TORAH SPARKS

Parashat Matot-Masei

July 30, 2022 | 2 Av 5782

Torah: Torah Portion: Numbers 30:2-36:13; Triennial 33:50-36:13

Haftarah: Haftarah: I Kings 9:2-9, 9:4-5a

Matot: Marriage (and) Vows

Ilana Kurshan

Our parashah begins with the laws governing oaths and vows. The Torah teaches that both men and women may make vows, but whereas a man s vows remain binding, a woman s vows may be annulled by her husband or father (Numbers 30). Indeed, the majority of the verses in this chapter refer to the details of how and when a husband may annul his wife s vows, a subject discussed at length throughout Seder Nashim, the section of the Talmud dealing with marriage, divorce, adultery, and other aspects of the relationship between husband and wife. The discussion of vows both in our parashah and in the Talmud suggests that vows played an important role in the marital dynamic, offering a window into the risks and rewards of intimate, committed partnership.

Our parashah, in discussing the laws of vowing, refers to vows and sworn obligations of self-denial (30:14), and indeed the majority of the vows discussed in the Talmud in the context of husband-wife relationships refers to vows of prohibition, in which a person declares

that something will be forbidden to him or her. For instance, an individual may swear not to eat certain fruits, or not to bathe, or not to derive any benefit from another person. At times such vows were taken in an attempt to draw closer to God by means of self-denial, like the case of the Nazirite, who vows to abstain from wine and from hair-cutting and from contact with the dead for thirty days. Anyone who has ever committed to a diet recognizes that self-denial seems at times worthwhile in service of a higher end. If I do not eat chocolate cake for a month, I will be able to wear my favorite dress to my sister s wedding. And if I swear in the name of God that I will not drink wine for a month, then my self-denial will bear witness to my devotion to God, bringing me to a higher spiritual level.

The Talmud recognizes that such vows of self-denial, while perhaps spiritually efficacious for the individual, could be quite harmful in the context of intimate partnership. After all, who would want to sleep in the same bed as a person who has vowed not to bathe for a month, no matter how pious his or her intentions? The rabbis, in light of this difficulty, imposed limitations on the vows and oaths taken by husbands and wives. These limitations may seem foreign to our modern sensibilities, given their inherent gender imbalances; but in biblical times, they served as a means of negotiating spousal relationships.

Basing themselves on verses from our parashah, the rabbis teach, according to one opinion, that a husband is authorized to annul any vow that his wife takes that involves her self-affliction, or that pertains to matters between him and her (Nedarim 79b). For instance, if a woman vows not to wear make-up, or not to engage in sexual relations, her husband may annul that vow. Indeed, should he not annul such a vow, it would be tantamount to saying that he is not interested in continuing their relationship. The Talmud states that when a husband fails to annul such a vow by his wife, it is as if he puts his

finger between her teeth (Ketubot 71a) meaning that he is asking for it, and it is his own fault if he is negatively impacted by her behavior. As such, a wife s vows may be understood as a passive-aggressive test of her husband s devotion: If you love me, surely you will annul my vow.

Conversely, the Talmud (Ketubot chapter 7) also restricts the ways a husband can restrict his wife s behavior by means of a vow. Although a wife may not annul her husband s vows, she is also not required to remain in a marriage in which her husband s vows restrict her behavior in certain ways. For instance, if a husband takes a vow with the implication that his wife may not attend weddings or pay shiva visits, then she is entitled to a divorce immediately, because a husband may not deprive his wife of social connection. And if he takes a vow with the implication that she may not spend the holidays in her father s home, he may do so only for one holiday but no more, suggesting once again that he is limited in the degree to which he may restrict her autonomy. These laws reflect an awareness that a husband may, in an effort to assert control and dominion, impose restrictions on his wife that we would refer to in modern parlance as domestic abuse; in such situations, a woman has legal right to be released from the marriage and to receive the payment due to her by her marriage contract.

The Talmudic discussion of vows made by husbands and wives offers insight into the emotional and intimate aspects of marriage. As Dov Berkovitz writes in an essay about Tractate Ketubot (HaDaf HaKiyumi, untranslated), a vow made by a wife and annulled by her husband, or a vow made by a husband restricting his wife, is a window into the inner workings of their hearts is the husband trying to get space from his wife? Is he trying to control her? Is the wife testing her husband s devotion? Does she feel sufficiently confident in his love? The Talmud, in imposing restrictions on such vows, acknowledges that

marriage is a very sensitive human dynamic, best handled with great care.

Marriage, like any committed long-term partnership, forges a deep connection in which both individuals expose their most vulnerable aspects to one another. The reward for such vulnerability and exposure is the potential for mutual understanding, trust, dedication, and love. By getting to know another person in the deepest possible way, we learn how to give that person what they most need, when they most need it. We learn how to draw out what is best in the other person, and how to speak honestly and openly about what we wish were otherwise. Ideally we do so without causing too much pain, because, as the Talmud recognizes, two people who love one another may also know how to hurt one another the most. We hope that with time, we will learn to trust and not to test; to heal and not to hurt; to love and not to lose the person we hold most dear.

Masei: A Lyric of Love

Ilana Kurshan

When my husband and I began dating, I took him to meet my family in the town where I was raised. One afternoon we went on a long run together around town, and I gave him a guided tour of my childhood: Here is where I went to high school. Here is where I fell off my bike in fifth grade. Here is where my best friend lived. I was reminded of this moment in our courtship when reading this week s parashah, Masei, with its focus on geography and its underlying theme of romantic reminiscence.

Parashat Masei opens with a long list of all the encampments of the Israelites in the wilderness, proceeds to delineate the borders of the land of Israel, and then mandates the allocation of specific cities for the Levites and, from among those holdings, the designation of cities of refuge. At first this focus on journeys, boundaries, and cities seems rather dull and prosaic; after all, does the Torah really need to recount for us every single one of the forty-two places in the wilderness where the Israelites set up camp? Read with a more poetic sensibility, however, our parashah becomes a love letter to the Jewish people and to the land of Israel, expressing God s devotion in language less literal than lyrical.

The opening verses of our parashah provide an itinerary of the wilderness journey, beginning with the departure from Rameses, Egypt on the fifteenth of Nisan, and culminating in the arrival at the steppes of Moab, at the Jordan near Jericho, a full forty years (and forty-nine biblical verses) later. The midrash explains the purpose of this extensive itinerary by reference to a parable about a king whose son was ill. The king took his son on a journey to a distant place to heal him. When they were on their way back, the king began recounting the

various stages of their journey: Here we slept. Here we cooled off. Here you had a headache. The parable draws the analogy to God s instruction to Moshe to recount to the Israelites all the places where they provoked me (Tanchuma Numbers 33:1; Rashi on 33:1). In this parable, God is the king who brings the Israelites on a long journey to heal them from the wounds and traumas inflicted by slavery, transforming them into a mature people capable of bearing responsibility. As the many encampments suggest, it was a journey with many starts and stops, and many moments of rupture. But in spite of all the times the Israelites provoked God along the way by complaining about the food, by speaking ill of their leaders, by constructing an idolatrous calf God nonetheless stayed with them.

In the weekly synagogue Torah reading, it is customary to chant the forty-nine verses detailing the Israelites itinerary to a special melody instead of the regular cantillations. This melody is very similar to the melody used to chant the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15), originally recited when the Israelites first set out on their journey, suggesting that the itinerary of the journeys from which Parshat Masei takes its name is in fact a song of its own, parallel to the Song of the Sea. As such, we might think of the Song of the Sea and Masei as bookends, flanking the forty years of wandering in poetic chant. In the Song of the Sea, the people praise God for what He has pledged to do for them: In Your love you lead the people You redeemed Till your people cross over, O Lord (Exodus 15:13, 16). In the lyrical itinerary of Masei, they attest that God has made good on that promise, standing by them through thick and then.

The period of wandering in the wilderness is analogized in the prophetic imagination to a time of young love between God and Israel: I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the wilderness, through a land not sown (Jeremiah 2:2). God led the people day in and day out, by pillar of

cloud and pillar of fire, through the seemingly endless sands of the wilderness; the people in turn followed God devotedly, trusting in God s love. In the book of Exodus, the final of the four languages of redemption used to describe God s pledge to the Israelites captures this exclusive bond: And I will take you to be My people, and I will be Your God (Exodus 7:7). The long wilderness journey, in all its many stages, serves to seal this bond of love between God and the people of Israel, which will blossom into maturity once the people settle in the Promised Land.

The second half of the parashah, which focuses on the borders of the land of Israel and the designation of special cities within it, looks ahead to this period of more mature love, when God and Israel at last settle down with one another. The Torah sketches the boundaries of the land, moving from the tip of the Dead Sea in the south, to the shores of the Great Sea in the west, to the peak of Mount Hor in the north, to the slopes of the Kinneret in the east. These verses read less like a geography lesson than like a literary blazon cataloguing the physical features of a beloved subject, as in Spenser s marriage poem, Epithalamion: Her goodly eyes like sapphires shining bright / Her forehead ivory white Indeed, throughout the classic biblical love poem, the Song of Songs, the female lover is described by invoking geographical sites and features of the land of Israel: My beloved to me is a spray of henna blooms from the vineyards of Ein Gedi Your hair is a flock of goats streaming down Mount Gilead Your neck is like the Tower of David (Songs 1:13, 4:1, 4:4). The midrash leaves no doubt that the land is an expression of God s love: The Holy One Blessed Be He said to Israel: The land of Israel is beloved unto me, as it is written, the land the Lord your God cares for (Deut. 11:12), and Israel is beloved to me, as it is written, for the Lord your God loves you (Deut. 23:6). God said: I will enter the people of Israel, who are beloved to Me, into the land that is beloved to Me (Tanchuma Buber, Masei, 5).

The prophets, too, describe the people s relationship to the land of Israel as a romantic bond. When the people of Israel leave the land, it becomes like a widow ( Alas! How lonely sits the city She that was great among nations, is become like a widow Lamentations

1:1); when they return to the land, it is like a wedding celebration ( Nevermore shall you be called abandoned. But you shall be called I desire her, and your land mastered (be ula, from ba al) as a young man masters a maiden, and as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, Isaiah 62:4-5). God s love for the people of Israel is consummated only when they settle within its borders, which God fervently desires. As Rabbi Yehuda Brandes notes in a Dvar Torah that inspired my own (also see the Tiferet Shlomo on Masei; quoted in Torat Imecha, vol. 2, p. 443, untranslated), the term used in our parashah to signify draw a boundary line (t tau, 34:7; v hitavitem, 34:10) comes from the same root as the Hebrew word for desire (ta ava), suggesting that the demarcation of boundaries is not merely political or geographic, but is an expression of love and longing.

Our parashah, filled with place names and geographical features, is a mapping of the evolving romance between God and Israel, beginning with the young bride trailing after her groom through the wilderness and culminating in the couple building a home together in the Promised Land. From Rameses to Succot, from Succot to Etam. From the Great Sea to Mount Hor, and from Mount Hor to Levo Hamat. Like the tour I gave my husband of my hometown, these litanies read less literally are a lyric of love.

All Over Again?!

Vered Hollander-Goldfarb

Text: Bamidbar 32:1-5

1And there was great multitude of livestock to the children of Reuben and the children of Gad; and they saw the land of Jazer and the land of Gilead, that indeed the region was a place for livestock, 2 So the children of Gad and the children of Reuben came and spoke to Moshe, to Eleazar the kohen, and to the leaders of the congregation, saying

4the country which the Lord defeated before the congregation of Israel, is a land for livestock, and your servants have livestock.

5They said, If we have found favor in your sight, let this land be given to your servants as a possession. Do not take us over the Jordan.

● The lands in question are those conquered by the Israelites on the eastern side of the Jordan when Sihon refused to let them pass through.

● The children of Reuben and Gad are introduced as speaking twice (v.2 and v.5). Only the second time did they present a request. Why do you think that they did not present it the first time? What might have happened between their first and second speech? (There is no verbal response recorded. Consider other stage directions.)

● What are these tribes requesting? (Try to be exact.) What do you think about the request? Why?

Text: Bamidbar 32:6-15

6And Moshe said to the children of Gad and to the children of Reuben: Shall your brethren go to war while you sit here? 7And why will you discourage the heart of the children of Israel from going over into the land which the Lord has given them?… 8Thus your fathers did when I sent them to see the land 10And the Lord s anger was aroused and He swore an oath, saying, 11 Surely none of the men who came up from Egypt shall see the land of which I swore to Avraham, Isaac,

and Jacob, because they have not wholly followed Me, and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the Lord was gone. 14And now you have risen in your fathers place, a brood of sinful men! to increase still more the fierce anger of the Lord against Israel. 15For if you turn away from following Him, He will still more leave them in the wilderness, and you will destroy all these people.

● Based on his response, how does Moshe perceive the request?

What are his 2 reasons for refusal?

● Why do you think that he speaks only briefly about the first reason but at length about the second? What is the essential difference between the two issues? Is either solvable?

In the end, after a detailed agreement of their responsibilities ( before the LORD ), these tribes received the land and dwelled east of the Jordan for centuries.

The Boiling Point

Bex Stern Rosenblatt

In the dead heat of summer, in these three weeks leading up to Tisha B av and the recitation of the horrors of the burning of Jerusalem, we read the second chapter of Jeremiah, a passage overflowing with water imagery. The source of the water is God and the source of the conflict in the chapter is our failure to recognize the water God has given us.

The structure of the chapter is a riv, a legal argument made, in this case, by God, against us, accusing us of not recognizing God. God names Godself in verse thirteen, calling Godself the source of living waters. But we did not know it. Turning away from the source of living waters, we dug faulty wells, wells too broken to even hold water.

It is a heartbreaking image. In the shimmering heat of midsummer, we desperately seek the only thing that can save us, the water to cool us. But the more we seek it the further we find ourselves from it. We work hard building useless wells for water we no longer have and couldn t store if we did. The hard work tires us out, dehydrating us, causing us to need that water all the more. We work harder and harder at the wrong task, trying to achieve our goal in a way that can never work.

It gets worse. We do not learn. We do not stop and consider why we have yet to find relief. As the heat addles our brains, we double down on incorrect methods, blaming external forces rather than our own actions. We look for the waters of Egypt and Mesopotamia. We reach out to foreign nations for relief. But the water we find there is bad and

bitter. The situation becomes even more desperate, even more humiliating. Where once we sought water and could not find it, now we find water but cannot drink it. We are tantalizingly close to the solution to our desperate thirst but as we approach it shifts, revealing itself as not ours, as poisonous to us.

In our agony, the world seems to have dried up. We reflect back on the source of it all. But even this we do incorrectly. We wonder why God has been a desert to us. We identify God as a desert, a dry place. God had identified Godself as the source of living waters. It is we, rather, who, having been planted in a place of abundance, having been given the ability to make the desert bloom, have instead made the garden wither. As we approach Tisha B av this summer, we have to feel the heat. We are once more presented with the choice: continue digging useless wells, or acknowledge where we have done wrong and return to the source.