Matot Massei. The freedom of (self) limitations

Parashat Matot -which means “the tribes,” opens with a detailed description of the legal framework surrounding a rite that has become one of the core traits of the Jewish ethos: the neder, the vow.

You’ve probably encountered the institution of the neder, perhaps unknowingly — if only through its annual annulment during a solemn ceremony:

once a year, at the threshold of the most serious and beautiful day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur — commonly called the “Day of Atonement” — a day when Jews seek kappara, expiation through fasting and prayer — the entire community gathers to declare null and void all vows made during the year.

This is the ritual of Kol Nidrei, literally “All Vows,” in which the hazzan, with his most beautiful voice, chants three times the solemn declaration of the annulment of all nedarim.

The aim of this ritual is to help us emerge from Yom Kippur truly cleansed, forgiven, and purified — free from a year’s worth of bonds and promises, of broken commitments and half-kept resolutions — to start again with a clean slate, pure and fresh like the soul of a newborn, for the grand renewal of a new cycle of days.

Why do we need to annul our commitments? Because in Jewish thought, a neder deeply binds the person. Here’s how the verse describes it:

Numbers 30:3“If a man makes a vow to the Lord or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word; he must do everything he said.” אִישׁ֩ כִּֽי־יִדֹּ֨ר נֶ֜דֶר לַֽיהֹוָ֗ה אֽוֹ־הִשָּׁ֤בַע שְׁבֻעָה֙ לֶאְסֹ֤ר אִסָּר֙ עַל־נַפְשׁ֔וֹ לֹ֥א יַחֵ֖ל דְּבָר֑וֹ כְּכָל־הַיֹּצֵ֥א מִפִּ֖יו יַֽעֲשֶֽׂה

The verse emphasizes the practical consequence of using our speech: what has been uttered must be carried out entirely.

The reason is that in the Jewish worldview, the world is created through speech.

And since humans are made in the image of the Divine, our speech is considered creative and sacred.

Therefore, we are responsible to actualize what we say — or else, as the verse says, we profane something holy: our own word.

But today, I’d like to focus with you not so much on the importance of keeping our word — though that message remains ever relevant — but rather on the ethos of the neder itself, particularly in contrast to the idea of vows or resolutions as they appear in contemporary secular culture.

In Western culture, vows are generally understood as wishes. We say “make a wish” when blowing out birthday candles or plucking an eyelash from our chick.

We make wishes like asking for gifts from heaven. And when it comes to commitments, we speak of resolutions, especially those associated with New Year’s.

In Jewish culture, it is quite different.

First, the weight of spoken words remains so significant that it still marks everyday language: a religious Jew, when committing to something, will quickly add “bli neder” — “without making a vow.”

But more importantly, the neder is not primarily a positive resolution or a commitment to do something. In most of its applications, it is a mechanism of self-restriction.

The Jewish vow is less about taking on action, and more about setting a limit.

Now, as summer arrives and some of us engage in detoxes or temporary dietary restrictions- staying away from guten or sugar so they can prepare their "beach body" and as Jews enter the Three Weeks leading to Tisha B’Av — a time of progressive self-limitation culminating in the year’s longest fast — this may be the perfect moment to explore the meaning of the neder.

To self-limit means different things in different contexts.

The classic example is the Nazir, as noted by the Hasidic master Sfat Emet.The Nazir takes on a special vow: abstaining from haircuts and all grape products during the period of commitment.

For the Nazir, this self-imposed restriction signifies a profound dedication to God.The word kadosh — holy — literally means dedicated.

The Nazir sanctifies themselves through moderate, focused abstinence, declaring through their lifestyle that they belong entirely to the Divine.I like to think that by abstaining from wine — the substance we use for kiddush, our ritual sanctification — the Nazir becomes, in a way, God’s own kiddush cup.

If nazirut is one example of a chosen vow, other forms of self -restriction accompany Jewish life regularly — in ritual practice and during life’s transitions.

Take, for example, mourning.

The ritual restrictions placed on a mourner — not washing, not sitting on chairs, not going out — are structured to help one fall fully into grief.

Because when we allow ourselves to descend entirely into an emotion, it runs its course, and we are emptied of it. By giving ourselves permission to grieve deeply, we can eventually rise from the grief more completely.

Even without personal loss, the Jewish calendar gives us a collective therapeutic experience of mourning through ritual — namely, the Three Weeks leading up to Tisha B’Av.

By progressively limiting joy — no weddings, no new clothes, no music, and later no wine or meat — we enter into the posture of mourning, physically and emotionally.

Eventually, on the 9th of Av, we let our garments gather dust, sit on the floor, and cry out Eicha — “How?” — the expression of despair at destruction. Not just that of the Temple long ago, but also recent tragedies, such as the brutal breakage of the thin border that still separated between Gaza and Israel on the evening of October 6, a couple of years ago.

When we lose someone dear, mourning is instinctual.We fall to the floor. We cry to the heavens. We lose appetite. We stop caring about clean clothes. We can no longer enjoy the things we once did.

These acts of self-limitation, are spontaneous emotional responses of the soul.

Tisha B’Av is a ritual — and one purpose of ritual is to place us in a posture to feel something deeply, even if life circumstances wouldn’t have led us there naturally. Ritual invites us to enter willingly in chosen emotional spaces.

The progressive restrictions of these three weeks give us the gift of a space in which to mourn — our personal and collective losses.

From the Nazir’s abstention from wine for divine dedication, to our collective abstention for communal grief, the biblical institution of temporary self-restraint offers profound gifts.

It saves us from the flatness of a world where everything is always available.

We see this echoed in other biblical frameworks that structure our interaction with the world. Three stand out:

• Kashrut, which restricts what Jews may eat

• Shabbat, which restricts action one day a week

• Niddah, which restricts physical intimacy during a woman's menstrual cycle

  
  

Each restriction opens a different kind of gift that modern consumer culture, with its endless availability, can obscure:

• Kashrut teaches mindful eating and impulse regulation

• Niddah invites renewed connection within relationships

• Shabbat redefines how we relate to action and time

  
  

These three form a triangular foundation of Jewish life.

To these, we can now add the neder: the vow, the freely chosen act of self-limitation.

In contemporary Western consumer societies — which sociologists like Christopher Lasch have called “cultures of narcissism” — where individual subjectivity reigns supreme and people claim unrestricted rights over their identity and reality, the Jewish institution of the neder offers a bold alternative: the virtue of limits.

What can we learn from choosing to give something up for a set time?

Self-limitation frees us from sensory overload and compulsion.It restores our appreciation of things. It helps us reconnect to the essential, clarifying what is superfluous. It fosters virtues (midot) that are keys to true happiness:

• Gratitude

• Clarity

• Discernment

• Sensory discipline

• Healthy simplicity

• Appreciation for life

  
  

  All of the above are keyes to Inner freedom
  

This ethos — embodied in nedarim and the mourning cycle of the Three Weeks — is decidedly countercultural, especially while at the peak of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, joy and sensual indulgence are celebrated.

Whether we like it or not, being Jewish in a non-Jewish world means belonging to a tribe that bears the ritual mark of difference.

Whether in food, in love, in time, or in space — Jew meets the world while choosing, through self-imposed boundaries, to abstain from certain natural instincts.

Yes — for better or worse — we stand apart, through our ritual taste for limits. But we also haven't chosen, like other religions, an ascetic lifestyle. Judaism always seeks — as Maimonides put it — the middle path. And because we understand that there need be a healthy balance between over indulging and over restricting is key, that there is a time for joy and a time to visit our dark places, because we are aware of our human limitations while honoring our sacred calling, maybe this, too, we have to offer the world:

to embody, through a heathy ethos of temporary, chosen, self-limitation, which wake us up to the essential and help us cultivate gratitude, a more humble, and perhaps more truly free, way of being human.