Parashat Matot

Parashat Matot
Tammuz 21, 5771 ~ July 23, 2011
by Dan Cohen

Parsha Matot:The lasting impact of wounds that never fully heal.

For my dear daughter Abby whose layers continually surprise me.

We can never fully know what motivates our actions or our decisions - or even accurately anticipate what our actions will inspire in others.That is one of the great mysteries of life.

In the movie, Shrek, the deep-thinker Shrek says to his friend, the not-so-deep thinker, Donkey, "Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers."

It struck me that our choices, the motivations behind them, and the reactions they inspire in others are a key element of this week's Parsha.

A quick summary of the key moments in this Parsha caught my eye.Courtesy of a 1997 piece by Rav Elchanan Samet for the Virtual Beit Midrash:

In chapter 32 of parasha Matot, the tribes of Gad and Reuven present their request to Moshe:

(5) "If we have found favor in your eyes, let this land [on the east bank of the Jordan] be given to your servants as a possession; do not bring us over the Jordan [into Eretz Yisrael]."

Moshe responds with a lengthy and harsh monologue (verses 6-15) accusing them of trying to evade the responsibility of participating in the war of conquest with their brethren. He compares them to the spies who had turned the hearts of the nation from the mission of reaching the land:

(14) "And behold, you have risen up in place of your fathers, a tradition of sinful men, to stoke again God's anger against Israel."

From Moshe's perspective, their request is likely to lead to results similar to those of the sin of the spies, or even worse:

(15) "You will destroy all of this nation."

The two tribes respond to this rebuke by offering to leave their wives and children to settle the east bank while the men lead the Israelite forces in their war of conquest of Eretz Yisrael. Moshe's anger is assuaged and he accepts their proposal.

What's going on here?

These quotes represent the core of the vignette.The Tribes of Reuven and Gad asked to settle on the Eastern side of the Jordan River and not to the west with the rest of the tribes.The key question is why?What motivated them?And what inspired the harsh rebuke from Moshe?

In a piece from a 2001 commentary on the Parsha, Menashe Elyashiv of Bar Ilan University cites a few commentaries of interest by Abarbanel that I will borrow.

"First, Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel, arguing that the Bible is not necessarily narrated in historical sequence, believes that the event took place after the war against Sihon and Og (Num. 21:21-35), when the tribes had acquired not only much plunder from battle but also large numbers of flocks."

Here, Abarbanel seems to imply that this was a request driven by need. It's a short leap to recognize that these tribes acquired large quantities of livestock in battle and now found great grazing land to the east of the river to utilize.Abarbanel seems to imply that Reuben and Gad's request was motivated by the realities on the ground.

Moshe doesn't seem to be buying this.

As we see in the text above, Moshe's response includes an expression of his fear that failure to cross the river will turn the minds of the rest of the tribes. He has seen this kind of devastating betrayal before.

Moshe also expresses anger (bordering on rage) by drawing a direct connection to the actions of the spies forty years prior - an episode that appears to be as fresh as the day it happened.

The representatives of the tribes of Reuben and Gad would surely have known the history and understood why it was them, and not the previous generation, that stood on the precipice of entering the Promised Land.However, is it reasonable to expect the tribal representatives to understand the depth of the wound that the episode of the spies left on Moshe?

Upon re-reading, Moshe's rage pours off the page.He calls them sinful men and replacements, not just descendants, of those who betrayed the nation forty years prior.Wow.

Moshe's reaction may be an example that in our interactions with others, regardless of how important or innocuous they may be, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to recognize that there is far more about the person we are engaging that is unknown than what is known.

Abarbanel had a second comment, one that flips the entire analysis.

"Since Reuben had lost the rights of the firstbornand the kingship (Gen. 49:3-4), it was humiliating for him to dwell in the Land of Canaan along with Judah who held the crown and the sons of Joseph who inherited a double portion in the land, the right of the first-born."

I was deeply struck by this interpretation.All of us are probably guilty of harboring old grudges that inform our decisions in the here and now.Now imagine that indignity lasting generations and leading to a decision that might have fractured a nation.

A few weeks back, we read the story of the Korach Rebellion where Korach challenged Moshe's leadership. Korach's rebellion garnered great support from the tribe of Reuben - the origninal first-born of the descedants of Jacob.

In a 2003 piece in Jewish Bible Quarterly, academicians Harvey Sicherman and Gilad Gevaryah called this the "complex case of the displaced first-born." They analyzed a series of anecdotes in our history which echoed this conflict.

In their conclusion, they speak to this issue saying "the quarrel over the birthrights of the first-born is a constant biblical theme from the time of Jacob to the end of the Northern Kingdom. Reuben's loss of rights is used to challenge Moses; Ephraim's claim, founded in Jacob's preference for Joseph, had considerable tradition behind it; and following the death of Solomon, Jeroboam acted effectively to establish a new kingdom."

Remarkable to me is how grudges, regardless of origin, are powerful things.They set their tentacles into our psyche- personal and collective - and challenge our rational thinking in ways we can never fully understand.Abarbanel challenges us to see that this grudge, the impact of a displaced first-born son, can scar a nation for generations.

So, like the great Rav Shrek said, we all have layers.This is true if we are speaking about Moshe, the descendents of Reuben, or ourselves.These layers have a significant impact on all of our interactions. As seen in the elements of the parsha, Moshe and the representatives of the tribes would have done well to respect the unknown"layers" in the other.

And sometimes, if we are overwhelmed by what we can't know about others, we can follow the Donkey's lead in his response to Shrek.We can forget about the layers and go eat some Parfait, because as the Donkey says, "Parfait's gotta be the most delicious thing on the whole planet!"