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