What’s worse, according to Jewish law: intending to eat a ham sandwich and instead, by accident eating a turkey sandwich; or intending to eat a turkey sandwich and by accident eating a ham sandwich? 

Rabbi David Weiss Halivni points to a moment in the beginning of Parashat Mattot, in Numbers 30, that gets at this question.  The Torah and Jewish law take vows very seriously. If you make a vow using the proper, binding formula, you are obligated to fulfill the vow unless you can get the vow annulled. (Kol Nidre is a preemptive annulling of vows, to avoid these problems!) 

In the patriarchal time of the Torah, a father could annul his daughter’s vow, or a husband his wife’s vow. But there’s an odd detail in the verses that says the vow won’t stand, “and the Lord will forgive her.” 

If her vow doesn’t stand, for what transgression does God need to forgive her? You might think it’s for making a vow in the first place. Rather, the Talmud (Nazir 23a) explains that it’s a situation where her vow was annulled, but she broke her vow anyway. 

Imagine that she vows not to eat apples. Her husband annuls her vow but doesn’t tell her, and she then eats an apple, thinking she is violating her vow. In that case, she wouldn’t actually be violating her vow because it had already been annulled. But she intended to violate her vow.

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It’s that intent for which God is forgiving her, the Talmud says. 

This suggests that intent to sin is a transgression even if, by chance, we don’t actually commit the act we had intended. 

Jewish law generally does not prescribe legal consequences for “attempted sins,” but it recognizes here that we may still come to regret them and seek divine forgiveness.

So, to return to our original question of the turkey and ham sandwiches:

If you do something wrong by accident and it really was an accident, despite your best intentions, you’re unlikely to repeat the error. 

But if you knowingly choose to do something you believe is forbidden, whether by God, ethics or American law, something significant has happened, even if, by chance, you never actually commit the prohibited act. 

A feminist lens can raise all sorts of questions about this situation in the Torah. Among them: Why didn’t the husband tell his wife he annulled her vow? What kind of vow would a woman make that her husband would be so inclined to annul?

Between whom, or between what competing loyalties or values, might she really be choosing when she attempts to violate her vow? For what might God actually be forgiving her? 

May we take our words, actions and intentions seriously.