Pinhas: Land Distribution -- Then and Now

I've made reference more than once on this blog to commentaries on the weekly Torah reading that are found at www.MyJewishLearning.com. I'm pasting in the following posting for "your reading pleasure," but also to scratch your head, as I did, and wonder whether the writer purposely stepped back from the most obvious application of her Torah, or did she include it in her draft, only to yield to an editor's cautionary wisdom (Persecution and the Art of Writing lives!):

Land Distribution--Then and Now

As Jews, we must express our religious imperative to ensure equal access to land.

By Sarah Margles

This commentary is provided by special arrangement with American Jewish World Service. To learn more, visit www.ajws.org.

"Among these shall the land be apportioned as shares, according to the listed names: with larger groups increase the share, with smaller groups reduce the share. Each is to be assigned its share according to its enrollment" (Numbers 26:53-54).

The Israelites had the incredible luxury of being told how to build a just society before settling in a new place. The rationality and fairness of land distribution in Parashat Pinhas is remarkable and very different from the norms of land ownership currently present around the globe.

Agrarian Communities

In rural areas, particularly in developing countries, land is the source of income, sustenance, and social (and often legal) status. Approximately 45% of the world's population (~2.7 billion people) earns its living through agriculture. More than 500 million of these people are without secure access to land.

As workers on other people's land, many farming communities cannot depend on continued access to the land they currently farm. In places of violence and civil unrest, displaced people are often denied the right to return to the land they fled. In former communist countries, public lands have become places of dispute as families and communities strive for some access to the small amount of land up for grabs. Many countries struggling with the legacy of colonialism deal with the chaos of unstable and corrupt governments that have followed independence.

The common theme that runs through all these cases is a lack of any coherent underlying commitment to address the agricultural needs of all members of the national community. This global challenge highlights the relevance of the short passage above from this week's parashah.

The underlying assumption of the text is that every family, clan, and tribe has the right to own land. Ancient Israelites, like modern communities, needed a stable place to live, eat, and earn a living. The inclusion of this text in the Torah underscores the point that land ownership is essential to the successful survival of the people.

Today, the survival of the half billion agriculturalists without ownership rights to their land continues to be in question. Unequal land distribution furthers cycles of poverty and hunger that plague communities all over the world. With an elite few owning the vast majority of land in developing countries, the disparity between rich and poor continues to increase.

The land distribution methods outlined in this section of the Torah represent a radical departure from what we see today. The fact that land is apportioned based on population size underscores the fundamental equality of every person. Every tribe began its new life on a proportionally equal footing, with the tools it needed to build a successful community. The clear starting place for every Israelite was with ownership of land--the most important resource and the most valuable gift that one generation could pass along to the next.

Zelophehad's Daughters

In this context, the story of the daughters of Zelophehad, which concludes Parashat Pinhas, furthers the point. As unmarried women whose father died and left no sons, the daughters of Zelophehad were not originally allotted any land--the initial formulation of land inheritance stipulated that land holdings only pass from father to son. The daughters of Zelophehad brought their grievance to Moses who, with God's sanction, remedied the situation, establishing a precedent that title to land can pass from parents to children, including daughters.

The original land allotment structure would have resulted in a manifest injustice, leaving innocent women homeless. With this injustice brought to the attention of people in power, the entire system shifted to protect those whom it had initially neglected. The story of the daughters of Zelophehad comes to remind us that, once we recognize the consequences of structural and systemic injustice, once our consciences are pricked, we must change those structures and systems in order to meet the needs of those who occupy the periphery of any society.

The Israelites had a blank slate upon which to build a new society. They were lucky. Today, we face ingrained systems of wealth disparity. Because of this challenge, it is even more incumbent upon us to engage deeply in the necessary work of land reform. There are many countries that have begun to take brave steps toward land redistribution. As Jews, we must do our best to support these movements and urge our government to behave in ways that express our religious ethical imperative to ensure equal access to land.

As Shabbat brings into balance the uneven scales of our business and spiritual lives, let us help those who have fallen off the scales entirely to find a foothold and a place to call home.

If you don't know what I -- this is Jeremy again -- was aiming at when I mentioned having to scratch my head up above, here are a few hints:

1. While I can appreciate the tidiness that comes with having "a blank slate upon which to build a new society," a staggering moral price would have been involved then, as it is now, in assuring that it would be a land without people for a people without a land (a phrase coined by the 19th century Christian Zionists Alexander Keith and Lord Shaftesbury and happily assimilated into the mainstream Zionist jargon in 1901 by Israel Zangwill).

2. If I'm still being too subtle, I'll elaborate: the writer learns from our Torah reading that "once our consciences are pricked, we must change those structures and systems in order to meet the needs of those who occupy the periphery of any society...we must do our best to support these movements and urge our government to behave in ways that express our religious ethical imperative to ensure equal access to land;" the writer understands this to be a sweeping commandment, to be applied to “any society”, but then manages to avoid mentioning the one case where this rectification is entirely up to the Jewish state, and the Jewish Diaspora which supports it. The answer is that it is all conditional on whether or not “our consciences are pricked” -- and the best minds and sharpest pens (remember Abba Eban?) among us have made toughening our skin and obscuring our vision their life's work.

3. Still not clear? There's no Israeli town that has the density of a Palestinian refugee camp, where there's no room to plant a tree (if you're an Israeli for whom visiting refugee camps is illegal because they are in area A, just go to Shu'afat Camp which Israel annexed in 1967, within t'hum shabbat (easy walking distance) to the French Hill Ramot Zion Synagogue). Did you say something about “each is to be assigned its share according to its enrollment”?

4. The good news is that every year, dozens of American Jews who were raised with selective consciences and come to Israel to have that tunnel vision reinforced by Birthright programs, etc., end up working with international volunteers in Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations. ובא לציון גואל Uva l'tziyon goel -- thus may redemption come to Zion.

Shabbat shalom,

Jeremy

Hukkat-Balak: Plus c'est la même chose?

1. Point

This week's long, double Torah reading (Numbers 19:1-25:9) starts with death and ends with death; even worse, the ritual laws of corpses with which chapter 19 echoes the violent deaths, through acts of force majeur, of chapter 16, and next week's reading bringing the command for yet another round of violence (25:16-18) that will be recounted (31:1-9) in the week following provide a four-week-long framework of violence. And most of this story will be retold and the message reinforced throughout the summer Torah readings from the book of Deuteronomy. There is a a symmetry of symbols: Moses is commanded to take up his rod (20:8), and in the closing verses of the double reading, Phinehas impales the offending couple with a spear (25:7-8).

The scenario that will happen if Israel violates the prohibition against living in peace with the indigenous nations and against allowing them to maintain their rirtuals given in Exodus 34:12-16 (they will invite you to partake of offerings to other gods, that it will lead to worshipping them and then to YHWH's vengeful punishment) thus takes place already in the desert before the entry into the Promised Land. What was is what will be, and there is nothing new under the sun, as Ecclesiastes said; the sea is the same sea, and the Arabs are the same Arabs, said Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, to ensure the failure of the Madrid Peace Talks in 1991.

2. Counterpoint

This week's Haftarah (reading from the Prophets), Micah 5:6-6:8, is famous for prefering morality to ritual:

6 6 With what shall I approach the Lord

Do homage to God on high?

Shall I approach Him with burnt offerings

With calves a year old?

7 Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams

With myriads of streams of oil?

Shall I give my first-born for my transgressions

The fruit of my body for my sins?

8 He has told you, O man, what is good,

And what the Lord requires of you:

"Only to do justice

And to love goodness

And to walk humbly with your God."

but what I find even more soothing, "like cold water on a parched throat (Proverbs 25:25)", is the twice-repeated vision of integration with the nations: "The remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many peoples (5:6,7)," a direct refutation of Balaam's famous עם לבדד ישכון am l'vadad yishkon, "a nation that lives alone (Numbers 23:9)"

The previous chapter in Micah is also the source of the famous pacifist passage most commonly quoted from Isaiah (nation shall not lift up sword against nation, etc.) so it is not really surprising to find a strong anti-militaristic statement in our Haftarah as well:

"...I will wreck your chariots...and demolish your fortresses" (5:9-10)

3. An inner-biblical Resolution

I got a kick out of Numbers 20:14, when Moses starts out his message to Edom with, "Thus says your brother Israel..." Well, it didn't work -- Edom was not interested in allowing Israel free passage through its land -- but it's good to see some optimism here, even if it comes out of self-interest and not consideration, let alone altruism. If the text imagines brotherly between the descendants of Jacob and Esau ( = Edom) despite the rocky beginning they had in Genesis 25-33, I guess there's hope for all of us.

Shabbat shalom,

Jeremy

Sh'lah: Faith in what cannot be seen

In Moscow for a conference during the last days of the Cold War, I managed to attend Shabat services at the nearest synagogue, and told a curious Russian Jew who had never been out of Russia but was eager to emigrate to Israel that if he came back to my hotel, he could meet Shulamit Aloni, a celebrated human rights activist and, at the time, an Israeli cabinet minister. His response: "Her problem is, she doesn't know the Arabs." When I told her of his uninformed impertinence, she said, "if he makes aliyah, he'll fit right in." (I might add that after in living Israel for the rest of his life and never meeting an Arab, he'll still be convinced that he knows better)

In tomorrow's Toah reading (Sh'lah, Numbers 13-15), 12 spies set out to reconnoiter the Promised Land, and come back with a mixed report: the land is lush and fertile, but its inhabitants are fierce; bottom line, all but Kalev, who is later joined by Yehoshua, believe the enemy cannot be vanquished. The Israelites, discouraged, begin to complain and consider returning to Egypt. God threatens to get rid of them, and Moses manages to bring God to stick with them, but God will keep them in the desert for 40 years till this entire generation dies off, only bringing the next generation into the Land. The desert narrative is suspended during chapter 15, which provides seemingly unconnected ritual commandments; the Haftarah, from Joshua 2, retells a similar spying expedition, and this time, the result is an endorsement of the planned invasion.

The commandment to attach fringes on the outer clothing, tzitzit (Numbers 15:37-41) is the pivotal passage here: the fringes function paradoxically: seeing them will make the Israelites remember the commandments and perform them, and keep them from straying after their desires (to go back to Egypt) and what the eyes have seen (a hostile land), because the commandments come from YHWH, who took them out of Egypt to be their God. The Haftarah features Rahab, the righteous prostitute, to indicate that some straying from the norm can be useful, thus adding an ironic if not subversively antinomian rabbinic flourish to tomorrow's service.

Diaspora Jews will resonate with the assignment the spies received: what kind of land will they find if/when they come, and how fierce are its inhabitants? The animosity that confronts the immigrant is not restricted to hostilities between Jews and Arabs; there's plenty of aggession to go around, but somehow, luckily or not, many visitors don't pick up on it. It's in the eye of the beholder, and even more so, in the itinerary that a tour follows; people quickly establish comfort zones that mark the boundaries of the familiar, beyond which spin and stereotypes tend to prevail. And what binds up the package is faith: the 10 discouraging spies forgot to factor divine providence into their report.

What could count for divine providence in the Middle East for us today? Is it in the acquisition of the latest weaponry that does not distinguish between combatant and civilian? Could it be in discriminatory policies that impverish the indigenous population with the hope of forcing it to emigrate, but actually only breed a hard line and violent resistance? Christian Zionists? I'd rather see divine providence as that which has us overcoming our fear and seeking our partners, sharing the land and harvesting the peace.

The three closest pizza venders to my flat here in Berlin are all Lebanese, which inevitably means that their parents were Palestinian refugees from '48, and their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have never seen it -- the modern equivalents of Moses and his generation. I imagine relatives who remained and satellite television and internet deliver their reports, and I wonder what keeps them going. My heart pounds louder when I greet them in beginner's Arabic, but my inner dialogue is in mamma loshen, what I drank with my mother's milk: vih'yitem k'doshim leyloheychem; be holy, be faithful, to your God (Numbers 15:40).

Shabbat shalom,

Jeremy

B'ha'alot'cha: All rise with the Ark, including a reluctant divine warrior

(לה) וַיְהִי בִּנְסֹעַ הָאָרֹן וַיֹּאמֶר משֶׁה קוּמָה יְהֹוָה וְיָפֻצוּ אֹיְבֶיךָ וְיָנֻסוּ מְשַׂנְאֶיךָ מִפָּנֶיךָ:

(לו) וּבְנֻחֹה יֹאמַר שׁוּבָה יְהֹוָה רִבֲבוֹת אַלְפֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל:

vay'hi binso'a ha'aron vayomer moshe: kuma hashem v'yafutzu oy'vecha v'yanusu m'san'echa mipanecha

uv'nuho yomar: shuvah hashem riv'vot alfey yisrael

When the ark was to set out, Moses would say,

"Rise, O Lord, may your enemies be scattered and may your foes flee before You"

And when it was put down, he would say,

"Rest, O Lord of Israel's myriads of thousands"

A nun-friend of mine was rather surprised when I told her I was planning to write about Numbers 10:35-36: "Enemies scattering?" she wrote, and I'm not sure whether it was the subject of enmity or the violence (or fear of it) required to scatter them that upset her, or maybe she assumed that I was simply adding a few verses to the longish list of passages I wish would disappear, and she's a traditionalist...well, I'm not going to censor it, but I'm also not willing to turn this prayer in a central pillar of faith,sefer hashuv bifney atzmo (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 116a; actually, the inverted letters -- nunim m'nuzarot -- that bracket these two verses do suggest an ancient form of anti-virus quarantine!).

Etz Hayim (p. 826) starts off trying to shift the physical danger into the past: "During our years of wandering, exile and persecution, when we were (my emphasis) vulnerable to those who sought to do us harm, our prayer was (again, my emphasis), 'Advance [sic], O Lord! May your enemies be scattered!'" However, our vigilance has only moved to the spiritual: "During tranquil times, when the danger is not persecution but assimilation, our prayer is a homiletic interpretation of verse 36: 'O Lord, return the thousands of Israel who have strayed'" (notice how the editors reduce the verse's astronomical order of magnitude -- 10 to the 7th power -- to an almost trivial amount). But finally, Etz Hayim keeps the midrash from Sifrei (and popularized by Rashi) current when it asks, and answers: "Does God have enemies? Anyone who hates the Jewish people because we strive to do the will of God is an enemy of God" (nota bene: "because we strive to do the will of God" is -- perhaps unfortunately-- an editorial novum).

So, is this yet another utterance of the default sentiment in all religions: "God is on our side"? Nehama Leibovitz provides some relief by bringing the following snippet (the original is oh, so wordy...) from Samson Rafael Hirsch's Torah commentary (Frankfurt, 19th century):

"Moses knew that enemies would arise to the Torah from the word go, since justice and loving the Other are completely contrary to the decrees of tyrants and their aggression..." and not once in over a page and a half of commentary does he imply that we and the Torah are one, or that its enemies are our enemies or visa versa.

We are so prone to take advantage of the presence of Jewish worshippers and spoonfeed a pro-active political agenda that originates in certain corridors of power that we hardly notice the jingoistic force of singing these verses during the Torah service (last week I heard a prayer sung to the melody of Hatikva...); does our demeanor resonate "tranquil times" and do our texts reflect the nuances of our tradition, which certainly contains fantasies of divine violence against "them", but an authentic voice such as Hirsch as well? We move right on from Kuma Hashem (verse 35) to Ki mitziyon (Isaiah 2: 3b); I can't recall where I experienced it, but I was thrilled when I discovered somewhere out there they keep going till the end of the next verse as well: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore".

A final note of subversion: I was suddenly struck (or maybe what my father wrote, "This song is only a prayer (the imperative "Arise", "Rest" are not written in the usual form, "kum," "shuv", but are lengthened to "kumah," "shuvah" and thus may be expressing a wish," Numbers, JPS, p. 375) by the similarity of this language to the words Elijah puts into the mouths of the Ba'al worshippers:

"It was already noon, and Elijah made fun of them, saying, "Cry out in a loud voice, he's a god, maybe he's busy, maybe he's on a journey, or maybe he's sleeping and must be wakened!" (I Kings 18:27)

It's almost as if God is a reluctant warrior whom Moses has to beseech to go out to battle (actually, Moses was wont to say this whenever the ark arose, not only in battle, which suggests a default setting of belligerence...hmmmm); and once set in motion, there's inertia to overcome, to get God back to non-violence...(kevan shenitan rashut l'hash'hit --once the slaughter begins, look out! -- the danger that Israel found itself in when the Angel of Death was killing the Egyptian first-born --

ואתם לא תצאו איש מפתח ביתו עד בקר כיון שניתן רשות למשחית אינו מבחין בין צדיקים לרשעים ולא עוד אלא שמתחיל מן הצדיקים תחלה שנאמר והכרתי ממך צדיק ורשע)

Life in the desert, according to this passage, was not a beach (that's the clean version), and we should choose our prayers carefully.

Shabbat shalom,

Jeremy

Naso: the adjacency of leprosy and restitution

Greetings to my faithful readers; I hope you all managed to "get a life" during the last four weeks of this column's absence... I must confess that I needed the break, and I'm not sure that I'm up to resuming my weekly struggle with the Parashah/haftarah, but two center-stage events, macro and micro, impel me to write: both happenings, the latest chapter in Obama's presidency, as well as Tony's visit to Minerva House relate directly to the Middle East conflict, and resonate within Parashat Naso (and, for Israeli readers, the haftarah of B'ha'alot'cha).

. אל נא תאמר הנה דרכי האחרונה

את אור היום הסתירו שמי העננה

זה יום נכספנו לו עוד יעל ויבוא

ומצעדנו עוד ירעים: "אנחנו פה!"

Al na tomar hiney darki ha'aharona

et or hayom histiru sh'mey ha'ananah

Zeh yom nechsafnu lo, od ya'al v'yavo

u'mitz'adenu od yar'im anahnu po!

Don't say this is a dead end --

the light of day is only hidden by a cloudy sky

It's a long awaited day, bring it on --

Our parade will yet thunder: we are here! (from the Jewish Partisan's Hymn, Glick/Shlonsky)

1. The long awaited day -- in the Minerva/Shiber house

וְהֵשִׁיב אֶת אֲשָׁמוֹ בְּרֹאשׁוֹ וַחֲמִישִׁתוֹ יֹסֵף עָלָיו וְנָתַן לַאֲשֶׁר אָשַׁם לוֹ

v'heshiv et ashamo b'rosho vahamishito yosef alav v'natan la'asher asham lo

" ...He shall make restitution in the principal amount and add one-fifth to it, giving it to him whom he has wronged." -- Numbers 5:7

"Tony's father was around the age of 11 when Zionist soldiers came to the doorstep and informed them that they had 48 hours to vacate the home in the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Talbieh...I looked around and wondered to myself, what happened to the furniture and household items, where did all the clothing go, how much has been removed and redone, what about kitchen supplies and food items, where did the ghosts of the home settle?" (http://onefire.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/finding-tonys-house-in-jerusalem/ )

We had heard that George Shiber built two houses, and believed he'd rented this one out and lived in another, larger house that he'd built around the corner; while that version took a bit of the heat off of us, it didn't significantly diminish Tony's rights to the house. But he wasn't here to reclaim his property (it isn't always easy for an American citizen with an Arabic name to enter Israel; Tony told us he felt lucky he'd made it in); he had basically come to find his roots. His traveling companion wrote about us (op. cit.), "They both seem to be very calm at our arrival, almost as if the home has been telling them that one day the Shibers would come back in search of their home, and now this 'one day' has arrived," but the truth is that I'm very happy and excited to meet Tony and to have brought him into the house;

וְאִם אֵין לָאִישׁ גֹּאֵל לְהָשִׁיב הָאָשָׁם אֵלָיו הָאָשָׁם הַמּוּשָׁב לה' לכהן

v'im ein lai'sh go'el l'hashiv ha'asham elav, ha'asham hamushav l'hashem lakohen

If the man has no kinsman to whom restitution can be made, the amount repaid shall go to the Lord for the priest (Numbers 5:8)

We had heard that George's children had gone to Beirut and Kuwait, from which it is not that easy to enter Israel, and I figured we'd never have a living connection with that family.Who would be the priest who would receive restitution instead of George Shiber's exiled children? Lucky for us, Tony's father John had made it to the United States; If they are interested, I hope his grandchildren will have the same access to their past as my own; will our leaders do the honorable but inconvenient thing, or will they continue to play games, play war games, play with our lives and the lives of our loved ones? (hint: God willing, my grandson will turn 18 in 17.8 years...)

2. The long-awaited day that arrived in Cairo, in Dar-al-Islam (the rest of the Moslem world) and in Dar al-Harb (the rest of the world that is not yet Moslem -- just kidding, folks)

Both Naso (Numbers 4:21-7:89) and B'ha'alot'cha (Numbers 8:1-12:16) provide ready-made springboards for peaceful preaching; the priestly blessing (Numbers 6: 22-26), which inspired a sublime series of midrashim that all begin with Gadol Hashalom ("Peace is the Greatest"), and B'ha'alot'cha's haftarah, with "Not by power and not by might rather by my spirit," (Zecharia 4:6) will hopefully resonate in homilies throughout the Jewish world tomorrow. However, even the most powerful sermon will not be able to penetrate the insularity of fear, victimhood and privilege that allows the Jewish establishment to be dismissive of every peace initiative and hostile to the idea of justice. For them, peace means "they should stop bothering us", i.e., what we have, we can keep; sooner or later they'll settle for crumbs. Bush seemed to think that was fine, and apparently, hopefully, Obama does not. Is he serious enough to be willing to pay the price of meaning what he says? Do supporters of Israel really think there can be any kind of long-lasting stability, let alone peace, without ending Israel's systemic discrimination againist and marginalization of the Palestinian people?

You guessed right if you thought Obama's words in Cairo yesterday gave me hope; wouldn't it be wonderful if his denounciation of violence brought about a cessation of attacks on Israel and Jews worldwide? What was significant, in my mind, in his approach yesterday, was what appeared to be his giving Jewish and Palestinian nationalism equal weight, which basically means that not all means can be used to achieve national ends. I hope Jewish leadership internalizes this message, because I have begun to despair of the worship of the state, i. e., the religion of Israel. The Land and the State can be no more than instruments in the worship of God; the People is not essential but is rather a framework of a covenanted community. But I'm slipping into a sermon or a seminar here, and that's not where it's going to happen. For that -- surprise, surprise! -- we'll go back to the text:

Numbers chapter 5 begins with two ostensibly unrelated topics: ostracism of the leper (verses 1-4) and מעל, ma'al, the restitution of misappropriated property (verses 5-8). We've talked about the second pericope above, in the story of Tony's house; now I feel I can (or rather, I must) use the homiletic principle of סמיכות פרשיות smichut parshiot (the adjacency of passages) to derive a truth and deliver a message: what we -- Israel, with the connivance of the western world -- have been doing to the Palestinians has been a ma'al, a misappropriation of sancta and this is becoming evident worldwide, where Judaism is increasingly seen as hideous because it is inextricably linked with Zionism, itself resembling more and more a form of moral leprosy. Oh, but we made the desert bloom while defending our land from infiltrators, we said. Actually, they were refugees who just wanted to come back to their homes and families (ושבתם איש אל אחוזתו ואיש אל משפחתו תשובו v'shavtem ish el ahuzato v'ish el mishtahto tashuvu, Lev. 25:10), and most of the world is learning that now. As for us, the innocent and gullible are in denial and are still spun by propagandists, while the more brazen say, "So what?" (the former group could have their eyes opened, as their hearts have not been hardened; the latter will probably only learn the hard way). Which tendency do you think got Netanyanu and Lieberman (and maybe Barak) elected?

May God who healed Miriam and Na'aman of their leprosy heal us of ours. And may redemption come to Zion.

Shabbat shalom,

Jeremy