Making & Breaking Vows — Nedarim 21b–22a — #37

A certain person came before R. Assi, who said to him, “Have you already regretted [your vow]? He said to him, “Haven’t I?! [meaning: I certainly have!]” So [R. Assi] released him [from his vow]. 

A certain person came before R. Elazar, who said to him, “Do you [still] want your vow [to be in force]?” He said to him, “Had they not angered me, I would never have wanted [to make the vow] at all.” [R. Elazar] said to him, “It is as you desired.” 

A certain woman imposed a vow on her daughter. [The mother] came before R. Yochanan. He said to her, “Had you known that your neighbors would say about your daughter, (22a) ‘Had her mother not seen in her matters that warranted abandoning her, she would not have made the vow for no reason,’ would you have imposed the vow on her?” [The mother] said to him, “No.” He released her [from her vow].

INTRODUCTION

Do you know people who make promises but do not keep their word? For inconsequential issues, we can turn a blind eye, but for important matters, we are inclined to “put it in writing.” Long ago, agreements were  often contracted orally by taking an oath. Vows had legal validity and consequences. Torah uses two terms: If a person makes a neder (vow) to Adonai or takes an shevuah (oath) imposing an obligation on himself, he shall not break his pledge; he must carry out  all that has crossed his lips (Numbers 30:3; see also Deuteronomy 23:22–24). The distinction between a neder and a shevuah is that a neder prohibits an object to the one who makes the vow (although Torah permits it), while a shevuah obligates or constrains the behavior of the person who makes the oath. Our passage concerns vows. For example, if I vow not to eat unhealthful food for a month, then junk food is now forbidden to me. To be enforced, a neder requires both intention and a verbal declaration (just thinking it is not sufficient). The Rabbis took people’s pledges seriously. Life and death are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21).

What happens when someone is too quick to make a vow, failing to recognize its consequences, or if the consequences are unforeseeable? Torah does not provide a mechanism to absolve people from their vows. The most tragic example is the general Jephthah (Judges 11:30–40) who leads Israel in war against the Ammonites after foolishly vowing that if he is victorious in battle he will sacrifice the first thing he sees upon returning home; upon his return, his only child, a daughter, comes out to greet him. It is a horrifying scene.

The Rabbis attempt to balance the ideal with the real. They understood that making rash vows is part of human nature and therefore they strongly discouraged people from making any vows whatsoever, and further  built into halakhah mechanisms to annul rash and inappropriate vows. Generally, either a rabbi or a bet din of three knowledgeable lay people can have a vow annulled (called hatarah) if there exist grounds for a petach (“opening”), which means that the person regretted the vow because they were not aware of the affect it would have on them. Our passage provides three examples of finding a petach to release a person from their vow.

COMMENTARY

Our passage has three brief stories. In the first vignette, R. Assi finds a petach (“opening”) to annul a man’s vow because he regrets having made it. In the second vignette, R. Elazar releases a man from his vow because he made it rashly in a moment of anger; the anger “coerces” him into making the vow. In the third vignette, a woman unknowingly and unthinkingly digs herself into a hole by vowing that her daughter will derive no benefit from her (the mother). We can only imagine what transpired between mother and daughter to inspire the mother to make such a rash vow. The result, however, is not surprising. The neighbors begin talking, as people are wont to do: “Wow! Did you hear about So-and-So’s vow regarding her daughter? Her daughter must have done something spectacularly awful for So-and-So to have made that vow!” The mother is horrified that many people in her community now presume that her daughter has done something so terrible that it is appropriate for her mother to essentially abandon her. She goes to R. Yochanan in the hopes that he will retroactively annul it. He asks the mother whether she realized that such damaging gossip would ensue from making the vow. She replies that she did not. This the petach (“opening”) he needs to annul her vow. 

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER AND DISCUSS

1. In a moment of anger, have you ever declared that you would do, or refrain from doing, something (e.g., never speak with someone again, never enter someone’s home again)? Did you later regret your declaration?
2. What might be the emotional and spiritual consequences of holding someone to a rash vow they made?
3. G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) argued in a famous essay, “A Defense of Rash Vows” (abridgment here) that modern people fear vows because they pose consequences we would prefer to avoid, but require of us self-discipline and responsibility. Do you agree? If the Rabbis disapproved of making vows because people so often make them rashly and later regret them, do you think they should have found a mechanism for retroactively annulling all vows automatically? Why do you think they did not?

If a prosperous modern man… were to solemnly pledge himself before all his clerks and friends to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, to hop up to the City on one leg every Thursday…to collect 300 dandelions in fields belonging to anyone of the name of Brown… to sing the names of all his aunts in order of age on the top of an omnibus, or make any such unusual undertaking, we should immediately conclude that the man was mad, or, as it is sometimes expressed, was ‘an artist in life.’ (G. K. Chesterton)