Holy Scrollers Preview - Parashat Mattot

Scrollers Preview
Parashat Mattot
7/23/2011
Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg

As we near the end of the Book of Numbers, we receive some additional laws, Moses receives his last task from God, and we begin to focus on the settlement of the Promised Land. The three main sections of the Parasha are:

1.) Laws regarding vows – Specifically, we learn about who is responsible for the vows or oaths of a woman, depending on her personal status (living in her father’s house, married, divorced, widowed.) A vow or oath is a powerful use of words, made binding by the use of God’s name.

2.) God asks one last thing of Moses before his death – to go to war against the Midianites. This war is meant to redress past wrongs, specifically the Midianites’ seduction of the Israelite men in last week’s parashah. Balaam reappears here as the mastermind behind that mass-seduction. Moses is unhappy when the Israelite armies only kill the men and not the women. So he sends them back to slay all male children and all women who have known men carnally.

3.) The tribes of Reuben and Gad claim the land on the East side of the Jordan as their inheritance and want to settle it because it is good cattle country. Moses is not happy; he is concerned that they won’t help the Israelites conquer the land. A compromise is reached in which the Reubenite and Gadite men will serve as “shock-troops” and will conquer the land before returning to their lands on the East side of the river.

This year, with a nudge from some Scrollers, I thought I’d look at the Women’s Torah Commentary on this Parasha, especially on the sections about vows and the war against the Midianites. On the vows section, we’ll look at how the rabbis of the Talmud limited the kinds of vows that husbands could annul on behalf of their wives. We’ll also look at how two later Biblical stories (Jepthah’s daughter, and Saul’s son) shed light on the power of vows.

An essay in the Women’s commentary asks the following question - Given how the Torah treats the vows of women and men differently, what impact might this have on a woman speaking up about her needs or acting independently? What status do the yearnings and dreams of women have?

Some additional questions we’ll explore include:

What role do vows play in your life? Do you make vows?

What meaning does the Kol Nidre prayer hold for you? (Kol Nidrei is the prayer we chant on the eve of Yom Kippur, in which we pray that any vows we utter in the coming year which we fail to uphold will be annulled.)