MATTOS

MATTOT: Vows and Private Altars: The Role of Self-Expression in Judasim

In pursuit of perfection
At the beginning of parashat Mattot we find the mitzvah of nedarim, personal vows, which
provide a person with the means to prohibit what the Torah has permitted. In his Shemonah
Perakim, Rambam1 takes an overwhelmingly negative approach to nedarim and those who
utter them. He explains that the Torah’s laws are carefully designed to lead a person to the
perfection of his character traits 2. In choosing to take a neder, a person is essentially rejecting
the notion that God's mitzvot provide an adequate means of regulating his life, implying that
he knows better than God how to achieve religious perfection. 3 Rambam posits that nedarim
should be employed only as a last resort, when a person feels that he has no other way to
control his excessive or inappropriate desires.
Ban the bamot?
With this is mind, we can approach a statement of the Gemara4 that:
"One who makes a neder is like one who constructed a bamah [forbidden altar], and
one who fulfils it is like one who offered a sacrifice on it [the bamah].”
What exactly is behind this comparison, which equates the taking of a neder with offering a
sacrifice outside the Beit Hamikdash — an action which is punished with karet (spiritual
excision)?5
First, just like nedarim, bamot are not always prohibited. In the absence of a Beit Hamikdash,
an offering on a private altar to God may be considered a great mitzvah. 6 Even so, a person
who offers such a private offering at the wrong time is liable to receive the punishment of
karet.7 Similarly, nedarim are generally viewed as a rejection of the Torah's formulation for
perfection. In a situation in which a person feels he is likely to be overcome by sin however,
the making of a neder is considered a praiseworthy act.8 By way of example the Gemara

1
Chapter 4. See our chapter on parashat Naso for further analysis of Rambam’s position regarding
nedarim and nezirut.
2
Rambam concludes Hilchot Temurah by stating that this is the primary purpose of many mitzvot.
Rambam’s understanding of the purpose of mitzvot is examined in our chapters on Yitro and
Beha’alotecha.
3
The Torah’s role in delineating correct practice is of crucial significance in the debate regarding the
influence of Aristotelian thought in Rambam’s worldview. In chapter 5 of Interpreting Maimonides,
University of Chicago Press, 1990, Marvin Fox demonstrates how Rambam adopts Aristotle’s theoretical
moral structure, with its emphasis on achieving perfection, by taking the ‘middle path’ (discussed in our
chapters on Naso and Vayishlach). Crucially, however, whereas for Aristotle the application of this
principle remains vague and imprecise, depending largely upon the social conventions of the society,
Rambam is strongly insistent that the Torah’s directives alone declare the correct manner in which this
principle can be achieved, as well as its exceptions.
4
Nedarim 22a.
5
The concept of karet is examined further in our second essay on parashat Ha’azinu.
6
14 years were spent conquering and dividing the land, after which the Mishkan stood in Shilo for over
300 years and bamot were prohibited. The destruction of the Mishkan at Shilo after Eli’s period of tenure
as Kohen Gadol (High Priest) led to a period of unsettling submission to Philistines, during which bamot
were permitted for 57 years until the building of the Mikdash. It would seem that the use of private bamot
firmly took root during those 57 years and remained even after the Beit Hamikdash had been built by
Shlomo, for reasons which will be explained later in this essay.
7
Vayikra 17:3-9, codified by Rambam in Hilchot Ma’asei Hakorbanot 18:2.
8
Nedarim 9b. See our chapter on parashat Naso for an extensive analysis on Rambam’s approach to
Nezirut.

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relates an episode in which Shimon HaTzaddik praises a handsome young man who became a
nazir in order to help overcome a narcissistic response to the sight of his reflection in a well.
Of privacy and psyche
Rabbeinu Nissim (‘Ran’)9 hints at a further connection between these two halachot, based on
the fact that the Beit Hamikdash was built a full 400 years after the Jewish people had
conquered and settled the land of Israel. With the construction of the Mikdash, the use of
private altars, which had been deeply ingrained into the national psyche as a valid and
meritorious method of serving God became totally prohibited. In explaining the significance
of bamot sacrifices in the national perception, Radak goes so far as to say that such bamot
had become synonymous with the idea of religious expression, and the term ‘bamah’ was
thus used to describe even the public altar at Givah.10 Perhaps most significantly these private
altars had served for many years as a way for a ‘Yisrael’, the regular (non-priestly) Israelite
Jew, to make a personal offering, literally in his own back garden.
Following the ban on bamot, the ordinary Jew was being asked to forgo a treasured act of
personal involvement through which he felt great spiritual fulfilment, and to renounce it in
favour of the Kohanim. He now had to be satisfied with nothing more intimate than the
bringing of his offering to the Beit Hamikdash. Henceforth it was the Kohen who performed
all of the avodah,11 leaving this Yisrael a distant and uninvolved spectator.12
Another dimension is added by R’ Yehudah Hechasid,13 who explains that righteous kings
did not remove bamot because the Judaean people were influenced by their counterparts from
the Israelite kingdom who offered sacrifices throughout the land. Thus even though bamot
had only been permitted in Judaea for a relatively short time (57 years see footnote
explanation above), the enforcement was lax. It was only during the era of Chizkiyahu, who
reigned after the fall of the sinful Israelite kingdom, that the righteous kings of Judah were
able to turn their attention to uprooting the practice of bamot from their kingdom. In addition
there may have been a very real concern that the prohibition of bamot would disconnect
people from serving God, causing them to stray instead towards idolatry. It is little wonder
therefore that very few of even the righteous kings of Judah were able to uproot the common
practice of bamot. Chizkiyahu, who is praised by the prophet Yirmiyahu for removing bamot,
was accused by opponents of a political move to centralise all avodah under his control.14
Sacrifice and self-sacrifice
The prohibition of bamot therefore represented a request to Israelites, who lacked priestly
status, to sacrifice their personal religious involvement and intense feelings of spiritual
fulfilment on the altar of unified national avodah. In the presence of a fully functional Beit
Hamikdash, bamot represented the idea that the individual's feelings of fulfilment could
override the national religious interest. Bamot were therefore considered a rejection of God's
instruction for a unified national place of worship. In a similar vein, nedarim also represent a
9
Commentary to Nedarim 22a.
10
Yechezkel 20:29.
11
Non-Kohanim were not inherently prohibited from performing Shechitah and could actually do so: see
Pesachim 7a (Rashi) and 64a; Kelim 2:8, and Rambam, Hilchot Pesulei haMukdashim 1:1.
12
This feeling of detachment and displacement caused by the replacement of private offerings by a public
institution may be said to echo some of the contemporary discussions regarding the role of women in
public tefillah. Our chapter on parashat Emor examines the importance of subjective fulfilment in
Judaism. The connection between sacrifices and prayer is tellingly made through the verse “Uneshalmah
parim sefateinu” – and may our lips substitute for [sacrificial] bulls”) (Hoshea 14:3).
13
Cited in Ohel Dovid, vol. 3.
14
Radak, Melachim II 18:22.

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rejection by an individual of the formula which was divinely transmitted to the nation for
perfection of a person's character – with that individual instead attempting to draw close to
God on the basis of his own subjective ideas.15
However, as mentioned, the rejection of nedarim and the prohibition of bamot are both ideals
for which God has provided exceptions. For someone who feels that there is no other way to
restrain his sinful desires, nedarim are endorsed as a method of strengthening his self-control.
Similarly, the prohibition on bamot, which is a by-product of a strong, centralised, Mishkan
or Mikdash, only applies when the Jewish nation is relatively settled or has been unified
under a king or strong leader.16 Against this backdrop of unified purpose and worship, the
Jewish people can then complete its transition from being a collection of individuals
worshipping God, to a true nation of God.

15
The strongest condemnation of such an approach can be found in the writings of Yeshayahu Leibowitz,
Accepting the Yoke of Heaven: Commentary on the Weekly Torah Portion, Urim Publications, Jerusalem,
2002, p 105: “the worship of God, if not performed with one’s awareness that he is obeying an order of
God, but because of an internal drive to serve God, is a kind of idolatry” One must therefore not
“transform the worship of God into a means to release the tensions of one’s inner urges, which the person
dresses up, possibly with sincerity, as the worship of God.”
16
Zevachim 14:4-8, see the commentaries of Rambam and Bartenura who highlight that bamot were
prohibited during the 40 years in the desert when there was a fixed encampment around the central
Mishkan. However they were permitted during the years of flux when the Jews were conquering and
dividing the land, and after the years of Eli during which the nation was unsettled after suffering heavy
defeat to the Philistines.