Reuven and Gad and Lech Lecha (Matot 5768)

Yesterday, I went to Weis to buy challah. When I got to the checkout, though, the cashier made me what you could call a counteroffer (yes, gratuitous My Cousin Vinny reference): “You want to buy challah? If you’ll pay for meat, I’ll give you the challah you want. But if you won’t pay for meat, I’ll just give you meat.”

Sounds confusing, not to mention illogical - but that’s exactly the deal that Moshe offered to the shevatim of Reuven and Gad.

The members of these shevatim said, “We want to settle outside Israel.” And Moshe replied, “Nothing doing; either you fight for Israel, in which case you can then choose to settle outside Israel, or you can choose not to fight for Israel, but then you’ll have to live in Israel.” In simpler words: Either fight for Israel, or live there without fighting for it.

Why does this deal make any sense at all?


One possible answer goes to the core of the Jewish experience, from its nascence with Avraham and Sarah and onward: The Divine charge of לך לך, to leave the comfortable, to leave the day-to-day, to leave the safe, to travel through a wilderness, to face challenges, to fight wars, in order to acquire a land in which the Jew could develop a new society and bond with HaShem.
This is a journey of trust - trust in HaShem. And this is a journey of spirituality, of המקום אשר יבחר לשכן שמו שם, of a place in which HaShem will dwell and with which HaShem will develop a bond.


Avraham and Sarah are challenged to make this journey of trust and spirituality, from Mesopotamia to Israel.

Yaakov is challenged to make this journey, from Israel to Mesopotamia and then back to Israel.
Leah and Rachel and Bilhah and Zilpah are challenged to make this journey from their homeland to Israel.

Their great-grandchildren, the former slaves of Egypt, are likewise challenged to make this journey of trust and spirituality, to shed their fears, to overcome privation en route, and to trust in HaShem to bring them to a land Divinely designated from the start to be their home.


That trip met a roadblock at the Eigel, the Golden Calf - because the trust broke down, as the nation, waiting for its leader Moshe to return, panicked.

That trip met another roadblock when the Meraglim returned home with a negative report about Israel, and the nation rejected its spiritual goal as too challenging.

And now, in our parshah, 39 years later, a new generation had taken up the journey and stood at Israel’s boundary. But representatives of two shevatim approached Moshe and said, “This journey is not for us.”

To which Moshe replied that the Jewish nation cannot opt out of the journey of לך לך - this is essential to our identity, as it has been essential to our identity from the beginning.

And so Moshe told the shevatim of Reuven and Gad: If you want to live elsewhere - that’s acceptable. But you must at least make the journey, you must at least demonstrate trust in HaShem and you must feel that spiritual connection through the land.

If you will not live there, you must at least go there. And if you will not agree to at least spend that time there now, then you cannot live outside the land - you will have to live in Israel permanently.


The obligation for Jews to make this לך לך journey persisted after the time of Reuven and Gad in the form of עליה לרגל, the mitzvah of traveling to Yerushalayim and the Beit haMikdash for each Yom Tov. As Rav Menachem Genack wrote in his book גן שושנים, this mitzvah is a basic re-enactment of that original journey embarked upon by Avraham and Sarah.

A quirk in the laws governing this mitzvah proves Rabbi Genack’s point: The gemara rules that a Jew is obligated in this mitzvah of aliyah laregel only if he owns land.

This is an odd requirement - what does land ownership have to do with the mitzvah? Rabbi Genack explains that the point of our thrice-annual journey to Yerushalayim is to re-enact the faithful trip of Avraham and Sarah, to abandon our land in order to travel to Yerushalayim, to the site of the Beit haMikdash.

In the time of the Beit haMikdash, every Jew who owns land is expected to turn his back on it and fulfill לך לך.


Today, when we lack a Beit haMikdash and when the majority of Jews do not yet live in Israel, most halachic authorities rule that we cannot fulfill the mitzvah of aliyah laregel. Nonetheless, the לך לך imperative endures, binding all of us to display, on a practical level, our trust in Gd, to make a practical attempt to achieve the spiritual benefit of living in Israel. Like Reuven and Gad, some Jews will opt to live outside of Israel, as some Jews have always done - but לך לך is still our charge.

What, exactly, is expected of today’s Jew? What, exactly, is the definition of this לך לך command?
We do a number of good things which are not לך לך. We say Tehillim. We fast on Shivah asar b’Tammuz and Tisha b'Av, and mourn through the three weeks of בין המצרים. We send sizeable checks to Israel. These are wonderful things, all important, all significant mitzvot. But when we look at Reuven and Gad we realize that these are not לך לך.

Reuven and Gad go to Israel and exhaust and endanger themselves for the sake of settling Jews in the land - just as Avraham and Sarah did, just as Yaakov did, just as Leah and Rachel and Bilhah and Zilpah did, just as Reuven and Gad and the rest of the nation did. That is לך לך.

A Jew can be very religious, a Jew can believe in the Torah and believe that Israel is ours and daven ותחזינה עינינו בשובך לציון ברחמים three times a day and learn mishnayos and say Tehillim, and read Arutz Sheva on-line until his eyeballs fall out - but with all of that wonderful merit, this is still not לך לך. לך לך is about entering the land - even just four amot, as the gemara prescribes - but it’s about going into the land.


I’m going on the Federation mission to Israel this November. I’m glad to say that more than 100 people are going with me, and there is even a waiting list.

Certainly, a mission to Israel is an all-too-brief stint, but Jews who go on such trips are fulfilling our original responsibility of לך לך, they are showing that original trust in Gd, and they are showing that original recognition of Israel as a land pledged to us by HaShem as a special place.

Of course, not everyone can go on a Mission - these are expensive trips, and they come with a very specific schedule and design. But personal trips are a possibility. Many people here do it, even staying in Israel for months at a time. ________, _________ and __________ will be there this coming year, studying. No matter what time of year you go to Israel, you’re guaranteed to find an Allentonian in Israel. We can do this.

If Avraham and Sarah can travel from Mesopotamia, if דור המדבר can spend forty years in the wilderness, if Reuven and Gad can fight wars, then many of us can save up funds by skipping and stinting for a few years in order to make that לך לך trip.


Believing in the holiness of Israel is important, of course, but it is nothing compared to going there. Like Reuven and Gad, we can choose to pay for the meat and use it, or we can choose the counteroffer, paying for the meat and taking home the challah. But we must always pay; our mission today is, and always has been, לך לך.

Sefer HaKuzari presents a religious dialogue between a non-Jewish king and a Jewish philosopher. At the end of the dialogue, the Jewish philosopher expresses his desire to travel to Israel. The king asks him, “Since you believe in the value of the land, and Gd knows what is in your heart, and Gd really cares about what is in your heart, why do you need to act on your beliefs at all, and travel there?”

To which the Jewish philosopher replied with immortal words: האדם מונח לו בינו בין מאוויו ומעשהו, והאדם נאשם כאשר איננו מביא השכר הנראה אל המעשה הטוב הנראה - A person is situated between his desire and his action, and a person is guilty if he does not convert his desire into action.

We already have the desire; what remains is for us to convert it into action.

-
Notes:
1. Yes, another speech about aliyah and Israel. Way I figure, maybe people will be motivated to go just to get away from all of these speeches about it...

2. Rav Ben Zion Firer (מדי שבת בשבתו) asks the same question about the illogic of Moshe's offer, but gives a different answer, about the importance of national unity.

3. Rabbi Genack's article is in his Gan Shoshanim, #55.

4. The gemara's limitation of aliyah laregel to those who own land is in Pesachim 8b. There is some controversy regarding the fact that the Rambam omits this in his discussion of the mitzvah.

5. Tosafot Pesachim 3b מאליה, in his third answer for why R' Yehudah ben Beteirah did not go to the Beit haMikdash for aliyah l'regel as well as the korban pesach, suggests that someone who lives outside of Israel is not required to do so. Many commentators struggle to explain this comment.

6. On the status of the mitzvah aliyah l'regel today, see the Ran ואיכא to Taanit 10a (2a בדפי הריף), Tashbetz 3:201, and She'eilat Yaavetz 1:127.

The Increasing Irrelevance of the American Jewish Community

In the past year I’ve watched three of my rabbinic peers, all in the 30-40 year old prime of their rabbinate, announce their aliyah. I’ve cheered on several congregants along their path of aliyah over the past few years. While much of the decision-making process for these olim has been individual, focusing on factors like children’s education or job situation or personal Zionism, I also see in it a sign of the increasing irrelevance of the American Jewish community. (Note: This isn’t a value judgment, just an observation.) Just as individual Jewish communities move their centers of gravity over time, so the world Jewish community is inexorably moving its center to Israel.

This is not a religious statement about the centrality of Israel for Torah observance, it’s not a Zionist statement about the future of Jewish life, it’s not a negation of everything American life has offered Jews for centuries. It’s just a recognition of a social shift which is already underway.

Certainly, the American Jewish community is currently the wealthiest and most politically connected in the world, but I’m looking at this community’s relevance for the future of the Jewish people, and I see three major signs of communal irrelevance: Satellitism, Entropy and Individualism.

Satellitism:
The American Jewish community is losing its relevance because, religiously as well as politically, the American Jewish community functions increasingly as a satellite of Israeli Jewry.
For education of our children, for Birthright connections, for halachic guidance, for the leadership of institutions which address issues of modernity in the context of Judaism, we look to the Israeli Jewish community. Much of our political leadership is currently in America, and much of our philanthropic is as well, but this landscape is shifting.

Entropy:
The American Jewish community is losing its relevance because its institutional infrastructure is decaying and is not being replaced.
This is true across the spectrum of religious observances. From schools to philanthropic umbrella organizations to synagogues, the problem of funding as well as communal participation (and even communal interest) is proving difficult to solve. Major challenges include the tuition crisis, the drift away from umbrella philanthropy, Jewish disaffiliation from JCCs, and the tendency of younger Americans not to affiliate with synagogues. Just look at the numbers at the Jewish Databank’s surveys; it’s all there in the community studies.
Much institutional time and energy is being devoted to finding solutions to these major problems.
Non-Orthodox movements have developed an approach of solving the problems by negating the questions. Example: Intermarriage is not a problem, because intermarrieds can now be members, are seen to be making a legitimate lifestyle decision, and are labelled as “on the cusp of Jewish confrontation with secular society.” The biggest question is how we can serve them. Another example: The choice of sports activities over religious school is not a problem, because one can engage in sports Jewishly, and religious schools can fit everything into one afternoon a week.
Orthodoxy has done no better in solving these problems. Schools are underfunded, JCCs and Umbrella philanthropies are ignored. Institutional dissolution is considered acceptable; we’ll just look elsewhere to meet our needs. Creative, effective solutions are few and far between.

Individualism
The American Jewish community is losing its relevance because American Jews seem to be more committed to the welfare of the individual than the welfare of the community.
There just seems to be little interest in guaranteeing the future of Jewish life in America. Intermarriage rates are one indicator of this problem. Affiliation with institutions is another. A third indicator is the failure of the Jewish community to adopt any sense of sacrifice for the sake of the future. George Hanus’s “Five Percent for Jewish Education” plan is a program which could work, but I’d like to see it at 10% or 15%. It’s not going to happen, of course; too many of us are more interested in Caribbean vacations and building on to our homes and purchasing fancy cars. Think back to great-grandparents who had little to spend on food, and yet they gave money to Hebrew Loan Funds and to support mikvaos, and contributed their time to Jewish community infrastructure; today’s level of consumerism would have been unthinkable to them.

Ultimately, this may just be the natural evolution of a community, from its early growth to its institutional strength to its senescence. It may be a function of the failure of Jewish education for some, and the success of Jewish education for others, leading each group to abandon this community, whether to pursue Jewish oblivion or to pursue aliyah. Call it a Divinely orchestrated pattern of events, if you like.
As I see it: American Jewry will remain as a Jewish community, at least for the foreseeable non-Mashiach era, just as there are Jewish communities in South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the FSU and Hong Kong. However, it will be a community with decreasing potency and decreasing leadership. The strongest institutions will open branches elsewhere, particularly in Israel, and those branches will eventually become their centers. Our children and their children will increase their rates of aliyah. Kibbutz Galuyot will happen naturally. בעתה אחישנה.

Redemption must be learned (Derashah, 7th day of Pesach)

If the elephant never forgets, then we, the Jewish people, are a nation of pachyderms. Every two-bit country that oppressed us and then disappeared is commemorated with at least a holiday if not a book in Tanach, and every tyrant, king and general who attacked us and was then killed during the past 3400 years is marked for special ignominy. We don’t forget anything.

The best example of our inflexible hold on history is Pesach. We escaped Egypt, and now, every year, we spend a week not only marking our redemption but even eating the same food we ate at that time, 3400 years in the past!


However, Pesach is more than just another holiday in which we hold on to our past - after all, Pesach is the only event in Jewish history that actually requires full-scale, dramatic, re-enactment.

• We have no such re-enactment for the Akeidah.

• We have no such re-enactment for the giving of the Torah at Sinai - we do learn all night on Shavuos, but that’s a custom rather than a biblical mitzvah.

• We have no such re-enactment for the building of the Mishkan or Beis haMikdash, or for their destruction.

You might be able to make a case for Succos as re-enactment, but we certainly have no staging with the philosophical depth and legal complexity of the Pesach Seder for anything in Jewish history. Why this? Why is it so critical that we envision ourselves on this march through the walls of a long-dead empire?

Perhaps the key is in the Geulah experience itself, in teaching Jews of every generation how best to appreciate and handle גאולה, Redemption.

גאולה, as the word is used in the Torah, means more than being saved from a threat:
The Torah’s term גאולה refers to redeeming a slave from slavery.
The Torah’s term גאולה refers to redeeming family land that has been pawned.
The Torah’s term גאולה refers to redeeming property that had been dedicated to the Beis haMikdash, so that now it may be used for common, mundane purposes.

גאולה is about changing our state, enabling a fresh start, breaking new ground, without being beholden to the people we were before or the world in which we lived before - and because we are creatures of habit and comfort and fear of the new and unknown, גאולה is a hard experience for us to absorb. גאולה can frighten us into hiding like a groundhog who has seen his shadow, or like the Jews in the desert who complained to Moshe, “We would have preferred the slavery of Egypt to the insecurity of this new way of life.”

The trail of Jewish history amply illustrates the difficulty of embracing גאולה; our national narrative is littered with redemptions which offered the opportunity of a new start, but which ultimately failed either because we didn’t recognize them, or because we weren’t willing to grasp them:

• The Assyrians invaded Israel, exiled the northern ten tribes and then turned to the South. It seemed inevitable that they would conquer ירושלים - but King Chizkiyahu, Yerushalayim and the nation were miraculously spared. This could have been a real גאולה, the gemara even says that Mashiach could have come at that point, had the people celebrated and embraced Gd adequately - but they did not thank HaShem immediately with great song, and the opportunity was lost.

• Purim offered another גאולה, as the Jews celebrated their escape from Haman and thanked HaShem. But shortly thereafter the Jews were given Persian permission to return to Israel and build the second Beis haMikdash, and the great majority did not go.

• I would make the case that 1948 was a potential גאולה as well, a watershed moment when Jews could have returned en masse to this new, Jewish land - but, again, it was only a partial גאולה because some went but the great majority did not.


The megilah we read today, שיר השירים, sums up the problem of the failed גאולה. HaShem is described as a suitor at our door, his hand outstretched, calling to us, פתחי לי אחותי רעיתי יונתי תמתי, Open up the door for me, my sister, my beloved, my dove, my perfect one! But the response of the Jewish people is a reluctant excuse, רחצתי את רגלי איככה אטנפם, I have washed my feet, how can I dirty them? It’s an excuse, a paltry excuse for declining גאולה.


Pesach, on the other hand, was a case of successful גאולה, successful redemption, as we marched out of Egypt and all the way to Sinai to receive the Torah. We recognized the opportunity, and we grasped it - and so, today, we use Pesach in order to accustom ourselves to the idea and opportunity of redemption, of instantaneous change, of a Divinely ordained shift that demands we rush בחפזון to keep up.

• We imagine what it was like to be a slave, familiar with matzah and marror, and suddenly find ourselves eating a korban Pesach.

• We imagine what it was like to be downtrodden, born into servitude, and suddenly learn that the heritage of Avraham counts for something, that the promises of the past are more than legend, that the Creator of the Universe wants a relationship with us.

• We imagine what it is like to see our world’s priorities and obligations turned upside down in the frenzy of redemption.


We need Pesach to help us imagine what it is like to embark into a new world of possibility so that we will understand the nature of גאולה and so that it will no longer be intimidating. In every generation, we train our children to see themselves leaving Egypt, to have their lens widen from the closed perspective of the slave to the wide-open vista of the free, to understand what it means to have the shackles suddenly removed. Pesach is our training ground for freedom.


As I pointed out before, the Torah’s vision of גאולה is not an all-or-nothing term reserved only for Messianic redemption; גאולה refers to every change of status, every shift in our existence, large and small. All of these are opportunities.

גאולה may be a job offer. גאולה may be an opportunity to attend a class. גאולה may be an invitation from a spouse, a parent, or some other relative to apologize and re-start a troubled relationship on a healthier footing.

Pesach tells us to keep our eyes open, to watch for Moshe coming out of the desert to tell us that our slavery is over, to recognize the גאולה for what it is and to capitalize on our opportunities.

The ultimate גאולה, whether we call it the first sprouting of our national redemption or just the fulfillment of our Jewish dream of living in our own land, is the return to Israel. That’s the whole ball-game, a fulfillment of the Torah’s instruction to us to take possession of Israel and pass it on to our descendants, and the chance for us to celebrate the Torah and its mitzvos in their intended way.

We’ve been through, several times, the many legitimate reasons why people cannot make aliyah. Health reasons for some, responsibilities in America for others, and so on. But Pesach teaches us to keep our eyes open for גאולה, to recognize it when it comes, and to leap at our chance to escape Mitzrayim and head toward our land.

They tell the story of a man who drowns in a flood, declining all human efforts to rescue him because he’s waiting for a Divine miracle. When he goes before Gd for judgment, Gd explains that all of those human efforts were the miracle, the redemption Gd was sending.

May we learn to recognize our גאולות, large and small, and take advantage of them when they come.