Shavit Hakimi sing zachiti lehov- 2009

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The Book of Judges - Jeftach

I want to share with you from the happening in our class these days.
In the book of Shoftim (Judges) chapters 11+12 we hear about the judge Iftach (Jephtah). Iftach was a famous judge because of 2 things: one is the vow that he made, and the second is the massacre that he did in the people of Ephraim. Iftach's vow was if G-d will let him win the war – when he will be back home, the first thing that will accept his face and come to him – will be to G-d. When I taught this in class, the students started right away to ask the question the all commentators ask – How could he make such a vow? What will happen if it will be a non kosher animal? How can he sacrifice it? What if it will be a human being?
I was very happy to see the excitement around it, and most of it was because he was a judge, a man who needs to know the Jewish laws. The problem became bigger when Iftach came home after the victory and his daughter came to him first. He was in shock, but he told her about his vow and that he could not change it. At that point the students could not believe for what he said. How could he do that? I told them that we must understand that the answer is not simple. In the text its not mention that he actually sacrificed her. It's written that she went to the mountains for 2 months and then came back for committing the vow. We have 2 opinions in the commentators to understand what was really happened here, and I asked them to think what our options are? They thought and found that one options is that he actually killed her, because its written in the vow, and other option is that he didn’t kill her because its not mention that he killed her. I told them that their answer is wonderful, but how this group will solve the problem of the vow? It means, if he didn’t kill her – why he was very sad? Why she asked to go to the mountain for 2 months and cry? Why since then the women in Israel lament for her 4 days a year?
One of the girls raised her hand and told me "Mr. Hakimi, maybe when he said "it will be to G-d" he meant to serve G-d like Shimshon (Samson) that he was a Nazir (Nazirite- a Jewish monk)". I told her right away that this is the answer that goes with the second opinion, she was really happy about that.
Our second subject about Iftach that we spoke in class was the connection between Iftach to Gideon (another judge that I spoke about him last article). I encourage them to find it and I told them that we have at least 4 points of similarity between them. They found that both of them had problem with faith, because Gideon asked for another two proofs from God after he had already one, and Iftach had the spirit of G-d but still didn’t believe that he is going to win the war. Another student found that both of them had problems with the people of Ephraim. Another student said that Gideon knew how to handle it (he was politician) and Iftach didn’t know how to handle it. The next point was (and that was the hardest one) the fact that both of them used a strange unique test to identify something. Gideon did "The Licking Test" to find who is the best soldier, and Iftach did "The Language Test" to find out who is from the people of Ephraim (The people of Ephraim had a genetic problem, they could pronounce "SH", they said instead "S". So after Iftach and his people took control on the Jordan River (It was a kind of a siege) any person that try to walk through needed to say one word "Shibolet". If he said that he survived, but he said "Sibolet" they would kill him.)
I enjoyed a lot from these lessons; I saw how much curiosity they have, and how much creative they can be.