THESE WERE THE MARCHES OF THE ISRAELITES WHO STARTED OUT FROM THE LAND OF EGYPT, TROOP BY TROOP, IN THE CHARGE OF MOSES AND AARON.

(Bamidbar 33:1)

 

The Significance of Recounting the Marches - What is Important to Remember?

It is comparable to a king whose son was ill, and he took him to a far away place to cure him. When they started home, his father began recounting all of the legs of the journey. He said to him: "Here we slept, here we were cold, here your head ached, etc."

(Rashi on Bamidbar 33:1)

 

These were the marches of the Israelites - The Holy One blessed be He said to Moses: Write down the marches which the Israelites made through the wilderness, so that they will know how many miracles I performed for them on each march. It is comparable to a king whose son was ill, and he took him to a far away place to cure him. When they started home, his father began recounting all of the legs of the journey. He said to him: "Here we slept, here we were cold, here your head ached, etc."

Thus spoke the Holy One blessed be He to Moses: Count for them all the places where they angered me. That is why it is said These were the marches of the Israelites.

That it is written: I lead your nation like sheep - Just as sheep are not brought in under a roof, so too the Israelites did not gather under a roof for forty years... Another idea: Just as food is not gathered up for sheep, but rather they forage in the wilderness, so too Israel was fed for forty years without stocks of food. Another idea: Just as sheep follow where their shepherd leads them, so Israel followed to everywhere Moses and Aaron would take them.

(Yalkut Shimoni 786)

 

 

Stings in your eyes and thorns in your sides

Rami Pinchover

We read special haftarot during the three weeks between the 17^th of Tammuz and the 9^th of Av ("bein ha'meitzarim"). These haftarot consist for the most part of rebukes for the sins of ingratitude and walking in the paths of the nations, combined with serious interpersonal transgressions. The three or four parashiyot (especially Matot and Mase'ei) read in this period seem rather disconnected from their haftarot.

I want to consider the relationship between the Israelites and the peoples who they conquered or who became their neighbors in the light of the parasha of Massaei, the days of bein ha'mitzarim, and the rebukes made by the prophet Jeremiah.

At the end of the innocent and biographical list of marches, we are unexpectedly confronted with two verses that are painful to every Jew who has been brought up with Rabbi Akiva's motto:

Beloved is man, for he was created in the [Divine] image. Additional love was shown to him in that he was made to know that he had been created in the [Divine] image, for it is said, He created man in the image of God (Bereishit 9). (Avot 3:14)

Here is what is said in our parasha:

But if you do not dispossess the inhabitants of the land, those whom you allow to remain shall be stings in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall harass you in the land in which you live; so that I will do to you what I planned to do to them. (Bamidbar 33:55-56)

These harsh words are even more hurtful, since we know that they were used as a book title by one of the leading Jewish racists, Meir Kahanah, and he built his "philosophy" upon them.

The frequent use of these verses and of the commands to conquer and annihilate found in various places in the Torah and in the Book of Joshua has been discussed repeatedly by thinkers and sages in our generation. Writing more than twenty years ago, my teacher and uncle, Prof. Efrayim Elimelekh Urbach, related to "the attempts which we see to turn the ‘inhuman' into the ‘Jewish,'" and formulated the principles of his thought and life's philosophy in these words:

Events from our history as well as verses from Scripture and quotes from the Sages are being adopted as weapons in the struggles taking place before our eyes. They have often been uprooted from the locales in which they grew without regard for their contexts; sometimes they are presented in a deliberately false and inauthentic manner. This is done both by those who reject our tradition as well as by those who set themselves up as its guardians and as the watchmen of its walls. The sciences of Judaism can offer tools that can distinguish between values and vulgarity; between the eternal and the temporary; between passing excitement and true religiosity; between simplicity and primitiveness; between the underscoring of self-worth and the hopeless isolation that makes the term "Judaism" into something opposed to "humanity." (Ma'ariv 15 Sivan 5744, as quoted by the scholar Meir Ayeli z"l in the introduction to the pamphlet "HaSegulah Ve'Hakoah" by my teacher, Prof. Moshe Greenberg)

Albert Einstein also related to this in one of his letters:

To my mind, appreciation of the lives of all creatures constitutes the essence of the Jewish world view. The individual life is significant only if it serves to improve and ennoble the lives of all living creatures. Life is holy, that is to say that it is the supreme value, and all other values are subordinate to it. The sanctification of extra-personal life brings one to honor every spiritual thing - a quality especially characteristic of Jewish tradition. (From the Hebrew translation, Ra'ayonot ve'De'ot, pg. 109)

The question is: How can we square the passage from the parasha with our world view? How can we educate our children and students to love humanity in the face of such harsh and problematic verses?

Prof. Greenberg addressed this question in page 11 of the above-mentioned pamphlet:

One problem in teaching Scripture is that it enjoys ultimate authority in the eyes of the student. It cannot be questioned, nor can its judgments - be they positive or negative - regarding the characters appearing in it. The teacher recoils from criticizing Scripture due to the justified fear that he might dishonor it, or even alienate the student. However, such reluctance carries its own dangers of neglect of the ambivalence and ambiguity of the events, decisions, and human actions described in the biblical stories. Our judgment of a particular situation will be flawed to the extent that we do not recognize how complicated its causes are. When he matures, the student will have to function as a citizen of a democratic country; he will have to judge policies and statesmen, choose the people's representatives and relate to their deeds and failures. He will not be able to perform his civic duty without acquainting himself with the thicket of competing and opposing justifications thrown up by every public question and by every critical consideration of public figures... a deep and understanding reading of the [Bible's] stories that can uncover the ambivalent presentation of its heroes: our father Abraham, our rabbi Moses, and King David are not without faults...

Neither did the Sages nor the traditional biblical commentators balked at criticizing admired biblical personalities. For example: the RaMBaN and others criticized Sarah for expelling Hagar, and Abraham for having agreed to it.

Greenberg suggests that we allow the midrashim to come to our aid, since "the midrash limits the authority of Scripture by setting up the Sages as a parallel authority... this opens the door to autonomous thinking about the facts as related by Scripture." Later he explains the historical background to the call for annihilation and the Sages' reservations regarding this harsh command. The most interesting midrash cited by Greenberg completely reverses the significance of the problematic verse:

Ten prophet-priests descended from Rahab the harlot: Jeremiah, Hilkiyah, Shariyah, Mehasyah, Hanamel, Shalom, Barukh, Neriah, Ezekiel, Buzi, and some say that Hulda the prophetess was also a descendant of Rahab. (Rut Rabbah 2)

Basing themselves on the above midrash, the Sages wrote regarding our parasha:

The Holy One blessed be He said: I said, But if you do not dispossess the inhabitants of the land, those whom you allow to remain shall be stings in your eyes and thorns in your sides (Bamidbar)... you must proscribe them (Devarim 20:17). Yet they did not do so, but rather: Joshua let live Rahab the harlot and her father and her mother. Jeremiah was a descendant of Rahab and spoke words which were stings in your eyes to Israel, for it is said, The words of Jeremiah (and he rebuked them harshly and prophesized evil for them). (Yalkut Shimoni Mase'ei pg. 787)

The spies had left a Canaanite harlot alive, in contradiction of the Torah's stern commands. They apparently transgressed these commands, but it was precisely the act of saving Rahab that led to the birth of some of the Jewish people's greatest prophets. Thus the Sages demonstrated that there is room for the application of judgment and that the stern and awful command was not actually executed according to the letter of the law. The Sages also teach us that every human being as a human being (even if he seems to belong to the margins of society) bears the potential to change and contribute to society. In addition, had it not been for Joshua's spies' breach of the rules, Jeremiah would never have been born, he could never have preached to Israel to return to the straight and narrow (albeit without great success) in the prophecies which have been chosen as the haftarot of the first two Shabbatot of bein ha'meitzarim. (Greenberg claims that Jeremiah viewed the Israelite's deeds in a more critical light precisely because he was the descendant of converts. His ancestors had freely chosen to join the holy people and so Jeremiah - in contrast to the "original" Israelites - was more acutely aware of how they had broken the holy covenant. I chose to read this midrash differently).

Our haftarah ends with the wonderful verse of consolation:

And swear - as the Lord lives - in sincerity, justice and righteousness - nations shall bless themselves by you. (4:2)

I contend that this haftarah's optimistic ending is the key towards grasping that one must listen to and take into account every human being as a human being. The treatment of every human being in the spirit of Rabbi Akiva (who, according to the Sages, was himself the descendant of converts) is realized in traveling a path not of war and annihilation, but rather of you shall offer them peace (Devarim 20:10), the good and straight path of sincerity, justice and righteousness (Jeremiah 4:2). That path leads all nations to the name of the Lord in Jerusalem (verse 3) and causes both them and ourselves to bless and praise Him - soon and in our days.

Rami Pinchover is an engineer.

 

 

Readers Respond

 

As a loyal reader of Shabbat Shalom who is active in teaching and inter-faith dialogue (mostly with Christians) I was surprised by the choice to publish the midrash which appeared in the Balak issue. The traditional midrashic passage selected (from a book by Yeshayahu Leibowitz) is anti-Christian, it refers to Jesus as "that man," and places the claim to divinity in his mouth.

Leibowitz's animosity towards Christianity is well known to us. To my mind, it is one of the less savory facets of that important thinker, and unworthy of imitation. Earlier and greater commentators than he –such as the RaMBaM and the Meiri-offered more conciliatory approaches to Christianity, calling it a "true religion".

Christianity is the only world religion which includes our Scriptures among its holy writings. As far as I know, Jesus himself never made claim to divinity - some of his disciples did, but he never spoke so of himself.

My main qualm regarding the publication of the midrash is that I would not want to educate others by its lights (or shadows).

In my humble opinion, the order of the day in our world is to learn to respect the other and his differences from us, including those involving matters of faith. Rabbi Yitzhak Greenberg has recently written a book in which he calls upon religious Jews to view Christians as "covenantal partners."

Even Rabbi Soleveitchik, who was much more guarded in his views regarding inter-faith dialogue, tried to encourage cooperation between Jews and Christians in matters of social justice. I think that a publication such as Shabbat Shalom should educate towards tolerance and acceptance of the other. There are enough other forces in our society - some of whom publish their own parashat hashavua sheets - who educate towards the hatred of gentiles.

Dr. Devorah Weissman - Jerusalem

 

Pinchas Leiser, editor of Shabbat Shalom, responds:

a) I certainly agree with Debbie Weisman that we should educate towards tolerance, acceptance of the other, and respect for all human beings created in God's image. I think that we have tried to relay that message over the past years of Shabbat Shalom's existence.

b) I do not hold that the midrash quoted from Yeshayahu Leibowitz's book is "anti-Christian"; it makes salient the dangers involved in the deification of humans and the anthropomorphizing of God. These dangers are present in all religions, and invite far-reaching theological and educational consequences. Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz's emotional attitude towards Christianity is irrelevant to this matter.

c) Therefore, I see no contradiction between love of the stranger, respect towards all humans created in the Divine image, and theological disagreements which are part of frank dialogue. Education towards the acceptance of the other requires us to recognize these differences and not to blur them.

 

 

Dismiss the Refusenik Officers, Try those who Incite Refusal

Refusal to follow orders, whether it be the marginal phenomenon of refusal from the left, or the mass refusal to obey orders from the right which threatens our community (the religious Zionists), is illegitimate, obscene, and dangerous. It is illegitimate because it contradicts the law in a state ruled by law; it is obscene, because there are many legal ways to express one's political opinions, and dangerous, because, to our great sorrow, the State of Israel is surrounded by enemies and will need a strong and disciplined army for many years into the future.

Like many from the left and center, I gave quite a few years to military service that was, by turns, stupid, unnecessary, and wicked, in the occupation of half of Lebanon or the defense of settlements which have no future. Nevertheless I did my duty because refusal would cut the branch on which we sit out from under us - God's gift of a sovereign Jewish state founded upon democratic principles and the rule of law. So I thought then, as I still do today, and I think my commanders agreed with me. If I thought that my commanders selected the orders they were willing to follow, or that they changed them, following their own conscience, if I thought that they had replaced the second paragraph of the basic law of the army - "the army is subject to the government's authority" with "every soldier is subject to the authority of his own conscience" (as a colonel suggested on television) - I would not have served there. In order to preserve Israel's military strength and security, every commander who expresses his approval of conscientious objection must be dismissed from all command roles.

All those who espouse draft-evasion or refusal to follow orders must be dealt with equally by the law, be they important or unimportant, including rabbis who "send forth people to sin", those who start petitions and those who make so-called "halakhic decisions." Paragraphs 109 and 110 of the Penal Code are explicit: "One who incites or persuades a person who is required to serve in the armed forces not to serve, or not to show up for a military operation is subject to five years imprisonment; [one who incites or persuades a person who is required to serve in the armed forces to] not to follow a legal order is subject to one year's imprisonment." The calls for refusal which refer to the evacuation as "an immoral expulsion" are nothing but an attempt to force the majority of the state's population and its chosen government to annex the evacuees and their settlements to the state of Israel. The rule of law is crucial for us, and the time has come to apply it - and that is also the clear halakhic ruling.

Rabbi Hanokh Goldberg, Attorney at Law

 

Editor's comment:

Israeli society is going through a difficult period, in which disagreements within the public in general and within religious Zionism in particular have become more acute.

This letter opens an important discussion regarding the legitimate limits of the deep debate concerning the Torah's scale of values regarding various issues and the manner in which to maintain a Jewish and democratic state. In the past few weeks an important article dealing at length with this issue has been distributed. It is written by Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion, and has also been published by the Haaretz newspaper.

We invite our readers to discuss these issues, while demonstrating respect towards the various viewpoints.

 

 

 

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