Mattot

Mattot – Arik Ascherman

Arik Ascherman lives in Jerusalem. He is the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, dedicated to teaching and implementing the Jewish tradition of human rights and honoring God's Image in every human being.

Each section is problematic for me: The first section treats women as property, the second describes a merciless war in which the Israelites slaughter men, women and children, while the third establishes the basis for some Jewish groups not only to want to hold on to the West Bank as part of the Land of Israel, but to aspire to 'Both banks of the Jordan'.

This highlights existential questions of our relationship with the Torah. For some, rabbinic law is much more definitive. The Talmudic rabbis would never say outright that they were negating something found in the Torah, but, in some cases they effectively did so. For instance, they put so many conditions on applying the death penalty that it was effectively legislated out of existence.

This is difficult for me because I believe the Torah to be closer to God's revelation to Moses than Torah sh'ba'al peh (the oral tradition that became the basis for rabbinic law), although I believe that the Torah was also passed by word of mouth for generations. This leaves open the right of interpretation and even the possibility of human additions and errors. However, what tools do we have for making such determinations and how can one do so with any measure of intellectual honesty? Are we at least being honest with ourselves? To what degree are we dedicated to discovering God’s Will for us? To what degree are we dedicated to continuing the tradition passed down to us? To what degree are we consciously or unconsciously bringing our ideologies, presuppositions and world views to the text?

We learn that a woman’s father can nullify an oath in her youth (Numbers 30:4-6), while her husband can do so after she has married (30:7-9). Nobody can nullify divorced or widowed women's oaths. Rashi teaches that the Torah refers to a woman's youth because a minor's oaths are meaningless but, if she is an unmarried adult, her father can not nullify her oaths.

Do we read this simply as an unacceptable reality in which women and everything in their possession are owned by their husbands? Can we emphasize the positive in the recognition that a woman could be independent and/or the fact that a father or husband is not obligated to nullify an oath? Some are disturbed by any implied criticism of the Torah while others are disturbed by anything that seems like apologetics.

We are taught that the Torah is written in human language. Perhaps the Torah intentionally allows for an evolving state of consciousness. For some generations acknowledging that women have the capability of making oaths at all would have been progressive but, now that even the suggestion that a husband has the right to annul an oath would be an anathema, the husbnand is not forced to make anullment. Perhaps we must find which of the 70 faces of Torah God intended for our generation.