V’zot HaBeracha
Simchat Torah
Tisrei 23, 5773 ~ October 9, 2012
by Joel Ackerman
It is the last day of Moses’ life, but
before he accedes to G-d’s command and ascends the mountain to pass away, he
has one last task to carry out - one that he has not yet done - he wishes to
bless the people, the people that he has led and loved these many years. He does this tribe by tribe. He begins with the tribe of Reuben:
“Y’chi Reuven v’al-yamot, v’y’chi
m’tav mispar”
which is
translated in the Stone chumash as: “May
Reuben live and not die, and may his population be included in the count.” On the one hand, this would seem to be a
good blessing, or prayer for all of the tribes – not for only one. On the other, it would seem to be an odd
blessing for a tribe that was rather numerous.
Furthermore, the blessings (or prayers or wishes or prophecies) for all
the other tribes are much more positive, more of a blessing than this. Why is this given only for the tribe of
Reuben?
M
oses was
greatly concerned about the tribe of Reuben.
Their territory would be at the southeastern corner of the Land. It would be bordered by two potentially
hostile nations, Moab and Ammon, not to mention other hostile nations not far
away, such as Amalek. It would have a
common border with only one tribe, Gad, to the north. It would be cut off from the remainder of
Israel by the Dead Sea. There was a
danger that it could readily be attacked, and that it would be in poor contact
with the rest of the nation. And this
location had been their own choice.
In addition,
this tribe would be at the forefront of the invasion of Canaan and could suffer
serious losses.
On top of all
that, this tribe tended to be impetuous.
This last thought
raises the question of whether a tribe composed of many thousands of
individuals might nevertheless exhibit a character that is a reflection of the
character of its individual founder. For
Reuben himself tended to be impetuous.
Reuben was the
first-born son of Jacob. Because of that
status, he should have received a double portion of inheritance and should have
been the acknowledged leader of all of Jacob’s children – but neither was the
case. The double portion of inheritance
went to Joseph; the leadership to Judah.
Reuben was
Jacob’s first-born, and the first-born of his wife Leah. She gave him the name
Reuben “Ki ra’a Ad-nai b‘ani’I ki atah ye’ehavani ishi” – “Because G-d has
discerned my humiliation, for now my husband will love me”. He was the first of three sons whose name was
connected to the wish that now Jacob would love her. However, despite the Torah’s explanation, the
clear meaning of the name Reuben seems be something on the order of “Look! A
son!” or “Look! I can give you sons!”, and one commentator states that she
meant to indicate that Reuben was a normal son, not a strange one like Esau.
We first-borns
know that a lot is expected of us. We
are expected to become leaders, expected to become responsible adults,
hopefully to become wise (or at least sensible). But Reuben did not prove to be such a
man. His character can best be described
as having the right intention, more or less, but terrible execution. He would try to do the right thing to show
his leadership qualities, but always seemed to flub it badly. His actions tended to be impulsive,
precipitous, wrongly directed, and over the top in nature. On his deathbed, Jacob described him as
“unstable as water.”
After Rachel’s
death, Jacob moved his bed from her tent to Bilhah’s, her handmaid’s. Reuben saw this as an affront to his mother Leah,
who was Jacob’s wife, as opposed to Bilhah, who was only a concubine. So to show his objection he either lay with
her (according to the Torah) or moved Jacob’s bed into Leah’s tent (according
to the Talmud). In either case he failed
to show respect for his father’s marital relations. His act was taken in a good cause, but the
act itself was precipitous and wrong-headed.
When Joseph’s
brothers sought to kill him, it was Reuben who suggested they throw him into a
pit instead. The Torah states that he
planned to return to rescue Joseph later.
But instead of doing that as soon as he could, Reuben went off for a while,
during which time the brothers sold Joseph as a slave.
And later,
when the brothers were trying to convince Jacob to let them return to Egypt
with Benjamin, Reuben decided to make his move for leadership by offering to
kill two of his sons if he did not bring Benjamin back. Jacob’s reaction was to ignore this
way-over-the-top idea, saying to himself: “What a meshuggener! Instead of my losing one son, he wants me to
lose two more!”
Moses
similarly had to consider whether the nature of the tribe of Reuben, of
wrong-headedness in their actions, was such as to put that tribe in danger of
being lost to the people of Israel.
After all, it was men of that tribe who had accompanied Korach in his
attempted rebellion. And later, when the
Israelites were camped at the Jordan, the tribes of Reuben and Gad came to
Moses and said: “The land where we are
now is the land that will be our inheritance. For it is cattle land, and we are
cattlemen!” Moses exploded and accused
them of endangering the entire people, as had the spies, by declining to enter
the Land. They responded: “Oh no, Moses. You have us wrong. And just to show you that, we won’t just enter
the Land with our fellow Israelites, we will go in the front ranks! And we won’t return to our homes until
everyone has received his own land!”
Does that sound like an over-the-top, impetuous reaction to you? It certainly does to me.
From these
occasions, it does seem that somehow a tribe of many thousands can exhibit a
behavior reminiscent of that of its progenitor many generations in the
past. Are we seeing here some sort of
undiluted DNA passing down through the generations, or are we perhaps only
seeing the result of selective story-telling aimed at making a point?
In the end,
the tribe later lost much of its territory to the Moabites, apparently as far
back as the time of the Judge Ehud. When
Deborah called for tribes to send men to fight the Canaanites, “among the
divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of heart.” Great searchings of the heart, but no
action. And eventually this tribe was
among the first to be exiled by the Assyrians (see First Chronicles 5:25-26,
which states that this was caused by their taking up idolatry).
So Moses did
have great cause for concern for this tribe, apparently greater than for the
other tribes, and his hope, or prayer for that tribe was entirely appropriate.
As with the tribe of
Reuben, we can have the propensity for putting ourselves, through our own
choices, towards the edge of our people.
Wrapped up in our own objectives, we can lose sight of the need to
remain connected to our people, even our own family (this has been known to
happen with people who move to California).
And we can think that this situation is perfectly fine, again based on
our own objectives and perhaps a tendency to be impetuous and
wrong-headed.
But those of us who
are in such a situation should see a need to be connected to the rest of the
Jewish people.
Now, to be honest and
above-board, I should admit that, like Ko-Ko in The Mikado, I have a little
list: individuals and groups whom I
believe have shown by words and/or actions that they do not really wish to be
considered part of the Jewish people or that
they do not really belong as part of our people. And I’m tempted at times to hope that they
can be excluded from membership. But I’m
inhibited from trying to act on that temptation; I suspect that many if not all
of us have our own “little lists”, and if we could all act on them, there would
be few of us remaining in the Tribe.
So, to be sure with a
little sigh, I’m constrained to say that even with those who we clearly believe
to be wrong-headed or who, for one reason or another, and perhaps by their own
choice, have chosen to be on the periphery of our people (geographically, politically,
philosophically, religiously, or in any other way), or are isolated - as with
the tribe of Reuben, we should wish that they would live and not die, and continue
to be counted among us. And those of us who
are in the center of our people need to be concerned about that, as was Moses.
Shabbat
shalom.
