START THE DAY THE TORAH WAY 13th July 2014 ט'ו תמוז

The coming week’s sedra is Parshas Mattos on its own, not Mattos and Maasei and as Mr Milner has pointed out to me, this will not happen again in the very near future or for many years to come.

The sedra starts off  וידבר משה אל ראשי המטות לבני ישראל לאמר , the mefarshim, the commentators find the wording difficult. Why is the expression used here ראשי המטות heads of the tribes rather than the normal expression of וידבר משה אל בני ישראל

When we look at the actual laws concerning נדרים, vows made, we find some interesting rules, as enumerated in the final perek of Meseches Nedarim.

Firstly, a husband has the right to annul his wife’s vows but on the condition that these have to do with him and her personally בינו לבינה, for example refusing to eat together with him. Also they have to be things which are  נפשעינוי, matters that strongly affect them. For example, refusing to attend to her personal cleanliness or to dress presentably.

Furthermore, these nedorim have to be annulled on the actual day that the husband hears them or learns about them. Once the day has expired it is too late. Once again, I will give an example, if a neder is made say Friday night, the husband has all Shabbos until Shabbos ends to annul it. If the neder is made say an hour before Shabbos ends,  he only has that one hour time span to annul the neder.

Let me pose another question. A father is allowed to annul the vows of a נערה , namely a juvenile daughter, this is only a girl known as a נערה. Once she reaches 12 ½ years of age, he cannot do so. Why is he allowed to do so up to the age of 12 ½ but not any further.

Another question that I would pose is concerning the rule that a חכם, a יחיד מומחה a leading Rabbi has the power to annul vows. He even has a stronger power than a father in that he can be מבטל the neder as if it never was made whereas the husband’s כח, ability to annul, is from the time that he actually he says, I annul the neder.

In order to understand the possible reasoning behind all this, I would start by referring you to a Gemora in Sotah where Rabbi Akiva darshaned as follows:

ואשה זכו שכינה ביניהן ,לא זכו אש אוכלתן איש

Namely, a husband and wife, when they have merit, the Shechina rests on them. If they do not have merit, fire consumes them.

Rashi explains that if you take the word איש and take out the י you are left with אש, namely fire. Once again, אשה, if you take the ה away you are left with אש, in other words the י and the ה which are a Holy name, are represented in the husband and the wife. If Hashem takes His two letters away, you have just fire left and when there is fire between husband and wife, there are major problems.

Now, having said that, looking at the parsha of nedorim you have the word אישה with a dot in the ה, which is called a ה מפיק, and the translation is “Her husband”, referring to the husband of the wife who makes the vow, the neder. For example, אישה with the dot in the ה as stated later in the sedra יקימנו ואישה יפירנו  כל נדר וכל שבועת איסר אישה, namely her husband has the option to either confirm the vow or oath, he also has the opportunity to annul it.

What I am going to suggest today is that one should hark back to what happened to Odom Harishon when he was created on the 6th day of Maasei Bereishis. The medrash tells us that when Odom Harishon was created, there were in fact two faces back to front being basically Odom and Chava and afterwards Hashem took one of the ribs of Odom Harishon and made Chava into a separate person. If one looks carefully at the words of Torah, it states as follows, לזאת יקרא אשה כי מאיש לוקחה זאת, to this we will call a woman because she was taken from a man. אשה מאיש. Therefore what I am suggesting may be alluded to here, is that when we find the Torah refers to “Her husband” אישה with a dot in the ה, a ה מפיק, it is inferring that in the original man there was the  woman represented by the ה and  מפיקmeans to take away from, to take out of, as Chava was “taken out” of Odom. If I am right in my suggestion, one can understand that the whole of the parsha is therefore a remez, a hint to what I have said and a way of rectifying the sin of the עץ הדעת.

We all know that it was Chava who ate first of all as it states clearly in Torah and then she gave her husband Odom and he ate and this was despite the fact that she was told clearly that she should not eat from it.

Therefore, what I am suggesting is that in order to try and rectify this, at least partially and in some small way, the husband has been given the כח, the power, to annul the vows and oaths made by his wife in order that she should not come to possible sin.

One can therefore readily understand why the Torah limits which nedorim, which vows he can annul to those which are בינו לבינה between him and her and also דברים של ענוי נפש matters which strongly affect them. The original first sin was between Odom and Chava.

Bearing in mind my suggestion that this is to rectify the original sin of eating from the tree of knowledge, one can also understand why the husband only has the right to annul the vows on the very same day that they are made or are first heard by him. Remember that the same day that Odom and Chava were commanded not to eat but they ate and were expelled from Gan Eden. I would just like to give you the wording of the Gemora in Sanhedrin ל'ח and then translate it.

On the sixth day of creation of the world there were 12 hours of daylight. During the first hour, Hashem gathered together earth. In the second hour He shaped it. In the third hour, He formed the limbs. In the fourth hour, He placed a neshama (in Odom Harishon, of course). In the fifth hour, Odom stood up. In the sixth hour, Odom Harishon gave names to the animals etc. In the seventh hour, Hashem presented him with Chava. In the eighth hour, two went to bed and two were born in that hour, namely their sons Kayin and Hevel. In the ninth hour, they were commanded not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In the tenth hour, they sinned by eating. In the eleventh hour, they were judged and in the twelfth hour, that means just before Shabbos came, they were ejected from Gan Eden. I think this speaks for itself.

I am going to come back to one or two points which will also clarify questions that I posed.

Firstly, one can also understand based on all this, why a father can annul the vows of his household, namely a juvenile daughter. Because she, after all, is born from her father and is still legally under his domain, he can annul her nedorim. This again is only on the same day, subject to the same conditions pertaining to a wife.

Once a girl has reached the age of twelve and a half, she is a בוגרת and is no longer in his domain. Therefore, he has not got the right to annul her vows.

You may recall that earlier on I asked as to why the sedra starts off by mentioning the ראשי המטות which I translated as the heads of the tribes. Maybe one can also understand based on what I have just been saying, namely, that this also has a hint in it to Odom Harishon and Chava. You will remember that I quoted the Gemora in Sanhedrin about what happened in each hour of the sixth day of creation. In the eighth hour, it says עלו למטה שנים וירדו ארבעה, we know that in the Sefer Torah, there are no vowels in the letters, one can vocalise the Roshei Hamitois מטות instead of Roshei Hamatois. In other words the first ones who went to bed, being Odom Harishon and Chava, and that is what Moshe Rabbenu was alluding to in a very subtle way.

Let us turn to another interesting halocha. A rule which we would not know, and which the Mishna describes as היתר נדרים פורחים באויר. The fact that a great Rabbi a מחהיחיד מו has the power to annul a neder and this is derived from the words ראשי המטות, in other words the very greatest people have been given this power and no other people could do it.

Once again, let us have return to what happened, the first day that Odom Harishon was created. Hashem decreed that he should not eat from the  עץ הדעת and continued כי ביום אכלך ממנו תמות because on the day that you eat you will die. The fact is that Odom Harishon would have died on that day but he did teshuva, he repented just before Shabbos and the day of Shabbos itself pleaded with Hashem not to spoil the simcha of Shabbos. This is why Mizmor Shir Le Yom Hashabbos is recited Friday night as the medrash states, because, in fact, Odom Harishon said that mizmor once he was saved from being killed that day.

Dovid Hamelech stated that in the eyes of Hashem אלף שנים בעיניך כיום אתמול, a thousand years is equivalent to one day and, therefore, Odom Harishon was given a thousand years to live. We do not find that Odom Harishon really knew this, and not later generations until Dovid revealed it in Tehillim. Based on that, we can infer that in the same way that Hashem has the power to alter what seems to a straight forward statement from day to a thousand years, so a chochom has the power to uproot the neder as if it had never been made.  The חכם is the shaliach of Hashem and so to speak, stands in Hashem’s shoes. He has even greater כח than a husband, who so to speak, stands in the shoes of Odom Harishon. One understands that this is something very, very deep and hidden.

Maybe one can add a further perspective to this parsha. We are told that if a woman makes a neder not to eat something for example and her husband annuls this neder without her knowing and she then eats this food, even though technically her husband has annulled the neder nevertheless, she has to have סליחה, forgiveness. The Torah tells us וה' יסלח לה. Possibly one could say that this alludes to the fact that because Chava was originally the one that ate the fruit of עץ הדעת first of all, any further steps in such a direction like making a neder unnecessarily needs forgiveness because of the background of the matter going back 5774 years.

I mentioned the words of a Mishnah which states היתר נדרים פורחים באויר. The following words are ואין להם אל מה שיסמוכו loosely translated as “The rule that a chochom is able to be matir vows, are flying in the air and do not have anything to rely on. This implies that the din is only alluded to in Torah but Moshe Rabbenu was given the קבלה that a chochom can be matir ha neder.

Some fifty or sixty years ago, I heard from Rabbi Rabinow ז''ל an interesting idea based on this Mishnah. We know that every word that a person has said is recorded in heaven (and we ought to bear in mind that after 120 years it is likely to replayed and the person questioned regarding it). If somebody makes a neder and then the chochom is matir the neder what happens to such words. Rabbi Rabinow suggested that these words are not completely erased, they fly around in the air being not attached to the person any more, but on the other hand not being completely deleted.

In the same vein, I once heard from R’ Shlomo Rosen ז''ל who I believe quoted a source, but I do not remember it, on one of the Aseres Hadibros, it says לא תשא אל שם ה' לשוא כי לא ינכה ה' את אשר ישא שמו לשוא this, of course, means that one should not take Hashem’s name in vain or use the name of Hashem unnecessarily (as I have heard people incorrectly exclaim Oh My G-d!!!) Here again if the name of Hashem is invoked in any way, not just nedorim, unnecessarily, even though this may be deleted by teshuva or some other means, the actual name of Hashem, does not become deleted and, therefore, this will fly around in Heaven and will indicate that the person had originally said something incorrect. After 120 it will be picked up and the person concerned questioned.

So we have all been warned!!

I would like to turn to another aspect of nedorim, and that is the wording that the Torah uses as follows:-

איש כי ידר נדר לה' לא יחל דברו , a person who makes a neder, or for that matter a shevua, an oath to Hashem, should not profane his words and then the Torah continues ככל היוצא מפיו יעשה, he should stick strictly to whatever he has said. From this we learn that in respect of all mitzvos one is supposed to sanctify Hashem’s name, לקדש שם שמים. We know that Odom Harishon was different from all the other creations, in that he became נפש חיה and the Targum translates this as a living being who can speak, namely that a person is different from all other animals in the power of speech.

Here the Torah specifically emphasises that a person should not allow his speech to become profane, לא יחל. If one takes the first letters, the ראשי תיבות of the words איש כי ידר נדר לה' או השבע שבועה לאסר איסר על נפשו לא יחל דברו the first letters add up as a gammatria to 612. In other words not only this mitzvah but all the other 612, one should be careful with what one says and do everything to create a good impression שם שמים.

I believe that the lesson that can be derived from all this is that we all have to be very careful with what we say and not to make any nederim or shevuos if it is at all possible.