I. Keeping Our Word
THE CORE IDEA
This parasha opens with an account of the laws of vows and oaths. What is it doing here near the end of the book of Bemidbar, as the Israelites approach the destination of their journey to the Promised Land?
Vows and oaths are obligations created by words. They are commitments to do something or refrain from doing something. A vow, neder, affects the status of an object. I may vow not to eat something. That something is now, for me, forbidden food. An oath, shevua, affects the person, not the object. What is now forbidden is not the food but the act of eating it. Both acts bind: that is the primary meaning of the word issur.
These commitments have a holy dimension to them, and therefore they have demanding rules that have to be met if they are to be cancelled. You cannot do it by yourself: the parasha sets out some of the ground rules, the rest of which were supplied by the Oral Tradition. So seriously does Judaism treat verbal promises that one act of annulment, Kol Nidrei, takes place at the start of the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur.
The superficial reason for the law of vows appearing here is that the previous section of the Torah dealt with communal sacrifices. Individuals also brought sacrifices, sometimes because they were bound to do so but at other times because they voluntarily chose to do so. Hence the laws of voluntary undertakings.
But there is a deeper reason. The Israelites were nearing the land. They were about to construct a society unlike any other. It was to be a free society based on a covenant between the people and God. The rule of law was to be secured not by the use of force but by people honouring their moral commitments, their voluntary undertaking to God that what He commanded, they would do.
QUESTIONS TO PONDER
1. What covenant was to be the basis of the society the Israelites were to create in the land of Israel?
2. What does this have to do with the laws of vows and oaths?
IT ONCE HAPPENED…
When Elaine and I were married, I was twenty-two. She was twenty-one. We had no idea what the future would hold. At that time she was practising radiography. For the first few years of our marriage, while I was studying, she was the breadwinner and I the – not very good – housekeeper.
I had gone to university wanting to be an accountant. I then wandered into philosophy. For a while, after graduating, I studied for a doctorate. It didn’t go well (I eventually completed it ten years later). I then taught philosophy for two years. I made a foray into law but soon discovered that it and I didn’t get on. Then, following an insistent inner voice, I turned to the rabbinate. This involved intensive study and put a huge burden on Elaine. I went into the rabbinate, continuing to teach at our rabbinical seminary. Along the way our three children were born.
Our life together has had its twists and turns. At each stage of the way we were faced with new challenges. Looking back across twenty-nine years of married life, we could not have foreseen the outcome. We can know the past. We can never know the future. Human life is life lived towards the future, which means facing the unknown. But we faced it together. Without that togetherness, I doubt whether we could have done much of what we eventually did. It’s what made our marriage. At difficult times we were there for one another. I don’t think it ever occurred to us that we wouldn’t be. That’s what a marriage is: a journey across an unknown land, with nothing to protect you from the elements except one another. It’s not much, but it’s everything.
What is a marriage? Words. A commitment. We pledge ourselves to someone else. It’s probably the most significant commitment any of us can make, and it depends on our moral determination to honour it. A declaration of marriage doesn’t mean “We are man and wife so long as we find each other attractive or compatible; so long as we feel passion for one another; so long as we don’t meet someone else more attractive.” It means “I will be with you whatever fate brings. I will stay loyal to you. When you need me, I’ll be there. When things are tough, I won’t walk away.” By moralising the bond it lifts it to an altogether different plane. A personal commitment is stronger than passion or emotion or attraction. It is a pledge to share a life together, come what may.
Celebrating Life, 87–88
QUESTIONS TO PONDER
1. What does Rabbi Sacks mean when he writes that marriage is “words”?
2. How does marriage as a commitment connect to the message of this Covenant & Conversation essay?
THINKING MORE DEEPLY
A covenantal society is one in which words are holy, sacrosanct. This is the principle at the heart of Judaism as a code of collective freedom, a constitution of liberty.
This needs explanation. Any society needs laws. Without that, it descends into anarchy. There are three reasons why people obey laws. The first is that they will be punished if they don’t. This is a society based on power. The second is that it is to their advantage to do so. This is a society based on self-interest.
Both have shortcomings. Power corrupts. So, at times, does the pursuit of self-interest. When power is corrupted, there is a loss of freedom. When self-interest prevails, there is a loss of social cohesion. When people care about themselves but not others, the successful thrive while others suffer. Justice and compassion give way to greed and exploitation.
The Torah sets forth a third way, in which people obey the law because they have voluntarily undertaken to do so. This is a society based not on power or the pursuit of self-interest but on freely embraced moral obligation. The Torah is the story of how the Israelites came to this unique and radical idea: the politics of covenant.
Ironically it was one of the great critics of Judaism, Friedrich Nietzsche, who had the insight to see that the capacity to bind ourselves by words is the basis of both morality and human freedom. This is what he says in his book On the Genealogy of Morality:
To breed an animal with the prerogative to promise – is that not precisely the paradoxical task which nature has set herself with regard to humankind? Is it not the real problem of humankind?
Homo sapiens is distinguished from other animals by its use of language. That is well known. What Nietzsche saw, however, is that we use language in many different ways. We use it to describe, communicate, categorise, and explain. Language in this sense is a kind of picture of reality, a translation of what is into a set of signs, symbols, and images.
But we can also use language in a quite different way – not to describe what is, but to commit ourselves to some form of behaviour in the future.
So for instance, when a groom says to his bride under the ḥuppa, “Behold you are betrothed to me...,” he is not describing a marriage. He is getting married. He is undertaking a set of obligations to the woman he has chosen as his wife. Philosophers nowadays call this a performative utterance. Nietzsche saw how fundamental this is to the human condition:
In order to have that degree of control over the future, man must first learn to distinguish between what happens by accident and what by design...and before he can do this, man himself will really have to become reliable, regular, necessary, even in his own self-image, so that he, as someone making a promise is, is answerable for his own future!
When we bind ourselves by words we are using language not to describe but to create – to create an orderly future out of the chaos of human instincts and desires. What makes humans unique is not just the use of language. Other animals use forms of language. Dolphins do. So do primates. Even bees do complex dances that convey information to other bees.
What is unique to humans is that we use language to bind our own future behaviour so that we can form with other human beings bonds of mutuality and trust. One such bond is the promise. Another is marriage. A third – unique to Judaism – is society understood as a covenant, a set of mutually binding promises between the Jewish people and God.
It is this use of language, not to describe something already in existence but to create something that didn’t exist before, that links us to God. God used words to bring the natural universe into being: “And God said…and there was.” We use words to bring a social universe into being. What the Torah is telling us is that words create because words are holy: that is to say, they bind. When words bind, they generate trust. Trust is to society what predictability is to nature: the basis of order as opposed to chaos.
Social institutions in a free society depend on trust, and trust means that we keep our word. We do what we say we are going to do. If we make a vow, an oath, a promise, a verbal undertaking, then we hold ourselves bound by it. This means that we will actually fulfil our commitment unless we can establish that, due to circumstances unforeseeable at the time, we are simply unable to do so.
If trust breaks down, social relationships break down, and then society depends on law enforcement agencies or some other use of force. When force is widely used, society is no longer free. The only way free human beings can form collaborative and cooperative relationships without recourse to force is by the use of verbal undertakings honoured by those who make them.
Freedom needs trust; trust needs people to keep their word; and keeping your word means treating words as holy, vows and oaths as sacrosanct. Only under very special and precisely formulated circumstances can you be released from your undertakings. That is why, as the Israelites approached the Holy Land where they were to create a free society, they had to be reminded of the sacred character of vows and oaths.
The temptation to break your word when it is to your advantage to do so can sometimes be overwhelming. That is why belief in God – a God who oversees all we think, say, and do, and who holds us accountable to our commitments – is so fundamental. Although it sounds strange to us now, the father of toleration and liberalism, John Locke (England, seventeenth century) held that citizenship should not be extended to atheists because, not believing in God, they could not be trusted to honour their word.
So the appearance of laws about vows and oaths at the end of the book of Bemidbar, as the Israelites are approaching the Holy Land, is no accident, and the moral is still relevant today. A free society depends on trust. Trust depends on keeping your word. That is how humans imitate God by using language to create.
I believe words create moral obligations, and moral obligations, undertaken responsibly and honoured faithfully, create the possibility of a free society.
So – always do what you say you are going to do. If we fail to keep our word, eventually we will lose our freedom.
QUESTION TO PONDER
What power do words have?
FROM THE THOUGHT OF RABBI SACKS
I believe faith is part of what makes us human. It is a basic attitude of trust that always goes beyond the available evidence, but without which we would do nothing great. Without faith in one another we could not risk the vulnerability of love. Without faith in the future, we would not choose to have a child. Without faith in the intelligibility of the universe we would not do science. Without faith in our fellow citizens, we would not have a free society.
The Power of Ideas, 127
AROUND THE SHABBAT TABLE
What is unique about humans in terms of their language?
What can make words “holy”?
What is the connection between keeping promises and a healthy society?
EDUCATIONAL COMPANION TO THE QUESTIONS
IN A NUTSHELL
Moshe worries that these tribes are trying to shirk their responsibilities to fight with the other tribes to conquer the land of Israel. Ultimately they are given permission to settle on the other side of the Jordan River as long as they promise to send their menfolk to fight with the rest of the Israelite army. The commitment they give is a promise of sorts, just like an oath or vow, which is another theme of the parasha. They are true to their word, which is an important value necessary to build a society based on trust and faithfulness.
THE CORE IDEA
The Torah is the covenant that was to become the basis of the society the Israelites were to create in the land of Israel. It consisted of a commitment of the Israelites to keep the mitzvot and be faithful to God, and in exchange God promises to protect and look after the Israelites, and bless them with security and prosperity in the land of Israel.
This covenant is in itself a form of an oath. Both sides commit and promise to keep their side of the covenant. Ultimately the Israelites were not fully committed to their promise, and strayed from the Torah. This resulted in punishment in the form of exile from the land.
IT ONCE HAPPENED…
The commitment of marriage is ultimately just words. The couple pledge to each other with words their loyalty and fidelity.
In the words of Rabbi Sacks from this Covenant & Conversation essay, “Words create moral obligations, and moral obligations, undertaken responsibly and honoured faithfully, create the possibility of a free society.” While he is not referring to marriage, but rather vows and oaths in particular and commitment and trust in general, marriage is an example of a moral obligation taken with words. A free and just society is built on words that lead to trust and commitment, just as a marriage is.
THINKING MORE DEEPLY
While we know words have tremendous power, for good and for bad (explored in many other places by Rabbi Sacks), in the context of this parasha, Rabbi Sacks expresses the potential sacred nature of words when used to commit to others in relationships in society. A free society is built on words that express moral obligations. Words create moral obligations, and moral obligations, undertaken responsibly and honoured faithfully, create the possibility of a free society.
AROUND THE SHABBAT TABLE
While there are animals that can communicate and have some basic form of language, it is only humans who can think abstractly about the future, and therefore use language to plan for the future. In the words of Rabbi Sacks, “What is unique to humans is that we use language to bind our own future behaviour so that we can form with other human beings bonds of mutuality and trust.”
There are different definitions of the word “holy,” but one that Rabbi Sacks often uses is “the domain of God.” Words become godly when they reflect God and godliness. This means they must reflect the values and characteristics of God, including trustworthiness and faithfulness.
Society can only function if there is trust between people. Trust is the foundation of relationships and the functioning of society, from the most basic transactions to a system of government. If people do not keep their word and break their promises then there can be no trust between people and the breakdown of relationships, and society itself.