Mattot Masei

SERMON  PARASHAT MATTOT-MASEI     

August 2, 2024

Rabbi David Edleson 

Temple Sinai South Burlington, Vermont

הַאַֽחֵיכֶ֗ם יָבֹ֙אוּ֙ לַמִּלְחָמָ֔ה וְאַתֶּ֖ם תֵּ֥שְׁבוּ פֹֽה׃

 “Are your brothers and sisters to go to war while you stay here?”

This is Moses’ sharp reply in this week’s Torah portion to the tribes of Reuben and Gad when they asked to not go with the rest of the people into the Promised Land to fight, but instead to stay on the other side of the Jordan river where they are already settled, comfortable, and have houses and pens for their livestock. 

הַאַֽחֵיכֶ֗ם יָבֹ֙אוּ֙ לַמִּלְחָמָ֔ה וְאַתֶּ֖ם תֵּ֥שְׁבוּ פֹֽה׃

 “Are your brothers and sisters to go to war while you stay here?”

This verse has gotten a lot of play in Israel lately and in two very different, even opposite ways.   As you might know, the ultra-Orthodox, the haredim, are exempt from serving in the army as long as they continue to study in a yeshiva.  When they were a tiny fraction of the population, it didn’t really matter so much, but even then, only the top Torah scholars were exempt.  With the power of the Haredi political parties, now this exemption has expanded to be almost universal, and now that they are over 13% of the population, it means a significant loss of troops in the army.

 Estimates are that if all those who were eligible for enlistment did so, it would mean 66,000 soldiers.  At a time when the nation is at war and there is a serious need, even crisis of personnel,  this issue has erupted into another rift in Israeli society.     The haredi political parties hold tremendous power in Israel because their 13% gets determine which party gets to form a government.  Their number one goal in the past years has been to get the exemption from military service permanently into law, but the vast majority of Israelis, including most of the regular Orthodox who already serve in the army, and who make up much of Netanyahu’s base, strongly feel that the haredim need to be part of the fabric of Israeli society and that means army service. 

(In an interesting side note, there are also moves to extend this to Israeli Palestinians which while complex in terms of identity, family ties, and security, would go a long way in narrowing the economic gaps between Palestinian and Jewish Israeli citizens.)

Now the Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that there is no legal basic for this discrimination, and has ordered the army to begin enlisting several thousand haredi man. That has started, and that is where the verse from this week’s portion comes in. 

There was a campaign to recruit haredim to the army focused on this verse:  Will you let your brothers go to war while you stay home?  It has been an effective campaign, especially among a community so deeply knowledgeable about Torah and Jewish law. 

Of course, the haredi parties organized huge protests to the draft, blocking major highways, protests that became at times violent.   In their call to their fellow protesters, they put up large banners and wheatpasted posted that said: Will you let your brothers go to war while you stay home?   Meaning, you should join our protests.

When the tribes of Reuben and Gad asked not to go to war, Moses’  fear was that this sort of division would demoralize the people. He said to them:

“Why will you turn the minds of the Israelites from crossing into the land that יהוה has given them? That is what your fathers did when I sent them from Kadesh-barnea to spy on the land.  [Numbers 32:6-8]

In other words, divisions like this fracture and demoralize our people and threaten our survival.

But I also understand the tribes of Gad and Reuben.  They are tired of moving, always in the wilderness and they just want to get back to a new normal.  We can also understand this.  Constant change and threat is exhausting.   The people are cranky because they are all exhausted.

In my recent time studying in Jerusalem at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and going to some protests and talking and listening to people and teachers, what I sensed mostly was the tremendous weight of fatigue.  People are burning out.  Even Israelis have a limit on perseverance.

Some of it is fatigue of war, and having spouses off fighting for months at a time and having the economy really suffering is putting huge stresses on many families. 

For many, it is going to weekly protests for years now, and more recently hearing the profound emotional anguish when the hostage families speak.

For many, particularly those from Europe or North America,  it is seeing the antisemitism playing out all over the world, and the hatred for Israel, and seeing the West frame this as between Israel and Palestinians, instead of Israel and Iranian fundamentalist proxy armies.

And there is the deeper question of what can be done?  How can Israel survive in this Middle East?  How can Israel make peace with the Palestinians if Hamas and other similar terrorist organizations would be elected to lead them, something internal Palestinian polls show clearly. 

This sense that there is no answer, this draining of hope of a peaceful future is like a thick fog that is almost palpable. 

Just as Israeli society is exhausted, fatigued with argument and uncertainty, the Jewish world here at home is going through our own difficult and sometimes devastating arguments about justice and ethics. 

I have talked to many of you who have had painful division in your families, friendship groups, and particularly between parents and children. No matter where right and wrong might land, these sorts of ruptures in families are a painful part of the times we are living in, and they are exhausting both here and there.  I am going to be putting something in the newsletter to see if we might form a support group for families that are going through this.  Please let people know that might be in need.

It seems that right now, what we need most is to hold one another up, to look out for each other, to be there to listen when someone needs to talk about all this.  I don’t think we need to agree with one another to be able to be a people;  indeed, we never have done that and our brand is that we are a people who remain together in the face of profound argument and disagreement.  It has been our brand since Egypt.  Our brand is not moral certainty, or simple bumper sticker ethics.  It's complexity, and balancing competing virtues and values.

But one of the key moral values in Judaism is the value expressed in Moses’ question to the tribes.   The value of peoplehood. 

Peoplehood has a core virtue and responsibility, one we must balance with other moral questions to be sure, but in our tradition, peoplehood  and particularly peoplehood in the face of hatred, is an overarching value.  And a moral imperative.

And while there are very legitimate moral arguments to be made about how Israel has conducted the war, or about the treatment of Palestinians under military occupation, these arguments must take place within the context of peoplehood if they are to remain rooted in Jewish ethics and values.   “What about peoplehood?” is what Moses is asking really, and a question we must also ask one another, and ourselves.  

Shabbat Shalom.