THE COMMITMENT AT BIRTH
The Talmud28Niddah 30b. teaches that the most exquisite moments of life are spent in the womb. The embryo gains insight, as it sits together with its own personal angel and is taught the entirety of Torah. A glowing candle allows them to see from one end of the world to the other. As the soul leaves the womb, the angel guides it in a final and irrevocable oath:
I will be a tzaddik, a righteous individual. I will never take pride for virtue even if the whole world calls me a saint. In my eyes I will [always] remain like a rasha, a wicked person [who must still grow and improve].29Ibid.
Upon entering this world, the child is touched by his celestial mentor, and the illuminating candle, the doting angel, the Torah learning, and the solemn oath vanish from memory.
Three questions arise from this Talmudic account: First, since we have no memory of this pre-natal oath, why were we led to accept it? Next, according to Jewish law, only the oaths of adults can create legal and binding obligations; therefore, why is an unborn child taking an oath? Last, considering that an oath usually serves as a guarantor to the truth of one’s words, why is the pure soul of the child not accepted as trustworthy without the oath?
The questions may be answered as follows: an oath is not merely a verbal guarantee; rather it is a process that imbues an individual with added strength. We glean this understanding of the oath-taking process from two sources, the usage of such verbal commitments in the Torah and the etymology of the Hebrew word shevua, “oath.”
Oaths in the Torah
In the book of Genesis, after the death of Sarah, Abraham sends his trusted servant Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac, Abraham’s son. Abraham saw the rampant corruption among the indigenous Canaanites, and he sought a suitable daughter-in-law from a different society. Not satisfied merely to request that Eliezer avoid choosing a Canaanite, Abraham led him in an oath:
I will make you swear by God, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from among the daughters of the Canaanites in whose midst I dwell. But you should go into my country and to my relatives and take a wife for my son for Isaac (Gen. 24:3-4).
Abraham’s insistence on this oath is disturbing. Would he not trust Eliezer’s solemn commitment? Eliezer had been Abraham’s most loyal student.30See Gen. 15:2 and the commentary of Rashi, s.v. u-vein meshek beisi and Dammesek. The two had fought together and depended on one another in battle.31See Gen.14:14 and Rashi’s commentary on that verse. Abraham had trusted Eliezer’s loyalty to defend his life; why would he not trust Eliezer’s word? One might posit that Eliezer’s word was not trustworthy in the absence of an oath since he was not a member of Abraham’s family. This solution would not apply to a different circumstance of oath-taking in the Torah.
According to Jewish mystics, Joseph was the paradigm of virtue and righteousness, the personification of tzaddik yesod olam, a man of such holiness that his merit sustains the entire world. Joseph was also Jacob’s favorite son, and they shared a special relationship.32See Gen. 30:25 and Rashi’s comment on that verse; Gen. 37:2 and the respective Rashi; also Gen. 37:11, 37:35, 45:27-28. When Jacob lay dying he called Joseph and requested burial in the Land of Israel. Although Joseph promised that he would ensure his father’s interment in Israel (Gen. 47:30), Jacob was not satisfied and demanded that an oath be sworn in God’s name: “And he [Jacob] said ‘Swear to me’ and he [Joseph] swore to him, and Israel [another name for Jacob] bowed back toward the head of the bed” (Gen. 47:31).
Did Jacob really suspect that Joseph would not fulfill his final request? It is a Mitzvah to fulfill the last wishes of a dying man.33Gittin 15a. Did Jacob fear that the paradigmatic tzaddik would not fulfill a moral charge? Did he think that his most beloved son’s word could not be trusted?
Evidently, oaths function in the Bible as more than mere guarantees of truth-telling. They give the oath-taker added strength to attain what might otherwise be too difficult to accomplish. Abraham trusted Eliezer, and Jacob trusted Joseph, yet the goals that Joseph and Eliezer were charged to achieve were seemingly unattainable. To find a suitable spouse for his master’s son, Eliezer had to overcome his personal interests, having a daughter of marriageable age, and the opposition of both the boorish Bethuel (Besuel) and Laban (Lavan), relatives of Abraham who rejected Abraham’s mission.34Furthermore, Eliezer had to leave Abraham’s house. When Eliezer arrived to Bethuel’s home, Eliezer had to convince Bethuel and Laban to allow Rebekah (Rivkah) to marry Isaac. Abraham’s home was suffused with a spirit of sanctity, while the home of Besuel was a den of iniquity. Abraham feared that the atmosphere of Besuel’s home would affect Eliezer. In Aram, Eliezer would not be able to overcome his own biases, and he would falter and leave the task unfulfilled (Rav Wolfson). To bury Jacob in Israel, Joseph had to overcome the opposition of Pharaoh, a tyrant who believed that Jacob’s physical presence in Egypt brought blessings to the land and prevented the recurrence of famine. Without their oaths, Eliezer and Joseph might have quit if their initial efforts proved unsuccessful. Perhaps they would have invoked the Talmud’s rule that “the coerced are not liable.” Their oaths called forth added strength from the core of their soul. The extra determination and fortitude enabled them to successfully complete their missions.35See Or Gedalyahu on Parashas Vayetze, contrasted with the Sfas Emes at the beginning of Vayetze. See also the Sfas Emes on Parashas Mattos (5634), who writes, “My teacher and master, my grandfather, explained the concept of shevua. When man accepts upon himself a commitment with his entire heart, [he swears and] this is the shevua, the gathering together of all the seven middos [character parts] within man. Once fully devoted, the name of God rests upon him.” In later lessons there will be a further explication of the seven character parts of man.
The Words Shevua and Sheva
Hebrew words are derivations and variations of three-letter roots. The root of the word shevua, “oath,” is also the root of the word sheva, “seven.” The verbal confluence reflects a connection between an oath and the symbolic message of the number seven.
The number seven recalls the days of the week and also God’s creation of the world. On each of the seven days of creation, He formed a different elemental spiritual force. These spiritual forces devolved into the material world.36See further later lessons where the further depths to the creation narrative are revealed. The number seven symbolizes these forces and the totality of the natural world’s origins.37See the Collected Writings of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888), vol. 3, pgs. 96-111. Rabbi Hirsch develops the theory that the number seven represents completeness, as in the verse, “Wisdom has hewed out its seven pil-lars” (Prov. 9:1). The seven pillars of wisdom represent all the knowledge in the world. Rabbi Hirsch then symbolically interprets details of many laws such as the seven sprinklings of blood of animals offered as offerings, and the seven branches of the menorah as representing a totality.
How is an oath related to seven? Oath-taking invokes all of the natural forces within man. In critical situations a person may discover the enormous potential strength latent within him. A mother might manage to dash through flames to rescue her child who was trapped in an inferno. Caring relatives might spend weeks with inadequate nourishment and sleep to take care of a sick family member. During moments of trial, the adrenaline in our bloodstream increases to give us added vigor and enables us to perform at seemingly superhuman levels. Usually, in normal daily living, we utilize only a fraction of our physical strength, mental concentration, and spiritual capacity—that is, unless we enter into an oath.
Oath-taking calls forth and dedicates every ounce of willpower and strength. If one swears in God’s name that a statement is true, that person is committing his or her entire being to the fulfillment of these words. An oath is a guarantor of truth because it arouses the most passionate of commitments.
According to the Sages, when God declared in the Ten Command- ments, “Do not take my name in vain [through swearing],” the entire universe shook.38Shevuos 38b. Why did this command frighten the entirety of creation? Perhaps because a shevua summons all sheva, all the seven spiritual roots of creation, and invests them in the cause.39Nachmanides writes, “The secret is that the word shevua is from the word sheva” (commentary to Num. 30:3). See further Emunas Etecha, Parashas Chayei Sarah, pg. 70 s.v. ve-chein matzinu. A human is a miniature universe. Since I parallel the world, whatever I do with my soul causes a corresponding effect on the soul of the world.40See further Lessons Five and Six, where this concept is explained in greater detail. When I swear I arouse all the parts of my heart; the physical world then finds all the sources of its existence aroused as well. A false oath weakens every root of mine, and that causes all the channels through which God pours life down to the world to shake with instability.
Hebrew has a variety of letter sounds that are similar and therefore interchangeable. Commentators sometimes replace letters in a word with similar sounding letters in order to obtain an additional layer of meaning.41The name for this concept is Osiyos Mischalfos, letters which interchange. An example is the letters, ayin, ches, heh, and aleph, all of which are inter-changeable with each other. Osiyos Mischalfos is the guiding principle of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch’s analysis of the Hebrew language; see the Introduction to the Etymological Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew by Matityahu Clark. See also Rashi on Lev. 19:16, who explains that the letters bet and peh interchange, as well as the letters gimmel, kaf, and kuf; nun, lamed, and resh; zayin and tzadi. One such interchangeable pair is the letters bet and peh.42In the ktav ashuri (Assyrian script) of Hebrew, within the black ink of the letter peh (פ), is a white letter bet (ב). Through their interchange sheva acquires a relationship to the word shefa, an overflow of energy. Every shevua is really an awakening of a Divine emanation of spiritual energy and the source for renewed strength and commitment.
The Meaning of the Unborn Child’s Oath
The oath of the yet to be born child is a charge of strength that gives each human added energies and determination to succeed in this life’s journey. This world can be a house of horrors that is filled with trials and doubts that undermine faith. The wicked often seem to prosper and the righteous to suffer. Maintaining the inner faith that is harbored within our souls and following the faint voice of conscience despite the deafening protestations of lust and self-interest are most difficult feats. To resist the seductions of the profane and fully devote our energies to God’s work, we must commit all the spiritual forces within us. Before birth, we did not lift our hands onto a Torah scroll and swear, but every fiber of our being was charged with passion for our mission. We may have forgotten the encounter with the angel, but the invigoration from that parting persists. We have an enormous latent force, an overflowing river of spiritual energy, committed to the task to be a tzaddik.
The oath of birth is continually renewed through the celebration of Shabbos. Lesson Two will detail the role of Shabbos and how it resembles the pre-natal oath.