An oath is administered to a person before his birth, 'Be righteous and be not wicked and know that Hashem is pure and his ministers are pure and the soul that you were given is pure (Niddah, 30b, quoted in part at the opening of the Tanya).
Mattot
Reb Shlomo Minyan HarNof
(R. Raphael, email: [email protected])
If a man makes a vow (neder) to G-d or an oath (shevuah) to obligate himself, he must not break his word. He must do all that he expressed verbally (Bemidbar 30:3).
The Rambam brings out two competing effects of making an oath:
One who makes a neder in order to improve himself or his behaviors is considered zealous and praiseworthy as for example someone who has cravings for meat or wine and makes it forbidden to himself�these are called vows that create a fence for overcoming desire.
Even though these serve Hashem, a person shouldn't do this often so as to become habituated to making this kind of vow but he should control himself without a neder. As the rabbis said, "Making a neder is like building an altar outside the temple." If he can't keep his vow of abstention he should go one who is great in Torah and have it annulled. (Rambam Hilchot Nedarim 13, 23-25).
The Klee Yakar in his commentary distinguishes between different motivations that cause a person to forswear something. "There are two types of vows: A person sometimes makes an oath because he is angered for some reason and forbids something to himself. This is not "to Hashem." For it says in the pasuk 'A man when he will vow to Hashem,' i.e., when he is fully human with his mind clear, unclouded by concerns of the moment. But when he vows because he is angered then he is compared to an animal" (Bemidbar 30:2).
Although the Torah bestows upon the individual the power to bind himself through a neder or shevuah, he, alone, cannot free himself of it. Hatarat nedarim (undoing of vows) can be done either by one who is great in Torah or by a court of three Jews. When the person who made the neder expresses regret for his words, the chacham then searches the vow for an opening that shows that he never intended it in the first instance.
The problem with nedarim is that they are often made in the heat of the moment as a reaction to some event. Thus, a person who is furious with his friend might say, "I vow not to speak with you again and I will never undo this vow." When the anger subsides, if he decides to go to a chacham to anul the vow, he will first need to void the clause that says he would never annul the vow. The chacham could ask, "If you knew you were going to calm down at some point and no longer feel so angry, would you have made such a condition?" When the person says he would not have, the chacham can use this charatah (regret) to annul it. He must then annul the vow itself. He can do this in a similar way by having the person who made the vow express regret. Thus if he says, "I would not have made the neder if I knew I would feel differently when my anger subsided," then the neder is undone and speaking to his friend will no longer constitute a transgression.
Even a neder made with greater consideration - like those mentioned by the Rambam in order to foster a person's resolve in curbing his desires - can be annulled. Thus a person who vows not to eat bread and later finds that he cannot stand the deprivation can annul it by stating that he had not realized how strong his desire would be or how hungry he would get.
There is a story in the Gemara, Nedarim about a man who made a neder forbidding a thing to himself. The chacham probed the man's thoughts to see if he was aware at the time he made the vow in order to find a loophole that would allow him to undo it. When the man responded on each question that he had thought of every contingency, the rabbi got very upset. Finally he asked the one who made the vow, "Would you have made this vow if you knew how upset you would make me?" When he answered "No," the rabbi was able to undo it.
The essential element of undoing a neder, as in any teshuvah, is charatah. Regret means that, knowing what I know now, seeing what I see now, I would never have done what I did. Such a state of mind uproots the intention of the original action and makes it possible to unbind the one who vowed or transgressed.
The Meor VeShemesh (p. 184) discusses this issue of transgression and teshuvah in relation to vows. He sees the vow as a defensive move that a person will make to protect himself from the pain of facing what he has done. He gives advice on how to raise up the natural inclination to defend one's self through making this kind of neder; how to turn that into a complete teshuvah to Hashem.
Most of the time a person makes a neder when he is already in a state of distress over a sin that he has committed and the harshness of the dinim (judgments) that have already come upon him. The real remedy for a transgression is teshuvah shelemah (returning with all of his heart and soul) to do the will of Hashem. But when he is in such a state, he has no presence of mind and his inclination is to make a vow just in order to lighten the harsh judgments that are weighing heavily upon him.
The neder seems to help, suspending the dinim till he can calm down and begin his teshuvah. But in the final analysis there aren't many who have the presence of mind, by themselves, to achieve this complete return from sin. Like it says in the Gemara, "An imprisoned man cannot free himself." What he must do is find a tzaddik who can understand the depth and source of his sin and even reach to the teshuvah that he needs to do. When he realizes that the tzaddik sees him so deeply there flames up inside of him the fear of Hashem and this brings the person to a full teshuvah for his actions. Hashem will then return and comfort him over the bad deed and the judgments against him will be nullified.
The Torah makes a distinction between undoing (heter) nedarim and annulling (hefir) the vow. A married woman, for instance, can have her vows annulled by her husband. Since her daat is considered to be subsumed by her husband's, if he disapproves of her neder, it's as if there never was a decision to make such a vow.
That the holiness of marriage has such a power is discussed by Rav Nasan in Lekutei Halachot. He says that Yaacov stopped at the Holy of Holies before meeting his wife. His experience at "the place," was that all the stones became one stone. This refers to the even shateyah, which is the massive rock on Har Moriah (the Temple Mount) from which the world was spread to its dimensions by Hashem. "Even" (the one stone) is related to the word binah, the upper source from which the holiness of marriage takes effect. The union of the twelve stones into one is accomplished by lifting them (marriage is called nisuin, "lifting,") to their source in which the many are joined in holiness. That this is the source of neder as well, binding oneself in holiness, is shown by the fact that immediately after this experience of the stones Yaacov made a neder to fulfill Hashem's will.
Thus, heter nedarim works in a similar way to the husband's hefir nedarim. The chacham's daat, which is connected to its source in holiness overrides the decision of a man or woman whose neder has taken effect. The chacham or tzaddik can do this because his daat reaches to the source of mind from which the daat of individuals spring. Rav Nasan discusses this process in Lekutei Halachot, Yoreh De'ah, Hilchot Nedarim:
When a person makes a neder, he explicitly connects the object of the vow to the Torah. This is like a whole new mitzvah in the Torah that he originates and this is the power of every Jew. By so doing he connects that thing to the source of Torah above. We can see this same power of joining things below with their source above in the act of saying a blessing on various foods. Although the food is permitted before the blessing, it can only reach its full holiness through his blessing that connects it to its life source above.
These actions of creating new mitzvot or say a blessing on the fruit are ways of focusing the life force of the person. Otherwise it has the aspect of being unbounded and uncontained like the Infinite from which it comes while lacking the fixing that will enable it to emulate Hashem's goodness. Through the words of blessing or making a neder he vacates the raw energy from the heart and focuses this power in strengthening, so to speak, Hashem's presence in the world. This enables us to partake in fixing the world - the way the Torah was established for serving Hashem.
Before the Torah was given, Hashem sustained the world without this service through his freely given kindness (chesed). The chacham or tzaddik who can access the mysteries of Torah is in touch with this primordial level. Because he is in touch with this source he can undo the binding of a neder by returning the thing to its root where it is sustained by the Infinite.
The Meor VeShemesh speaks of Hashem's neder that arises from the person's transgression of a mitzvah or his own vow. When the person does teshuvah for a transgression this is the loophole, the opening, by which Hashem, so to speak, undoes His neder to punish the transgression. The din is sweetened at the root retroactively and automatically, i.e. there is no place for Hashem's neder to take effect. This is learned from the prayers of Moshe Rabbeinu when he supplicated Hashem and He undid His vow to destroy the people for the sin of the Golden Calf (see Brachot 32).
This experience of Moshe in undoing, so to speak, Hashem's neder expains the unusual language in the beginning of the parsha. Rather than saying, "And Hashem spoke to Moshe saying, This is the commandment�" the pasuk is more terse: "This is the command of Hashem�" The pasuk begins with Moshe because he had learned through his own experience with Hashem that a single chacham could free another from a neder. And the fact that Moshe spoke to the leaders of the tribes refers to the chachamim, those like Moshe who will be able to free a person of an undesirable vow.
The tradition of chanting Kol Nidrei (the undoing of vows) on Yom Kippur has to do with the notion of teshuvah being the source of undoing vows. On Yom Kippur, the day which is uniquely suited to returning to Hashem with a pure heart, we can uproot the parts of ourselves that have become attached to transgression and undo our vows.
The Mateh Levi compares the forgiveness that is forthcoming from Hashem with the following situation. A woman made a vow to become a nazir, meaning that she could not to drink wine. Unbeknownst to her, her husband was standing nearby. Immediately upon hearing this he annulled her vow but the woman was unaware of it. Because of her state of mind when she later came to drink wine, she must do teshuvah for what she conceived as her wrongdoing.
This mashal refers to the soul, which is called wife to Hashem, Master of the Universe. Upon coming into the world the soul takes an oath not to transgress the commands of the Torah. Hashem knows how sorely the person will be tested in this world and immediately annuls it. But the person is unaware that Hashem has taken this into consideration. Thus teshuvah must be still be done based on the perception of the soul. Kol Nidrei concludes, "All the sins of the nation were unintentional (and the neder is undone)." Let it be Your will, Hashem.
"Everything that went through fire shall be purified with fire" (Bemidbar 31:23).
Rebbe Nachman discusses the notion of serving Hashem implied by the purification of the vessels captured from Midian when B'nei Yisrael avenged the Midianites. He says that just as transgression creates a burning desire in a person its fixing can only come when a person finds the fire of longing for Hashem that is in his heart. This longing banishes the spirit (as fire consumes air) of impurity that arose from his attachment to the transgression.
One way of arousing his heart is in thinking into the greatness of Hashem. As his thoughts move from one concept of the actions of the Creator's to another, he heats up (this is similar to the way a person's body becomes hot with physical movement) and this pushes away the fires of desire. The other way is to focus himself on finding the merit in other people and at the same time attaching himself to one greater than him. Just as the stars pass the heat of their movement from one to the other, the person will be purified by the love that he receives and directs towards his fellows. This is similar to what it says about the service of the angels, acknowledging one another as they pronounce Hashem's greatness, "kadosh, kadosh, kadosh."