Matos-Massei: The (United) Tribes of Israel

Matos-Massei:

וַיְדַבֵּ֤ר מֹשֶׁה֙ אֶל־רָאשֵׁ֣י הַמַּטּ֔וֹת לִבְנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל לֵאמֹ֑ר זֶ֣ה הַדָּבָ֔ר אֲשֶׁ֖ר צִוָּ֥ה יְ

Moses spoke to the heads of the Israelite tribes, saying: This is what Gd has commanded

This introduces the last reading in the narrative Torah. Moses now presents the law to an assembly, the heads of the tribes.  The implicit single nation  is now addressed as a federation of tribes. Each tribe has been allocated a territory in the, soon to be occupied, Promised land.  This is an ancient example of state's rights...a response to universal ideas. 

From my liberal perspective, state's rights are mostly an instrument for evil.  In the USA, the first association is with slavery.  The legality of slavery was determined by the individual state.  It was the war that denied secession, that insisted on the unified nature of the United States of America, that did away with this ugly, evil, ancient, injustice. 

The tribes, hence states, of Israel are based on (imagined or actual)  descent from on of the 12 - make that 13- patriarchs, the sons of Jacob. The stories of their birth and lives imbues each with a distinctive character. Their natures are the subject of the cryptic farewell address of Jacob that ends, and thus implies some of the purpose of,  the first book of the Torah.

The tribal nature of the  nation is hardly mentioned in Exodus. This is a volume of unification. Although in Hebrew the book is designated Shemoth, Names; and it begins by  naming the sons of Jacob, the events are those that unify this people: their slave-bondage, their liberation by a combination of unified action and Divine intervention, acceptance of a common code of law, and  the construction of a  central shrine, funded by a universal flat tax. 

Bamidbar,  Numbers, the book we conclude this week, recounts the division of the nation into sections and tribes. The initial counting is done by patriarchal houses and divided by tribe. Much of Matoth, the first of this week's chapters, deals with the agreement that allows the tribes of Reuben, Gad and half of Menashe to occupy the territory conquered from the Emorites ( Sichon and Og), while the other 9½ tribes remain homeless. This is the  divisive struggle between those who have claimed resources and those who need their help to acquire. ( Perhaps all the non-combatants, regardless of tribe could be sheltered in the fortifications east of the Jordan) 

Massei begins with an enumeration of the journeys through the desert. The names of the places are reminders of the travails the nation endured  together. It is fusion though shared memory. This introduces the borders of the Promised Land, the area to be divided among the tribes on  the basis of lottery and population. A national system of refuge cities, open prisons, for the non-capital homocide, is required. Perhaps this is a nod to Cain and Moses and Pinchas. 

The last passage involves handling the novelty introduced three chapters ago: inheritance by women. Inheritance involves unanticipated complexities. Gd had decided to upset the patriarchal "order" ( in some, rare circumstances). This leads to questions.  How far  will the law stray from  the old ways? Will women be allowed to make business decisions that depend upon promises and oaths? (Only if they are adult and  independent of attachment to a man).  What will happen if  a woman owns land and  marry out  the tribe? The founding women, the daughters of Zelophchad  shied away from confronting that issue: they married within the clan.

We read the end of Bamidbar, this book of division, in the week prior to Tisha Ba'av, the memorial day of loss of political power.  Tu'BaAv, six days later,  is a  day of celebration.   The Talmud  ( Taanith 30b) states:

אֶלָּא חֲמִשָּׁה עָשָׂר בְּאָב מַאי הִיא? אָמַר רַב יְהוּדָה אָמַר שְׁמוּאֵל: יוֹם שֶׁהוּתְּרוּ שְׁבָטִים לָבוֹא זֶה בָּזֶה.

What is the fifteenth of Av? Rabbi Judah quoted Shmuel: it is the day that the tribes were allowed to marry each other

It is the day when the restriction placed upon land-owning   women was lifted.  They  could now marry out their tribe. Division into tribes was over. 

I met my wife on Tu Ba Av. We were from different places: America, the holocaust. We were from the same places.  It worked out.