Parashat Matot- Masei: Reuven and Gad- Sitting on the Sidelines of History

Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai taught, three gifts were given to Israel, and all of them were given only through the median of suffering, and they are : Torah, the Land of Israel, and the World to Come (T.B. Berakhot 5a)

Why must these gifts per se only be acquired through suffering?  Does God take pleasure in inflicting suffering upon Israel?  To answer these questions is not to engage in a conversation about God’s providence, but rather to consider the nature of these gifts and their relationship to suffering.

If one is offered a beautiful home or a precious piece of jewelry, its value is immediately understood.  However, what makes Torah, the Land of Israel, and the World to Come unusual is that precisely its value is not immediately perceived.  In fact, for many people these items appear as a burden, not a gift.  In truth, the are not material possessions but spiritual ideals, and one needs to invest- even suffer- to achieve these spiritual ideals.

For example,  let us consider the story of Jacob and Esau and the struggle for the right of the firstborn.  Jacob is cooking lentils, and he attempts to ‘buy’ the right of the first born, bribing Esau with a bowl of soup.  According to the rabbis, Jacob and Esau engage in an extended conversation.  Jacob clarifies that the right of the firstborn is not simply an entitlement, but an obligation which includes Divine service to God.

Esau said: What is the nature of this service? Jacob replied, “Many prohibitions and punishments and many acts involving even the punishment of death are associated with it — just as we read in the Mishna, (Sanhedrin 22b): The following priests are liable to death: those who carry out their duties after having drunk too much wine and those who officiate long-haired. He said: If I am going to die through [this right of the firstborn], why should I desire it! (Rashi, Genesis 25:32).

For Esau, who seems to only perceive what is in front of him, the birthright is a burden, and a dangerous one at that.  It is a gift that demands even the ultimate sacrifice. Better the bowl of lentils. The notion that the responsibility, the toil, and yes-even the suffering- can transform this birthright into a sublime calling is something lost upon a man of the moment like Esau.

Similarly, the case is true with the three gifts elucidated above; it is the very suffering- the toil and dedication- that transforms these ethereal ideas into a gift.  The things we value most are the things in which we are willing to invest, even in some cases give our lives to.  We invest in our children because this is the outer expression of our inner feelings of love towards them.  However, even more fundamentally, the very value of sacrifice helps us to understand the true value of what we are given.  In parenting, our feelings are understood more deeply through the daily commitments we make; the daily acts of sacrifice sensitize us to the gifts we are given.

To return to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai’s teaching, for the person who studies Torah day and night, their understanding and appreciation is qualitatively different than one who studies Torah on occasion.  The value of holiness or enlightenment associated with Torah study may not even be understood by someone who lives in the moment.  Similarly, in the World to Come Maimonides teaches that the righteous will ‘wear supernal crowns, basking in the light of the Divine presence.’ For this to become a true gift, one must spend time engaged in a life of commitment in which this would be a goal.  If one’s highest value is momentary food and drink, this reward is hardly a reward at all.

The same holds true with the Land of Israel.   The Land of Israel is a place, but it is also an ideal, an opportunity to create ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’  To achieve this ideal requires the commitment of a people over the course of a history, and to achieve this will include periods of sacrifice and immeasurable challenges.

Our parshiot which end the book of Numbers introduce us to the preparations to enter the land of Israel, and the value of the very Land itself seems to again be tested.  A people accustomed to the sheltered existence consisting of food from heaven, protective clouds of glory, water from flinty rocks will now transition to become a people in a land. In this new reality, they will need to plant fields, to build cities and towns, to negotiate relationships with neighboring people, and yes- they will need to wage war.  On a spiritual plane, they will be stewards in the land of God, required to fulfill the terms of the covenant, to execute justice and kindness.  In other words, they will be required to toil, to suffer, and even to sacrifice in ways they could not imagine yet.

It is at this point in history that crisis ensues.  Two tribes at first glance announce to all, “We do not want to go. This is not our future.”  Having conquered the lands east of the Jordan, and seeing their economic potential, the tribes of Reuben and Gad approach Moses.  The land which God granted them east of the Jordan is a land fit for grazing, and the two tribes are blessed with cattle.  “If we have found favor in your sight, let this land be given to your servants for a possession; don’t bring us over the Jordan” (Numbers 32:5).

These words are more than Moses can bear, and he angrily accuses them of deserting the rest of the people at this moment, weakening their hearts when they are preparing to enter the land. Moses recalls the events forty years earlier, the debacle of the spies.  Their actions led to a crisis of faith and resolve, in which the people rejected the gift of the land of Israel. “God’s anger was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander back and forth in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation who had done evil in the sight of God, was consumed” (Numbers 32:13).   For forty years Moses had been preparing this next generation to assume the mantel of leadership, and at the very threshold of entry, he sees the possibility of yet another generation languishing in the desert.

The tribes of Reuben and Gad respond to Moses’ concerns, assuring him that while they will take their inheritance on the east side of the Jordan, they will not desert the people.  Rather, they will be the first to go to battle with their brethren and will not return to their inheritance until the rest of the people are settled in the land.  In other words, the tribes express a sense of resolve and unity with their brethren, prepared to make the sacrifices necessary.  Moses acquiesces to the offer of Reuben and Gad, although he warns them that if they do not fulfill their oath, they will have sinned against God, implying they will be held accountable.

One must ask, why did Moses become so upset, given the ultimate response of Reuben and Gad?  Perhaps for one, the two tribes only proposed to join in battle after the rebuke of Moses.  Their very silence and lack of sentiments of solidarity at the moment of their request is more resonant than their response. While claiming that God had given the Transjordan lands of Sichon and Og to the people and therefore technically could be considered like an inheritance, in truth this is merely and equivocation.  They do not want to enter the land of Israel at all but see it more convenient in the words of R. Abraham Saba to “dwell in the land of impurity, a land of idolatry and an impure spirit.”  The people ‘saw’ the land around them but did not ‘see’ the “holiness of the land of Israel and its preciousness.”[1]  They simply did not see the Land of Israel sufficiently as a gift, but what was at the root of this myopia?

What truly upsets Moses is not simply the apparent lack of solidarity, but the root of their request.  They are a people of flocks, and the land of Sichon and Og is good pasture.  What motivates the tribes is not the gift given to Abraham, Isaac or Jacob, but rather immediate economic gain.  Their request is reflective of the fact that they do not see the great spiritual value of the Land of Israel and are ready to relinquish this right for immediate material gain.  Even after they return from battle, they tell Moses they will build  “sheepfolds here for our livestock, and cities for our little ones.”  Invoking the accommodations of the sheep before their own children reflect a value system that is awry (See Rashi 32:16).

Rabbi Chanoch Waxman points us to the leitmotif in the narrative, mikneh rav, ‘abundant flocks’.[2]  He directs us to an earlier episode in the Torah in which there was also mikneh rav, mainly the flocks of Abraham and Lot.  In that narrative, Abraham and Lot enter the land of Israel and are blessed with abundant cattle, so much so that the shepherds of Abraham and Lot begin to quarrel.  To mitigate the conflict, Abraham says the Land of Israel is wide open, ‘if you will go north I will go south, if you go south I will go north” (Gen. 13:9).  However, what happens next is unexpected; he decides to settle not in Canaan at all but near Sodom, seeing that it was fertile, ‘like the land of Egypt’. [3] By comparing this land of plenty and fertility to the Land of Egypt, the narrative is also implying that Lot chooses a difference spiritual future as well.  He decided to go to the land of Sodom, which is like the land of Egypt.  The Torah is emphatic in reminding us “the inhabitants of Sodom were very wicked sinners against God.” Lot is not merely physically separating from Abraham, but Abraham’s spiritual destiny as well.

In essence, by choosing not to inherit the land of Israel, Reuben and Gad on one level seem to make a similar calculus.  They put the immediate material gain at the forefront, and this will be the message understood by their brethren, who are about to embark on an exceedingly difficult journey into the land of Israel.  Israel, unlike the lands of Sichon and Og, will require sacrifice.  In addition to the settling of the land, Joshua will need to wage wars, and a Divine commonwealth of justice and kindness will need to be established. This process is a process that will not take days, or years or even decades but centuries.

Most of the Jewish world today reside either in the State of Israel or America.  Contemporary American Jews have been blessed with abundance, with mikneh rav.  For American Jews, we are fortunate that we are not asked to make some of the deepest sacrifices our family members make daily in the State of Israel.  Unlike Moses’ demand, we are not being asked to serve on the front lines.  In the past year we have seen the truth that indeed,  the Land of Israel is only given with sacrifices, and sadly there have been too many.   Anyone who has been in Israel in the past year realizes that there is not a citizen who has not been asked to make sacrifices and not only serving in the military.  People have had to uproot their lives, leave their homes, harvest the fields, heal the victims of terror, support the families who have experienced loss.  If there was any silver line to this year’s tragedies- and they are few- it is that Israelis realize the value of the State of Israel, both in terms of its present but also its promise for the Jewish people.

I am not a prophet and do not have a specific program as to how we are to get to the next stage in this uncertain time.  However, I do think we need to invest more, to sacrifice more.  We need to double up on our commitments to the State of Israel and our fellow Jews, especially now.   In truth, many in the American Jewish community have heeded the words of Moses to the tribes of Reuben and Gad.  American Jews have sent supplies, sent money, lobbied in Washington, and gone to the State of Israel to tell our fellow Jews, “We are with you and you are not alone.”   There are some who have even made Aliyah and have decided to enlist in the IDF.  We need to continue deepen our sacrifices, our commitments to support our Jewish brethren.  This does not mean we do not critique at all, but this critique must emerge from a deep love of the gift that is the State of Israel, to embrace the present and push for its unrealized potential.

Yet there are some- albeit a minority- who are ready to give up on the State, to declare they are ‘anti-Zionists.’   Besides the fact that these sentiments practically give up on more than half of Jewry (where will they go?)  and are utterly ignorant of what the world looked like for Jews without a State of Israel, it is a sentiment that for me at its core arises from a place of privilege and plenty.  The land of Israel and its significance was – and is- acquired through suffering and sacrifice. It is too easy to claim not to identify with Israel if it can unburden one of any tinge of guilt by association and does absolutely nothing to bring about any change on the ground.  Because for some there is limited investment, there is also by extension little understanding of the great value of the State of Israel and its unrealized potential.  The greater our investment, the more we will be vested in State of Israel’s flourishing on all levels- politically, economically, morally and spiritually, for the Land of Israel is not simply a physical place but a spiritual aspiration as well.

If we as American Jews decide we will stay on the ‘other side of the Jordan’, like Reuben and Gad, we should be prepared make commitments that share in the trials and tribulations of the present moment.  We, like the children of Reuben and Gad, are part of the Jewish people and we too are required in any way we can to make sacrifices for the greater whole.

In these three weeks between the 17^th of Tammuz and Tisha B’Av, we reflect on our vulnerable history of being uprooted and the tragedy of a world not yet redeemed.  According to the Jewish tradition, this tragic history began with the sin of the spies, who failed to have the imagination to see what Israel could be not just for the Jewish people, but for the world.  They, like some today, only saw a land ‘that devoured its inhabitants.’  They therefore perished in the wilderness.  Let us not make the same mistake. Let our hearts draw towards Zion, support her in any way we can, and work together to bring a better and more peaceful future for all of inhabitants.

Shabbat shalom

[1] R. Abraham Saba, Tzror HaMor, Number ch. 32

[2] See “A Possession before God” in  Torah MeEtzion: New Readings in Tanakh (Jerusalem: Maggid Books, 2014), pp. 437-445

[3] The Biblical narrative attributes the subsequent barrenness of the region to God’s punishment.