Mattos, Bamidbar 30:16: Causing Others to Sin. And The Converse; A Salute to Lubavitch PR

וְאִם-הָפֵר יָפֵר אֹתָם אַחֲרֵי שָׁמְעוֹ וְנָשָׂא אֶת-עֲו‍ֹנָהּ
And if he will erase/revoke her oath after hearing it, he will bear her sin.
The Sifri, brought by Rashi, explains that a husband has the right to revoke his wife's oaths, but only if he does not validate them first.  Once he validated her oath, any subsequent revocation is ineffective, and the oath stands.  The passuk is talking about the following case:  A husband had, unbeknownst to his wife, validated her oath.  He later told her that he revokes her oath.  Trusting her husband, she blithely transgressed her oath.  In this case, the husband bears the sin of transgressing an oath.  Rashi's words (from the Sifrei) are
אחרי שמעו: אחרי ששמע וקיים, שאמר אפשי בו, וחזר והפר לה אפילו בו ביום
After having heard them: After he heard and upheld [them], by saying,“I approve of it” and then he (spuriously and duplicitously) retracted and revoked it, even on that very day. 

ונשא את עונה: הוא נכנס תחתיה. למדנו מכאן שהגורם תקלה לחבירו הוא נכנס תחתיו לכל עונשין
He shall bear her iniquity: He takes her place. We learn from here that if someone causes his fellow to stumble, he bears his punishments in his place. 


We are familiar with the halacha of Lifnei Iveir, that we are not to place a stumbling block in the path of a person, that we are fobidden to enable a person to commit an aveira. Our passuk, however, is no mere reiteration of Lifnei Iveir. The consequence of Lifnei Iveir is that the transgressor of Lifnei Iveir is punished for his transgression.  (He doesn’t get actual malkos for Lifnei Iveir, because it’s too general of a prohibition, but he is guilty of a malkos-level sin—it’s a chiyuv malkos without actual malkos.) The consequence of our passuk is that the villain- in addition to the chiyuv malkos- gets whatever the innocent person would have gotten had he/she done the sin intentionally.   Here, where the punishment of transgressing an oath is far more serious than that of a regular biblical prohibition, the husband suffers the extremely serious punishment of transgressing an oath.  If you're machshil a person on a lav, you have two lavim: Lifnei Iver and the lav the other was oiver.  A person that's machshil on chayvei krisos gets the lav of Lifnei Iver and is also chayav kareis.

Why is this law stated specifically in the context of the laws of oaths?  If this is a universal rule, it should have been stated generically, as was Lifnei Iveir- a michshol, any stumbling block.  What is the connection to nedarim?

The first thing that comes to mind is the unique status the husband has here.  While in dinim of issur and hetter a solitary witness is trusted, this only true where the doubt is whether an object is muttar or assur.  But if is'chazik issura, where the issur existed and the question is whether the issur had been removed, a solitary witness is not trusted.  Why, then, can the wife trust her husband?  Why doesn't he need proof that he had not validated her neder before he was meifir?  After all, it was ischazik issura!  And don't tell me that when he is meifir it's retroactive, because first of all, that doesn't take off the ischazik right now, and secondly, only the Rambam holds that it's retroactive by a husband's hafara.  The answer is that it is Beyado: he had, at one point, the power in his hands to validate or revoke the neder.  Beyado gives him greater legal credibility, like by niddah. 

But more than that:  The fact that the Torah gives him the right to revoke not only implies that his word can be trusted.  The Torah is specifically telling the wife that she should trust him.

So, it seems to me that the Sifrei's rule has limited application.  Merely trusting an eid echad does not necessarily transfer liability from actor to inducer.  If the eid echad is lying, then the actor was wrong in trusting him, and it is a shogeg.  The inducer would transgress lifnei iver and nothing more.  Only here, where the Torah explicitly says that the wife should trust her husband, would the punishment for her acts be transferred to her husband.  This is even stronger than two witnesses (see Noda Be'Yehuda YD II 96); here, the Torah gives him ba'alus and ne'emanus on her nedarim and says she should trust him when he says he was meifir.

The Rambam in 10 Kilayim 1 says that a person who dresses another in a garment that contains Shatnez gets Malkos; not because of lifnei iveir, which is too broad a lahv, but for the actual lahv of Shatnez.  The Nosei Keilim say that the Rambam learned Lo silbash=Lo salbish where the wearer is shogeg.  But the Oneg Yomtov YD 96 says that the Rambam is basing his rule on the concept of Shliach lidvar aveira.  The Oneg Yomtov then deals with issues of "vechi zeh chotei ve'zeh mischayeiv," from Kiddushin 43, and the Shach in CM 348:6 that paskens not like Tosfos Bava Kamma 79 who holds that by a shliach shogeg, yeish shliach lidvar aveira.) But with our derech in the Sifrei, we can say that the Rambam was working with the Chiddush of Nedarim; where you are the cause of the aveira beshogeg- not just that you were machshil, you were mamash the cause, like the difference between grama and garmi, although this is not really a garmi- you take the place of the victim.  The Torah told the woman she should trust her husband; if he is machshil her, he is being malbish her the kilayim, and he stands in her place.  (This is not only mine.  I've seen it in several achronim, though I think I might be saying it a little better.)

With this, we understand why this halacha was stated in the parsha of Nedarim.  The parsha of Nedarim teaches us a continuum of liability.  Where the husband revoked the wife's neder, and she didn't know that the neder was no longer operative, and she transgressed what she thought was a live neder, the Torah says "ve'Hashem yislach lah," that she needs slicha for doing what she thought was assur, even if it actually was muttar.  On the other end of the spectrum, if a woman was tricked into thinking that what she was doing was muttar, but it was actually assur, she is considered blameless and her husband bears the sin as if he had done it be'meizid.

I just saw the Chasam Sofer on the parsha, who, I am happy to say, makes several of my points.  He begins by saying that if this is a general rule, why is it stated davka in the parsha of nedarim.  He answers with the Rambam that the Ran brings in Nedarim 15a (wrongly cited as 14 in my Chasam Sofer).  The Ran DH Halcha Asura brings the Rambam in 10 Nedarim 12 that if Reuven assers his object to Shimon, and then Reuven gives the object to Shimon to eat, Reuven is over Bal Yacheil.  The Ran, and everyone else, argues with the Rambam (See Kli Chemda, this week's parsha, toward the end of the first #8, p. 259, DH Ubechidusheinu).  But the point is that according to the Rambam, the noder is over on Bal Yacheil even if he gave the food to the mudar and the mudar ate it.  And, he says, from the fact that a husband can be sho'el on his hakama, we see that hakama is a kind of neder, as if , in a manner of speaking, the husband made his wife's neder.  So, he says, since the husband who is me'kayeim is called the noder, if he gives it to her to eat, he's over on ba'al yachel.  Strangely, though, the Chasam Sofer ends by saying that this would be true even if she knew he was mekayeim.  If that's true, then he's not saying pshat in the Sifrei, because the Sifrei is talking about a case where the wife didn't know he was mekayeim.

And, thank you Eli, I looked at the Kli Chemda #5 (p 276) on this passuk.  1.  He brings the Ramban here that there are two chiddushim in the Sifrei: A. that the woman is not only pattur, she's not even a shogeges: She's like an anusa.  B. That the husband is like a person who made a neder and transgressed it.  2. He brings the Rambam in Kilayim that I brought above, and another Rambam that a person that is metamei an unwitting Kohen is chayav malkos for his tumah.  3. He is mechavein to the Oneg Yomtov (he didn't see the Oneg Yomtov, obviously) about Shliach lidvar aveira, and 4. ends up saying that the Rambam's rule applies to all aveiros that are inherently sins, as opposed to sins that have a component of intent.  You have to see it inside.

So, Chaim B argued that to so drastically limit Rashi/Sifrei to specific cases undermines the whole point of the mussar haskeil.  I agree with Chaim, and I say that pashut pshat in Rashi is that this is a broad concept.  After all, the lashon is "hagorem takala lechaveiro," not "hamadir" lechaveiro. .  How broad, though, is debatable.  Even in Rashi, certainly in the Rambam, this is not a yesod in kol hatorah kulah.



Having spoken about the result of causing others to sin, here's a video from Lubavitch Cape Town.  Their work is to bring people to Yiddishkeit.  My father zatzal told me that after World War II, many Jews were trapped in the Soviet Union.  If a person needed a bris millah, or kosher meat, or a kesuva, there was one option, and only one: find a Lubavitcher.   As far as the Aguda, Mizrachi, Satmar, and Hebrew Union College were involved, you would remain an Arel eating neveilos in the house with a woman you weren't married to.  I am not criticizing those groups, chalila.  Organizational Groups are only representatives of the many individuals, and they were busy surviving and building a foundation of Torah life after the war.  But the fact remains that Lubavitch took on both jobs and handled them well.  Only Lubavitch.  Whether you like their theology or not, you have to salute their unquenchable enthusiasm and mesirus nefesh, and the myriad chasadim they have done for so many abandoned Jews.  It seems to me that if you kill an animal because of takala vekalon, then kal vachomer you're chayav to be makir tov for such gemillus chasadim.




Background to the video:  here and here.