Seventy Faces of Torah Dangerous Vows, Sacred Lives

Parashiot BeHar-BeHukotai Leviticus 25:1-27:34

Margaret Atwood, the 85 year-old Canadian author known perhaps most famously for The Handmaid’s Tale, has said she cannot remember another point in her lifetime “when words themselves have felt under such threat.” The Book of Leviticus (VaYikra), ends with a meditation on the power of language to affirm the sanctity of life. VaYikra, on the whole, centers on the sacredness of people, of time, of the land, and of holy space (the Temple and Tabernacle). The book now turns to the holiness of words, with a particular focus on vows (nedarim).

A vow (neder) is a speech act which “gets something done” (J. L. Austin). It is conditional, formulated as an “if…then…” promise. For example, Hannah vows that if she is granted a male-child, then she will dedicate that son to the service of God (1 Samuel 1:11). A neder entails a promise to sacrifice or dedicate the value of something in exchange for God’s special regard; it is a way of bargaining with the divine. But what happens when one breaks the promise? Or God withdraws? Perhaps this is why Yom Kippur opens with the annulment of all our vows and oaths in Kol Nidrei—a prelude to atonement, wiping the slate of our word-debts clean.

At the opening of the last chapter in Leviticus we read:

And God spoke to Moshe saying: speak to the children of Israel and say to them: when anyone makes a wondrous vow [ki yafli’ neder] in evaluating human lives to God [be-‘erkekha nefashot le-Yhwh], the following scale shall apply… (Leviticus 27:1-2)

What ensues is a standardized evaluation of a human life: a man, from 20 to 60 years of age, is valued at 50 shekels of silver; a woman at 30; with regard to a youth, 5 to 20 years of age, 20 shekels for a male and 10 shekels for a female and so forth. The discrepancy between the value of men and women aside, this idea is perplexing. Monetizing and creating a hierarchy of human value seems anathema to holiness. How can one place a value on a human life? The key word seems to be yafli’—to make wondrous, beyond the natural ways of the world. To articulate such a vow is an extraordinary thing to do. Placing a shekel value on a soul/human life [nefesh] essentially reduces what is immeasurable. This is a “hard” or “difficult” thing, a pel’e, “a wonder”. To speak in this way is to encroach upon God’s jurisdiction (see Genesis 13:18, Numbers 6:2, Judges13:18).

Yet the judge Jephthah does precisely that when he vows to sacrifice the first one who comes out to greet him if he returns victorious from battle against the Ammonites (Judges 11:30-31). Tragically, his daughter comes out to meet him, dancing with timbrels as women often do in the Bible (see Exod. 15:20-21, 1 Sam. 18:6-7). Yet he does not try to mitigate the vow (v. 35). The assumption, in the biblical story, is that the vow must be upheld and cannot be annulled; he feels compelled to “do as he had vowed…” (v. 39). The Rabbis, however, allow vows to be annulled in a process called hatarat nedarim, literally “loosening” or “untying” the words that bind.

In the homiletical midrash Tanḥuma, the unnamed daughter becomes the advocate for cancelling the vow and upholding human life deemed sacred. When neither military leader (Jephthah, the judge) nor the High Priest (Phinehas) are willing to come together to annul his vow, the daughter steps forward:

His daughter said to him: My father, could it be that it is written in the Torah that they should offer the lives of their children on the altar?!? Is it not written: ‘(When one of you presents an offering to the LORD(, from the livestock, from the cattle and from the herds…’ (Lev. 1:2). ‘From the livestock,’ but not from human beings!?!
He said to her: My daughter, I have vowed, ‘whatever/whoever comes out to greet me…’ (Judges 11:31). Could it be that anyone who vows need not fulfill his vow?!?
She said to him: When our forefather Jacob vowed, ‘And of all that You give me, I will surely set aside a tithe [ma‘aser=1/10th] for You’ (Gen. 28:22), and the Holy One, blessed be He, gave him twelve tribes [sons], could it be that he would have to sacrifice any one of them?!?
Moreover, Hannah when “She made this vow, and said: ‘O LORD of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your maidservant, and remember me, and not forget your maidservant…”’ (1 Sam 1.11), could it be that she would sacrifice her son to the Holy One, blessed be He?!?”
All these things she said to him, but he did not heed her.
(Tanḥuma Yelamdenu BeḤuqqotai 5)

While the daughter acquiesces to her sacrifice in the biblical narrative (v. 36), in the midrash she resists. In contrast to her father Jephthah, called an “ignoramus” or “boor”, she is eloquent and wise and knows how to wield the rapier of rabbinic interpretation. She cites two other famous vows in Tanakh: Jacob’s and Hannah’s. Neither of them were compelled to sacrifice their children. As the Rabbis contend, a monetary sum or an animal should substitute for the pledge of a human life. Yet her arguments fall on proverbial deaf ears.

Today words are bandied about—false promises, truth stretched thin —and, as a consequence, lives are placed on the line, even sacrificed. What is our counter? EMPATHY NOW! This entails empowering voices that hold supreme the sanctity of life. In closing, I want to offer a sequel to the Jephthah story, from the modern collection of feminist midrash, Dirshuni,:

“Tanot, Jephthah’s Daughter”
by Rivka Lubitch

‘She was an only child, he had no other son or daughter’ (Judg. 11.34).
The Shekhinah (Divine Presence) said to Jephthah’s daughter: Jephthah had no progeny through you, and on earth they don’t know that a woman has a name of her own, even without having a son or daughter. Sit with me in heaven and weep for this. On earth they call you ‘Jephthah’s daughter’ but I will call you ‘Tanot’.
And why was she called ‘Tanot’? Because it is written, ‘for four days every year the daughters of Israel would go out to lament [or recount the story of, le-tanot] Jephthah’s daughter, the Gileadite’ (Judg. 11:40). And they said, tanot does not mean lament but, rather, it is the name of Jephthah’s daughter. And what does she do? She sits in heaven and listens to the stories of the earthly daughters of Israel, and then sits by the Shekhinah and recounts their sorrows in Her ear, prays for them, and teaches their merits.

Indeed, the answer to the degradation of language is in listening, in lifting others’ voices and stories up to God, teaching their merits and upholding the sanctity of human life.

Rav Rachel Adelman (PhD, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Hebrew College, where she recently earned rabbinic ordination (2021). She is the author of several academic and popular articles in Jewish studies, as well as two books: The Return of the Repressed: Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer and the Pseudepigrapha (Brill, 2009) and The Female Ruse: Women’s Deception and Divine Sanction in the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield Press, 2015), She just completed a new monograph: Daughters in Danger, from the Hebrew Bible to Modern Midrash (forthcoming, Sheffield). When not writing books, papers, or divrei Torah, it is poetry that flows from her pen.