Lord shall forgive her, because her father disallowed her.
And if she be married to a husband, when she vowed, or uttered aught out of her lips, with which she bound herself; and her husband heard it and held his peace at her in the day that he heard it; then her vows shall stand, and her bonds with which she bound herself shall stand. But if her husband disallowed her on the day that he heard it; then he shall make her vow which she vowed, and that which she uttered with her lips, with which she bound her soul, of no effect: and the Lord shall forgive her.
But every vow of a widow, and of her that is divorced, with which they have bound their souls, shall stand against her.
And if she vowed in her husband’s house, or bound herself by a bond with an oath; and her husband heard it, and held his peace at her, and disallowed her not: then all her vows shall stand, and every bond with which she bound her soul shall stand. But if her husband made them void on the day he heard them; then whatever proceeded out of her lips concerning her vows, or concerning the bond of the soul, shall not stand: her husband has made them void; and the Lord shall forgive her. Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may let it stand, or her husband may make it void. But if her husband hold his peace at her from day to day; then he confirms all her vows, or all her bonds, which are upon her: he confirms them, because he held his peace at her in the day that he heard them. But if he should annul them after he has heard them: then he shall bear her iniquity.
Numbers 30:2-16 Koren Jerusalem Bible
Reading those words, your first reaction might be to recoil at the patriarchy of it. Why is it that a man’s vows are valid all on their own, but a woman’s vows are only valid if the man in charge of her life gives his assent? This is the kind of thing that makes many people disgusted with Torah, and want to throw it all out. We don’t need that kind of sexism. It’s terrible!
But, what if I told you that this is the very opposite of sexism? What if I told you that this law was specifically for the protection of women in a sexist society and that it has a very different teaching for us today?
Tikva Frymer-Kensky writes in the introduction to Reading The Women of the Bible, “The male Lord did not create patriarchy. The truth is just the opposite: patriarchal thought required that the one Lord of all be conceived as a male and portrayed in a masculine grammar.” In her analysis, the Bible isn’t patriarchal because God wanted a patriarchal society. The Bible reflects patriarchy because that was the environment in which it was written and received. She goes on to explain that “the Bible also does not defend the status quo, for the idea of a social revolution is integral to biblical thought. God is a god of change, for God elevates the lowly, brings the marginalized to the center, and raises high the socially inferior.”
The sexism we see in Torah isn’t mi Sinai but rather from the society, and Torah itself could only go so far in transforming that society in a single generation. The rest of the work is left for us as an ongoing exercise in spiritual and societal growth. But Torah didn’t just ignore the sexism and patriarchy of the society in which it was received. Torah takes that generation on the first steps toward transformation by mitigating some of the worst abuses right out the gate.
Torah didn’t abolish slavery, but did command us to help runaway slaves rather than returning them to their “owners”, and in so doing it showed us what God really thinks of slavery. So too, Toroah didn’t abolish the patriarchy, but it did give women rights and protections that they had not had before, showing us that women are just as human as men.
Last week, in parashat Pinchas, God told Moshe that daughters have a right to inherit when there is no son. Then Moses told the people that the rest of the potential inheritors were men – brothers, and uncles, and so on. The patriarchy was not in God’s commandments, but in the assumptions of Moshe and the Sons of Israel.
So, if this isn’t just a reification of patriarchal norms, what am I suggesting is going on here? This set of rules is about protecting women from the abuses of male power over their actions.
God knows that women are subject to male domination in the society where they live. As children and young, unmarried women, they are under the control of their father. As adults, they are under the control of their husband. Women may make a vow, but the men in their life may interfere with the fulfillment of that vow. God knows that.
These days we don’t think so much about the power of a vow, but in the time of the giving of Torah a vow was believed to have magical power. Oaths and curses are tightly intertwined. If you make an oath, there are consequences for not keeping that oath. The consequence is the curse. If a woman were to make a vow and her father or husband were to interfere with her fulfillment of that vow, a curse might befall that woman. The ruling at the start of this parasha makes sure that won’t happen.
If a woman makes a vow, and the man that has power over her wants to interfere with that vow, he has one chance. He can block the vow when he first hears of it. If he blocks the vow when he first hears of it, that vow is as if it never happened. If she can’t do what she has sworn to do, she may be upset that she is not permitted to do that thing, but at least there is no curse that will befall her. And if he doesn’t block the vow when he first hears of it, but then interferes with her fulfillment of the vow later? Then the curse will redound to him. She is safe.
Notice, this ruling does not say that women’s vows are irrelevant or that they are invalid. Women’s vows are just as real as men’s vows, and the vows of women who are not subject to male control – widows and divorcees – are theirs and theirs alone. The idea that a woman’s vow is anything less than a vow made by a man is an idea of the patriarchy, not the Torah. It is in fact the very validity of women’s vows that requires that this mitigation be put in place to protect women from a curse caused by the interference of a man.
So, what does this teach us for today?
I would suggest that today we might consider this passage through a more cooperative and gender-neutral light.
If a child who is old enough to be ritually responsible but young enough to be the responsibility of their parents makes a vow, their parents have the right to nullify that vow. Why? Not because the child is too dumb to know what they are doing, but because that vow might affect the family unit, and the adults have the responsibility to protect both the child and the family as a whole.
And if a married person makes a vow, they should preferably not do it without discussion with their spouse in advance. If, however, a vow is made and the other spouse finds out later, the other spouse should have the ability to nullify that vow, again, not because the first spouse is incapable of making a valid oath, but because that oath may affect both members of the couple and consent is important. Once the non-vowing spouse has heard about the oath and has assented to it, they should not interfere with the fulfillment of that vow. They should instead do whatever they can to assist the vowing spouse to do what they have vowed.
This is not halacha that you will find in any code today, but perhaps it will be in the future. Because our Path is not a Path that has been frozen in time. We are called upon to use our knowledge and our moral compass to apply the Torah appropriately in each generation. We do not live in the same kind of society as our ancestors who wandered in the desert, but we are not completely free from patriarchy today. If we wish to free ourselves from that ill completely, we MUST apply the Law to a post-patriarchal framework. If we do not, we will continue to slide back into the bad old days over and over without knowing why. It’s time for us to do more than mitigate for the harms of patriarchy just like we chose to stop simply mitigating the ills of slavery.