Stiffening one's resolve

 An Avot mishnah for Shabbat (Parashat Devarim)

Continuing our series of erev Shabbat posts on the perek of the week, we go back once again to Perek 3.

At Avot 3:17 Rabbi Akiva, having cautioned about the slippery slope leading from jest and frivolity down to sexual impropriety, promotes the efficacy of four “fences” in protecting higher values. He says:

מַסֹּֽרֶת סְיָג לַתּוֹרָה, מַעְשְׂרוֹת סְיָג לָעֹֽשֶׁר, נְדָרִים סְיָג לַפְּרִישׁוּת, סְיָג לַחָכְמָה שְׁתִיקָה

Tradition is a fence to Torah, tithing is a fence to wealth, vows are a fence for abstinence; a fence for wisdom is silence.

To the practising Jew of today’s world, the importance and practical utility of Torah, wealth and wisdom need neither explanation or justification. But what do we make of vows and abstinence? These are not part of our daily vocabulary. We no longer make the sort of vows that feature in the Torah, and abstinence is an unfashionable concept in any open society where self-indulgence, and indeed overindulgence, have become the norm. But if a teaching from Avot does not offer us an immediately relevant meaning, we do not jettison it or consign it to the museum of religious curiosities. We must look more closely at it and understand it more fully.

All of us make resolutions from time to time. These are not formal vows or oaths made in God’s name, and they usually relate to things that are either unregulated by the Torah or which are so prevalent that it is hard to avoid them. Typical examples might be resolving to limit one’s intake of alcohol at meals or parties, not to eat a second piece of cake at the shul’s kiddush, to get to bed by midnight or to try to avoid speaking about one’s friends behind their backs. If we mean these resolutions and take them seriously, we feel annoyed with ourselves if we break them—but it doesn’t cost us anything if we do and we do not incur any liability for which we would be obliged to offer a Temple sacrifice, a major deterrent to breaking one’s vows.

R' Yisroel Miller cites an idea expressed by R’ Yehoshua Heller in his Divrei Yehoshua that offers a simple way to apply our mishnah in the context of our own lives. He writes:

“Rather than vowing to keep to your resolution, vow that each time you break it you will give a certain amount of money to tzedakah (enough to hurt, but not enough to bankrupt you). A modified version of this is not to make an actual vow but merely a commitment to give the money each time you break your resolution. This sensitizes us and heightens our awareness of our actions, reinforcing our resolve”.

This creates a sort of win-win situation. If we keep our resolutions, we have money in our pockets and the satisfaction of demonstrating that we are strong because our self-discipline is in working order (see Avot 4:1). But if we fail, we are credited with the mitzvah of tzedakah and one or more charitable causes will be fortunate to benefit from it.

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Upon my oath! Making a personal commitment

This week’s Torah reading of parashat Matot opens with the topic of solemn vows and oaths, their binding nature and the extent to which they can be annulled. In modern society the making of such oaths plays only a tangential role, so we tend to give it little thought. That does not mean that we cannot learn something useful from our ancient laws. After all, keeping one’s word and doing what one promises are important parts of civilised life everywhere—and this is the issue that underpins the making and breaking of vows and oaths.

Not only the Mishnah but the Talmud give considerable space to oaths, dedicating no fewer than three tractates to them: Nedarim (defining a neder vow and its application to vows concerning food and daughters), Nazir (on the making of Nazirite vows and their consequences) and Shevuot (oaths made in the course of commerce and litigation). But that is not all. Pirkei Avot mentions oaths too, on three occasions:

·         “Oaths are a protective fence to abstinence” (Rabbi Akiva, Avot 3:17)

·         “Don’t question your fellow at the time he is making a vow” (Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar, Avot 4:23)

·         “Wild beasts come into the world on account of vain oaths and desecration of God’s name” (Anonymous, Avot 5:11).

From debate in the Talmud as to whether oaths are good, bad or both, we can see that much depends on the circumstances and the manner in which people make them. At one end of the spectrum we see how a person can strengthen his or her resolve to do the right thing by making an oath to do so; at the other extreme we learn of people taking God’s name in vain when making oaths that are without purpose or meaning. There’s not much point in making an oath that a muffin is a muffin, but at least that proposition is true. To utilise God’s name when swearing that a muffin is not a muffin is an insult to human intelligence, whether one is troubled by invoking God’s name in vain or not.

Of all Rabbi Akiva’s teachings in Avot, “Oaths are a protective fence to abstinence” is probably the one we encounter least frequently, since not only oaths but also abstinence are very much out of fashion. There is however more to Rabbi Akiva’s teaching here than meets the eye. Taking a positive view, his teaching suggests that binding oral commitments like oaths and vows are clearly of value if they help to strengthen the resolve of someone who is motivated to distance himself from the pleasures and sensual experiences of the world—whether permitted or otherwise—for the purpose of gaining greater proximity to his Maker.

In the world at large, many people practise the popular institution of the New Year Resolution—a pledge to undertake the making of (usually) one major change in their lifestyle in order to produce some sort of improving effect. These resolutions often cover abstinence from substances that are pleasurably harmful if consumed in quantity (e.g. chocolate, patisserie, alcoholic beverages). Or they may relate to acts and deeds (e.g. making a greater effort to visit elderly relatives, or regularly clearing their email in-trays). One thing they generally have in common is that much of their power to bind the person making them depends on that person telling others that he or she has done so. This means facing shame and embarrassment if, having publicised a resolution, a person then admits in public that he or she has broken it.

Like New Year Resolutions, the oaths and vows of Mishnaic times raised the expectation that the person making them would respect and stand by them. However, unlike secular resolutions, the oaths and vows that the Mishnah discusses were made by people who, by invoking God’s name, reminded themselves that both their binding commitment and any breach of it were made before their Creator, giving extra power to the notion that it is important to keep one’s word and honour one’s promises even if their subject, such as limiting their consumption of chocolate and booze, affects non-one but themselves.

A further note on abstinence and what it means should appear later this week.