I remember walking to the rally by myself, immediately after making a homemade “Never Again” sign with a faded marker on my Metro ride to the Mall. Although I was alone, I quickly found myself in a crowd of friends and family and was energized by the representation of the Jewish community. Soon after the rally, I found myself in a sea of blue-shirted friends, Jewish Seminarians for Justice, and eventually was at their local follow-up training, a program that taught us, the future seminarians of all streams of Judaism, how to continue to fight against the genocide. Walking back from the program, I vowed to myself that I wanted to take on this fight.

Sadly, although I did write letters and donate money after this rally, I did not completely live up to my goals. Once I got back into the routine of going to work and having my own life, I did not do one of the most important things that all Hillel professionals should do – follow up – on myself. From this week’s Torah portion, Matot, I gain great value in the nuances of making “oaths” in my life.

Matot begins with Moses speaking on behalf of God to the Israelite tribe leaders about the annulment of vows. Men (women are described later) must carry out all of their pledges or oaths that have crossed their lips. The Torah dedicates one pasuk (verse) to this concept. From this we can learn that we must be very careful with the promises that we make. We are blessed with the God-given gift of speech and may we all strive to use that gift for the greater benefit of humankind. We have the unique power to greatly improve the quality of life by agreeing to drive a neighbor to the grocery store, promising to do carpool for our children, or co-sponsoring a program with another campus organization. However, our words, promises and oaths are only as great as our intentions if we follow-through with them. When we do not fulfill a vow, we have the potential of bringing about neglect, discomfort and distrust to those around us. A vow can lead to a holy or unholy situation. Our goal should be to maximize the holy ones.

The Torah then continues by indicating specific rules on what happens in the case of a woman making vows. In these scenarios it seems clear that when a female is younger and makes a vow, her father can essentially invalidate this vow by simply objecting to it. So too can a husband annul the vows made by his wife. Reading these verses, I was taken aback at how the Torah went into such detail about how a woman’s vows were somehow not her own. The Torah dedicates 14 verses on how a father or husband technically has veto power over the vows set forth by a woman – as opposed to one verse in these opening passages regarding the oaths of men. I was deeply concerned by this and struggled to gain meaning in words that seemingly clash with my feminist beliefs. So I looked a bit deeper.

Although I eventually had to absolve my struggles to ancient societal precedents (but encourage you to explore these issues in greater depth), I did find that the Torah set forth a limited time frame in which fathers and husbands could annul these vows – specifically, “on the day that he finds out.”

When we look at the chapter on “Laws of Vows and Oaths” in the Shulchan Aruch (the compilation of traditional Jewish laws that are applicable today), we find even more specific details of this halakhah (law). The Shulchan Aruch indicates that “they can only cancel the vow within the day they heard it. That is, if they heard the vow at the beginning of the evening, they may cancel it all night and the entire following day. If they heard [the vow] close to the time that the stars appear, they can cancel it only until the stars appear. Beyond that time they cannot cancel it….” In other words, if we don’t take some time to quickly disapprove or approve of something upon hearing about it, it is as if we have approved of the vow. According to the Talmud, “silence is like assent.”

I write this on the 17th of Tammuz, the Hebrew date when the walls of besieged Jerusalem were breached in 69 CE. Yesterday, war broke out in Israel. The genocide in Darfur continues even after the death toll reaches 400,000 souls. According to experts in the hunger relief field, 852 million people around the globe suffer from the calamity of hunger – 18 percent of whom are children.

Many of us, myself included, have good intentions of fighting injustice and setting forth vows or goals, if you will, related to these global and social justice issues – but sometimes we fall short. Matot teaches us that we cannot be silent, for silence is approval of the injustices in our world. The summer is a great time to reflect on the vows that we have made in our lives – at our Hillels, with our families, and for ourselves. Have we lived up to them? Should we really have made them if we knew we could not follow through?

As we take some well-deserved time to reflect on the past year, may we all be inspired to be more careful when setting forth vows and not silently stand by the injustices and empty promises in our lives. Rather, let us gain strength in renewing our goals in an effort to communally create a more holy and just society.

Written by Jennifer Schlosberg, senior associate of Hillel’s Steinhardt Jewish Campus Service Corps of Hillel’s Schusterman International Center

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Additional commentaries and text studies on Matot-Masei at MyJewishLearning.com.