Exodus 32:11

Numbers 30:3

Exodus Rabbah 43:4

Sifrei Devarim 29:2

Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai, Additions 4

Tehillim 90:1

Midrash Tehillim 90:4

Genesis Rabbah 27:4

Genesis 6:6

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TEXTing with Elana Stein Hain delves deeply into Jewish texts to guide and inspire us as we grapple with the concerns and meaning of this moment. Join Elana as she addresses the issues of our day through the lens of classical Jewish texts, in conversation with Hartman scholars Christine Hayes, Yonah Hain, and Leora Batnitzky.

TEXTing. Where ancient wisdom meets contemporary relevance.

Another Way Transcript

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Elana: Welcome to TEXTing, where we consider issues relevant to Jewish life through the lens of classical and modern Torah texts. I’m your host, Elana Stein Hain. We are recording on June 17, 2024. If you’d like to follow along with today’s text, you can find the link to our source sheet in the episode description.

Okay. This is just between us. But I want to share a moment that I truly regret from my life as a parent. One of my kids was around four, I think, and he was having a serious tantrum. I mean, one of those where there’s nothing to do. There’s nothing to say. There’s no possible reprieve. And I had had a long day. So I did something bad. Like really bad. I took a doll. It was a Pokemon Squirtle that he had won at a recent carnival, and I cut it, like, in half. I mean, I cut it in half beyond repair. And I was too angry to even regret it in that moment because I was so self-righteous about my anger. And it actually did get him to stop crying for a minute, out of shock. And then he continued profusely.

But now, here I am, nearly six years later, confessing it to you. Because guess what? The minute I calmed down, I regretted it, and I’ve regretted it ever since. And while I couldn’t sew the doll back together, I told you, it was a pretty serious cutting job, I’ve expressed that regret and my mistake repeatedly to my son over the years, telling him how short-sighted and frankly, mean, what I did was.

And while this is maybe a rather intense example, I actually think we do and say things that we regret often, especially in high-stress times like these, and especially when we’re trying to prove a point. But then later we find out that the consequences just weren’t worth it. And they may even be inimical to what we were trying to do in the first place. So that’s what I want to talk about today. Having regret and actually being able to show it. And there is an amazing text in Shemot Rabbah, the Midrash on the book of Exodus. And to discuss it, I have with me today the other parent of the child from our opening story, Yonah Hain. Welcome Yonah.

Yonah: Thank you for having me, Elana.

Elana: Yonah, do you remember this incident? What does it say to you about anger, haste, regret?

Yonah: When you were retelling this story, my initial thought was, “You monster! How could you? And then I realized how thankful I am that you didn’t tell the parallel story to our older child when he was young and misbehaving and I took his Pokemon cards and tore them in half.

Elana: Oh my gosh, you did. What is wrong with us? This is terrible.

Yonah: Honestly, I think part of it is Pokemon.

Elana: That might be it.

Yonah: Because our children were obsessed with it for six years and I still don’t understand how to play it, but moving on.

Elana: But moving on, but moving on. Okay, so thank you, by the way, thank you for coming over to my side of the room on that. That was very kind. You could have gone in a totally different direction. The Midrash that we want to look at today, I mean, it is gorgeous and shocking. And it comes out of this strange terminology that describes Moshe beseeching God on behalf of the people after the golden calf. And the strange terminology, the word is vayechal Moshe, Moses implored.

Yonah: So I do remember from when I was acting with anger and tearing up the Pokemon cards, I gave our son countless warnings. And I was actually not, this was not actually an incident of anger. In retrospect, while I regret what I did, I was following all of the parent protocols. I’m sorry, if you do this, there will be these consequences. I’ve asked you a number of times. You now need to listen. Otherwise, we’re going to have to have the following consequence. And what it says to me is, whether we’re acting out of anger or not, things that we regret were not made with all of our decision-making senses. And some of that, sometimes that’s anger and it could be other…

Elana: Well, it’s all, it’s also interesting, what you’re bringing up is that sometimes the reason why we regret is because maybe what we did didn’t fit what, what, you know, it wasn’t a proper reaction or response. It was too much, but maybe also like, it’s just an unsustainable, like, what are you going to do, you’re going to rip up your kid’s Pokemon card? That doesn’t make any sense. It’s not, that’s not just a moment of anger. It also is like, doesn’t, it doesn’t move the relationship in any normal way.

And I love that you remembered to go back to that, given that we’re starting with the golden calf. Because what is God supposed to do when the people worship the golden calf. Because on the one hand, it’s like, you can’t just say, oh, God’s going to be angry and therefore maybe God may do something to them that they don’t deserve. They’re literally breaking the cardinal sin. And that’s why I think it’s so interesting that the Midrash is actually going to get into God saying, I’m not sure I actually want to punish them the way that they should be punished. Right? So it’s a little bit more sober of a question of sometimes even if you are actually trying to make a decision out of, you know, smart decision making, does it go too far?

So here’s how it goes. I call part one the conflict. “Another matter. Moses implored, vayechal Moshe.”

Yonah: And that word, veyachal, is basically the main star of our topic. It’s such a short, but confusing phrase.

Elana: Sure. So Rabbi Berechia says in the name of Rabbi Chelbo who said in the name of Rabbi Yitzchak. It actually comes from the word for dissolving vows. Moses dissolved the vow of his maker, shehitir nidro shel yotzro. How so? When the Jewish people made the golden calf, Moses got up to placate God, but God refused to pardon them. And God said, I already took an oath, Moses. There’s a verse in the Bible, Exodus 22:19, it says, one who sacrifices to God’s will be destroyed. And an oath that’s come out of my mouth, I don’t recant it, right?

So this is kind of an amazing setup. The setup is essentially, God is dead serious about the problem of paganism. So dead serious that God has already said, if anyone sacrifices to pagan gods, I’m going to destroy them. And now God is actually presented with such a situation. The people have worshipped the golden calf and God says to Moses, stop trying to plague me. I already said I would destroy them. I have made a commitment here and I’ve got to do it. But what we’re gonna see going on is that Moses somehow undoes God’s oath, which we’ll get to.

Yonah: There’s a move that our rabbis are demonstrating here, and that is the theology of God taking oaths and perhaps reneging on oaths. Our relationship with the divine is one in which there can be such a barter.

Elana: Yeah, it’s wild. Over and over again, you find in rabbinic literature, you find a God who’s in relationship with people. You find God who says, I regret, quote unquote, and you pointed out to me, this is biblical, even, God’s regret, right?

Yonah: But this also points to a rabbinic move of God being subject to the Jewish legal halachic system. It’s part of anthropomorphizing God in such a way where God prays and God wears tefillin.

Elana: Yes. Totally.

Yonah: And I think that’s an interesting move. On the one hand, it’s making mitzvot maybe something more desirable, even God does them. But on the other hand, it doesn’t just encourage the human involvement. It also pushes God towards us.

Elana: But look, I also think about, what’s the function of Midrash in general. The function of Midrash is to teach people something. And to be honest, this idea that if you say, these are going to be the responses or the consequences if you do X, and then you do X, and I now have to carry out those consequences. This Midrash is going to say, we’re actually going to provide you with an alternate, like an alternate model that even God says is okay to do, is the right thing to do. It really pushes people to realize that, you know, you could get yourself up in that tree that you’ve climbed into because you’ve committed to something. And you might be able to say, well, if even God allows sort of stepping back, then maybe human beings are also okay admitting when something, the consequences are just not going to be right. It’s not what we want.

So let’s look at what happens here, right? Because the Midrash gave us the opening. Moses is going to nullify God’s vow. Okay. So part two, I call it, giving permission for regret. Or maybe giving permission for admitting fault. It goes like this. “Amar Moshe, so Moses says, ribono olam, sovereign of the universe, vlonatata li hafara shel nedarim? Didn’t you teach us that there is a concept of nullifying vows in Jewish law? Ve’amarta, and you said,” and here’s where the vayechal Moshe play on words is about to come, “You said in the Bamidbar, in Numbers, chapter 30, when a person makes a vow to God or an oath to prohibit something to themselves, lo yachel devaro, their word should not be profaned.” But you know what? A person can’t profane their own oath that they made by not keeping it. But a chacham, but a sage, can actually do it for them. Right? “Aval chacham mochel et nidro,” a chacham, a sage, can say, you know what? If there is a reason why you need to get out of this oath, and that reason essentially tells you, I didn’t realize where this oath was going to lead, you can’t nullify it yourself, but you can go to a sage to nullify it for you.

Right? And that’s an incredible tool to use. And Moses says, God, that’s your tool. You taught us that tool. And anyone who is an elder or a sage who is issuing rulings, like you teaching us that tool, if you want other people to accept your rulings, you have to do it first. And so guess what? You’ve taught me about nullifying vows. It’s only right that you allow me to nullify the vow you made. that anyone who sacrifices to pagan gods is going to be destroyed. So let me nullify your vow.

Yonah: It’s done perfectly.

Elana: Yeah. Having an actual method for regret and for canceling a vow, it really indicates how important it actually is to assume that we will regret things and don’t think it’s an outlier. It’s not a bug. People are going to say things that they ultimately don’t want to have to act on or they don’t want to have to stand by

Yonah: As much as this is kind of a random verse and midrashic exposition, there’s actually a big role this has played in Jewish history, and the battleground for it is Kol Nidre. Kol Nidre begins Yom Kippur by nullifying our vows. Anything that we fell short of in terms of our promises, that’s fine. And as comforting as that might be, it also puts us in a strange position when it comes to, I don’t know, Gentile business partners.

Elana: Right. It’s so interesting because some people think you’re even thinking about it as nullifying anything you’re going to say for the coming year,

Yonah: Yeah, it’s a big dispute. Is it looking back or looking ahead? And there’s a long history in rabbinic literature of increased comfort with this mechanism of nullifying our vows, but then also scaling it back. If you look in the Mishnah, it describes the whole phenomenon of nullifying a vow as being without a biblical antecedent. There’s no proper source. They have this amazing phrase that it’s floating in the air, porchim ba’avir. And then the Rabbis, a few, on the same page in the Talmud, but a few hundred years later say, no, they walked that back. We’re comfortable with this. I could list sources galore and they have a whole roster of sources.

And over the years, there’s been this strange step forward, pull back. And that’s what we’re talking about with regret. As much of a feature as regret is, it can’t then be used as a way to make words meaningless altogether.

Elana: Right. You’re really, it’s really an interesting thing because I’m even thinking, you know, we gave the example of regret of tearing up our kids’, I’m so sad, I hope they listen to this and just take it as an apology. We use that example. I think you use an example here of God saying, and obviously you learn from that, to human beings, saying, the following is going to be the consequence if X happens, and then X happens, and you say, oof. It’s a bad idea to have that be a consequence, right?

I think there’s also another type of, you know, saying things that you regret later or doing something that you regret later, which is just kind of shooting your mouth off. Right? Meaning, and I think especially in these high-stake times, like a lot of us sort of make these broad sweeping statements that later you kind of want to walk back or you express a certain, like absolute revulsion or absolute support and then you want to walk it back.

And I think what this is offering is it’s saying, look, we don’t want this to become so breezy that you just shoot your mouth off, right? But we also don’t want this to become so rigid that we assume that people never change their minds based on experience, right? Which is the craziest thing about this, is the idea that God would change God’s mind based on the experience of what’s about to happen, right?

So something in between is this, okay, listen, you’re going to have to go to a sage. You’re going to have to actually have a proper platform and performance ritual where you’re going to have to say, I regret doing this. Had I known, I would have done it differently, right? Like there’s actually a procedural element to it and I think sometimes those procedural elements are what keeps something from just becoming a, oh, well my words don’t matter to begin with cause I can always nullify it later.

However, the nullification process is a real process. Right? So I think that’s powerful and to me, that happens in part three, which is it actually starts talking about, okay, if Moses is going to nullify God’s vow and God is going to accede to this nullification, then this is going to be a really awkward situation, because God is God and Moshe is just a human being and yet Moshe here is going to be the sage who gets to nullify God’s vow? It’s a very strange reversal of a hierarchy, right?

And it goes like this. So immediately Moses wraps himself in a cloak and he sits like an elder and God stands like a person who’s asking for their neder, for their vow to be nullified. And that’s actually, interestingly enough, the Midrash then connects it to a verse in Devarim, 9:9, where Moses says, “And I sat on the mountain,” right? Which probably means I dwelled on the mountain. I was up there for a long time, right? And then the Midrash says, “V’efshar shehayah Moshe yoshev, v’Elohim yitbarach shemo omeid? Moses is going to sit and God’s going to stand?”

And I think this speaks to sort of this strange moment of when God decides there’s something I regret and I want to go back on. How do we not turn this into, wait, is the hierarchy completely reversed and now Moses is in charge? The Midrash is scandalized by this idea. And so it says, no, no, no, don’t worry. Rabbi Drosei says, no, there’s a special chair that the advocates in Roman courts actually sit in that make it look like they’re standing. So don’t worry. God’s standing and Moshe’s standing.

And this to me, of course, there’s a theological element. I mean, it is the theological element. The idea that, you know, you know, make sure that Moses is not sitting while God is standing. That’s a reversal of the hierarchy. But it’s more than that. The Midrash says, Moshe is actually the lawyer. Don’t think he’s the judge, right? He may be nullifying God’s vow, but Moshe is the lawyer pleading on God’s behalf, so to speak, that this can change and pleading on the people’s behalf. And I think that says something about the way we look at people when they admit regret. How much do we sort of take our self-righteousness of, well, I’m not the one who said that ridiculous thing. I’m not the one who did that ridiculous thing. And when I look at you regretting it, I judge you instead of actually trying to help you get to the best outcome.

Yonah: I think there’s also a distinction here when someone is expressing regret in general versus what often happens if someone is willing to regret that which they have done to you. And what kind of dignity and disposition does it take to be not an onlooker, innocent bystander, third party, but to be the wrong party and to accept their regret properly. I find most of the times that people apologize to me, I don’t want to grant them that forgiveness and I’ll just say that’s fine, it’s fine, don’t worry about it. I don’t want to properly engage and see them in their moment of regret because I didn’t like what you did to me to begin with.

Elana: That’s so interesting because here, Moshe is so clearly serving as a middle person. He’s so clearly serving as both a representative of the people and a supporter of God as well. And I find that sometimes in those roles, people could be quite suspicious of people who end up in those roles because it’s sort of like, well, whose side are you really on? Do you really think that God should destroy us, but for particular reasons, you’re, you know, trying to push in the other direction? Do you really think we should get off scot-free? And if we should get off scot-free, why do you even need this whole rigmarole? Right? I think there’s something powerful to that too. So I think you’re right. Sometimes when it’s directed at you, you have certain perspectives, but I also think that the role of the intercessor I think is very, it’s a very complicated role, I think.

All right. So let’s bring this home. Part four, as it were, what we might call divine regret. Because as part of this process of nullifying a vow, part of the legal process of nullifying a vow, the person who made the vow has to express regret. And holy cow, I mean, I know that we have examples of God expressing regret in the Bible, in the Torah itself, but this is a really interesting move to pull in the Middle Ages, which is when this is written, okay?

So, “Umah amar lo?” So what did Moses say in this little court that they’ve created here? “Davar Kasheh.” Something, I don’t know if it’s something harsh, something difficult, something hard to believe, hard to know. Rabbi Yochanan says, “Davar kasheh amar lefanav,” Moses said something difficult before God, which is tahita — Do you regret your oath? And then even the term itmah comes, which is sort of like an exclamation point or like a shock kind of value. And God answers, amar lo, God answers, tohe’ana, I regret, al hara’ah asher dibarti la’asot l’ami, I regret the bad that I said I would do to my nation. Whoa! Right? And at that moment, the Midrash says, Moshe says, like a standard, you know, situation of letting someone out of their vow. Mosha says, mutar lach, this has been released for you, mutar lach, it’s been released to you, for you, there is no longer a vow here. There is no longer an oath there. And that is coming the word veyachal, not Moses implored, but Moshe was able to nullify the vow from the terminology in Numbers 30. Someone may not have their own word nullified by themselves, but someone else may do it for them.

Yonah: I Think we should dwell for a moment on the fact that in the Jewish system to nullify your vow, you have to have someone else involved. The sage plays the role of expert and a sobering figure, but it also demonstrates that regret on your own and to yourself is not regret. That’s processing. That’s just contemplation. Definitionally, in order to properly regret, it needs to be articulated to an other.

Elana: Right, and then this text is actually saying, yeah, but what could go wrong there? Like, what could go wrong there, which is especially acute when it’s God and Moshe, is that someone’s sitting in judgment of you. They’re sitting, you’re standing, and they’re just judging you. And the truth is, of course, it’s more acute with God and Moshe, but it could happen with people too, right? I want to come down from the tree that I got myself up into, and you’re sitting there just judging me for doing that, as though that couldn’t happen to you, as though I’m not doing it for good reason, yeah, I think that’s really, really powerful.

Yonah: As much as this wants to present a relatability and inspire us to regret, I almost wonder if the human standard should be less than regret. I would settle for uncertainty. I would settle for uncertainty. I find myself these days surrounded by people with full confidence in their newfound beliefs.

Elana: Newfound. Are you on a college campus? I’m sorry. Are you…?

Yonah: I often say to people, certain people, if I had half as much confidence in my lifelong commitment to X as you have in your newfound commitment to anti-X, yeah, that’s what I think it is, lo yochel devaro, you can’t completely make hollow your words, but how about you question them? How about you avoid where you have this utter confidence that there can be no other way of looking at things?

I remember once, one summer, at Hartman, we had an initiative with Israeli rabbis, North American rabbis and Israeli rabbis and one of the Israeli rabbis there had a reputation and I didn’t expect them to be participating in a pluralistic, transatlantic encounter, and in our small group conversation, I asked, you know, what brought you here? Not betraying that I thought they didn’t belong, and this person said to me that they had reached an age where they were confident enough to know she’ein li et kol haemet b’kis sheli, I met back. He’s chilly. I don’t have the entire truth in my pocket. And I think that is an invaluable disposition. So divine regret that fiends feels lofty. How about just a little human uncertainty?

Elana: Well that’s really interesting. It’s funny, because I’m thinking about, there’s a whole constellation of rabbinic comments about divine regret and specifically, or by the way, about human regret and specifically about this tool of trying to nullify a vow, which is really like pressing a rewind button in a certain sense in life. And I’m fascinated by the fact that this is not the only approach. Right? Like there’s, and we’ll put it in the show notes, but there’s an example, for example, much earlier material than this. This is a middle, this is a medieval Midrash that we’re talking about.

But much earlier material, you have examples like Moshe saying to God, Hey, why can’t I go into the land of Israel? And God says, I’m sorry, you can’t. I’m the sage. There’s no one to nullify my vow. My vow is that you’re not going into Israel. And that’s what it is. I’m the sage. There’s no one to nullify it for me. And then here you see centuries later, they’re coming up with, no, Moshe can nullify God’s vow. Or, for example, you actually have God nullifying Moses’s vow. So Moses promises to stay with Yitro. And God says, Moshe, would you have promised to stay with Yitro if you knew that the Jewish people were waiting for you to take them out and only with you? And Moshe says, no, I regret it. I’m going to go. Right?

So that’s like a whole different positioning here, both in terms of sometimes there is no nullification of the vow and it stands and it has sad consequences and sometimes those sad consequences are actually what has to happen. And it’s also, undoes it a little bit in the sense that for many, many centuries, the rabbis were very uncomfortable with the idea that God would have regret. It’s the opposite. God’s the sage to whom you go in order to confess your regret, and God takes care of you in that regard. Right?

So I also want to notice, I want to notice that because I don’t want to just end on human uncertainty is important. It’s important among a series of needs in the world, including sometimes when you say there are consequences, sometimes they have to happen.

Yonah: Yeah, we can agree that they shouldn’t lead to ripping and tearing and cutting.

Elana: I think we should let our kids have the postscript to this. I feel like that might happen on a couch somewhere.

Yonah: Sorry, Squirtle.

Elana: Sorry, Squirtle. Well, Yonah, thank you so much for joining me. I think it’s really important to talk these days about uncertainty, regret, real consequences in the world, and the way that we judge other people.

Thanks everyone for listening to our show and special thanks to my coverage of this week, Yonah Hain. TEXTing is produced by Tessa Zitter with production assistance from Sarina Shohet. Our senior producer is M Louis Gordon and our executive producer is Maital Friedman. This episode was mixed by Ben Azevedo at Bear Cave Audio with music provided by Luke Allen.

We’re always looking for ideas for what we should cover in future episodes, so if you have a topic you’d like to hear about, or if you have comments about this episode, please write to us at [email protected]. For more ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute about what’s unfolding right now, sign up for our newsletter in the show notes, and subscribe to this podcast everywhere podcasts are available. See you next time and thanks for listening.