Guest Sermon by Jason Lever 22nd August / 9th Elul 5786

Ki Teitzei

Today’s reading from Parasha Ki Teitzei, on the surface, may be seen as a long list of anachronistic rules lacking in relevance to our lives today. And I have been known to skip over such Sedra material in the past, keener to get back to the narrative of the plot and characters – ‘the action’ in our Torah story.

We read that when you go into a fellow Israelite’s vineyard you can eat as many grapes as you want, until you are full– but no more. A bit like scrumping for apples – one thing to fill up your pockets but not come with an empty bag.

Then, there’s not abusing a needy and destitute labourer by making sure you pay their wages due on the same day, and before sundown. Similarly, if you’ve made a loan to such a person, “you shall not go to sleep in that pledge”; in other words, holding on to a garment a poor person gave you as loan collateral. Both sound ways of conducting our business practices today surely.

Moving into the domestic sphere, there’s a prohibition that if a woman obtains a divorce from husband number 1, marries husband number 2, who then dies or divorces her, she cannot go back to marry husband number one. I wonder if this was mentioned to Elisheba Rachel – Hebrew name of Elizabeth Taylor – when Rabbi Nussbaum helped her to convert to Judaism in LA in 1959. How many times did she re-marry Richard Burton?

On a more serious domestic note, we are also told in this Parasha (and in Shoftim, last week) that a new bridegroom gets a one year’s exemption from military service. Not something modern armed forces can afford to do, in Israel or here, but this seems to be a very compassionate approach, giving the opportunity to start a family, the amount of time away that will ensue and of course the risks of loss of life. Or is it more strategic in that they are likely to be distracted, unable to properly focus on their duties at war, as they wonder what they are missing back home, and so could become a battlefield liability. Ultimately, I prefer to see this as a means to actively encourage the building of homes and families among the Jewish people. Giving equal priority to afkidei hashalom – “missions of peace” (in R Shimshon Raphael Hirsch’s words) as “waging war”.

All in all, this selection to me shows an ethical framework for behaving in one’s domestic, family and wider societal spheres that can reasonably be applied today (granted some of these Biblical prohibitions did not make it into the do’s and don’ts of Rabbinical Judaism – you’re off the hook Liz and Dick). And in a Hassidic mindset, when we perform acts of compassion, love, and healing, we reveal more of the Holy One in the world. So, as we’re in the lead up to Rosh Hashanah, one could do worse than cheshbon nefesh, a weighing up of oneself, against some of these standards set in this week’s Parasha.

I’d like to go back to the first one we read in chapter 23, verse 22: “When you make a vow to the Eternal your God, do not put off fulfilling it, for the Eternal your God will require it of you, and you will have incurred guilt”. The earlier examples affect other people, but top of this list is this injunction for God’s sake.

On the subject of vows or oaths, just last month I was teasing online Ben – my best friend I’ve had since I was 4 years old in kindergarten – that he didn’t come to my barmitzvah due to a clash with his cousin’s one; and with chutzpadik extracted an oath that he will put in his diary to come to my planned repeat rendition, B”H”, in 2053. That is, if the WhatsApp message is still enforceable in a likely obsolete technology cloud archive.

They were usually thought of as binding pledges, neder – a conditional promise made to God – if God will do such-and-such, the vow taker will then repay for this Divine help by offering such-and-such in God’s service or honour.

As we learn in the book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), “Better than you not vow than you should vow and not fulfil”. Oaths or vows are solemn and high stakes. Yet, if they are sincere, vows made to God hang over one’s head in perpetuity. As only under very special and precisely formulated circumstances can you be released from your undertakings (such as if you can persuade a bet din to annul as you didn’t really mean it).

Is this really selling such vow-making to me in my life today? To me, even if you substitute vow-making (common in Biblical times) by prayer supplication (in fixed prayer, through the daily Amidah – we rest from most of this this on Sabbath), I’m still wary of seeking to invoke Divine benevolence or mercy to improve our and our loved one’s lives. I relate more to Yeshayahu Leibowitz’ argument in his controversial essay, ‘Of Prayer’ (1960), that prayer is about ‘the duty of worship’. It entails ‘setting aside our interests and motives’, as opposed to seeking to secure things we want and ‘bring about God’s intervention in the natural order to our benefit’.

Put another way, I feel it shouldn’t be about a covenantal style vow deal – if I go to Shul more or keep Kosher, then I’ll expect God to favour me in my concerns and challenges. We pray – through Amidah text or our own private petitions to God – in order to purify our soul and draw us nearer to the Divine. That’s it. Just one way to conceptualise and embody prayer, and not the majority one!

So where does that leave the role of taking vows or making oaths today? They do still play a role, whether in saying chuppah betrothals, as I have the privilege of witnessing as this Shul’s Secretary for Marriages. And, coming up fast, undertaking that crucial ritual central to the opening of Kol Nidre to annul all our ill-considered and/or unfulfilled vows.

Just for balance, though, Rabbi Sacks makes a strong claim for the value of vows still as a practical tool underpinning freedom, because it ‘depends on people keeping their word’. In turn, this requires trust – for ‘keeping your word means treating words as holy, [therefore] vows and oaths as sacrosanct’.

So maybe I’ve written off vows prematurely. Not seeing them as a practice connecting us back to our ancestors, whose covenantal vow at Sinai bound them and, still to this day, binds us.

The timing of the people being ‘reminded of the sacred character of vows and oaths’ in today’s Parasha, links to what Rabbi Sacks teaches. It was when they were close to inhabiting the Promised Land, where a free and thriving society needed the application of the values of trust and in turn self-responsibility for them to begin to govern themselves. It’s also a reminder to us today what the alternatives can be; rising intolerance, use of coercive force, sectarianism and diminishing freedoms.

So, what we can do to the betterment of ourselves and maybe have some influence on the wider world in countering these troubling tendencies? Let us take comfort in one month’s time from our annual Kol Nidrei’s absolving ourselves ‘from all the vows and obligations we make to God in vain’ and to ‘shield us from their consequences’.

In the famous dictum of our sage, Hillel, ‘If I am not for myself, who is for me?... But if I am [just] for myself – what I am? – over the Yamim Tovim ahead, we can seek a re-set to believe in ourselves that we can change things around to do good for us, our families, community and be an exemplar in the world.

Shabbat shalom.