Torah Portion on Vows Mattot/Masei
Mattot and Masei are the last two portions of the book of Numbers (30:2–36:18)
Vows
Mattot opens with a chapter on the subject of vows. “A
vow is a word of action.”*
Judaism takes the making or uttering of vows very seriously.
Often, when talking about a future event, we say “b’ezrat Hashem (“with the help of G‑d”) so we
are not uttering a vow.
Fourteen of the seventeen verses in this porition address the topic of women and
vows.
"Torah makes the point that a father or a husband may cancel the vows of a daughter or wife. It follows that men have to keep the promises they make, while women are often prevented from doing so."
Matot picks up that there are
differences in words of men and women. Another interpretation “might be that
men and women should both accept the responsibility for vows that they utter.
Another possibility is that men learn from women, and vice versa, and that together
we accept the responsibility entailed in uttering vows, while also sharing
those responsibilities with the people close to us.”
Source: "Women speak louder than
words" by Rabbi Stacy K. Offner,
from the book, The Women’s Torah Commentary
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