WARNING: THIS DVAR TORAH IS NOT POLITCALLY CORRECT BY 21ST CENTURY STANDARDS
The Book of Numbers, Sefer Bamidbar, concludes just as Bnei Yisrael are ready to enter the Promised Land. All that remains is Moshe’s final speech, which is Sefer Devarim, the Book of Deuteronomy. In the last parshiot of Bamidbar, Matos-Masai, which are usually read together, we learn some interesting lessons on the importance of societal strength over personal happiness in the realm of family values.
One of the more well-known and “fun” to discuss portions of the parsha is the section pertaining to the tribes of Reuven and Gad. These two tribes see the lovely pasture-land where they are encamped and decided that they wish to remain there. When they ask Moshe for permission to do so, he rebukes them for stating: “Pens for the flock shall we build here for our livestock and cities for our small children” (Bamidbar 32:17). Their values are mixed up, he tells them. They understand then that their responsibility is to build cities for their small children and then pens for their livestock. But this passage does not just help them realize that their families come before their material security. In specifying that the men of Gad and Reuven must first build cities and pens and then leave to go and fight for the Promised Land, Moshe is subtly reinforcing the idea that as comfortable as a man’s home may be, he cannot enjoy the comforts of home until he has ensured its security and protection (which in this case means assisting in the conquest of Eretz Yisrael so that all of the people could build for their families).
To the 21st century ear, this sounds old fashioned. We do not think of the world as dangerous in the ways it once was. And women can, and do, go out into the world to support and protect themselves and their homes. Indeed, there is much that is in the parshios of Matos-Masai that would raise an eyebrow of any feminist – and perhaps of most women raised in modern society. In fact, the parshios are bookended by such subjects! Parshas Matos begins with the laws of vows and focuses heavily on the circumstances under which a woman’s vow is upheld or invalidated by her father or husband. And Parshas Masai concludes with the men of Menashe seeming to want to undo Hashem’s ruling that Tzelaphchad’s daughters – who had no brother – could inherit their father’s land. A complaint to which Moshe brings Hashem’s response that the five sisters, and any future women in a similar situation, can only marry men from within their tribe.
Shalom – peace – is a primary goal of halacha. Shalom comes from shelaimus, completion, and the societal dynamics set out by the Torah are meant to guide Bnei Yisrael into creating an ideal, Torah society. This is not about individual wants and needs, it is about the weave of the fabric of a strong, sustainable society.
Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsh wrote the following at the
conclusion of the opening section of Matos:
…the general declaration of the gravity and binding force
of the spoken word is only mentioned here as introduction and indeed as a
contrast. A man has no power whatsoever to annul his own vows, for that he has
to go to his national contemporaries, but towards his young daughter and his
wife he has restricted authority to intervene… The calling of woman is, to be
absorbed into the home of a man as the most important factor of the component parts
of that home. But it is not her calling to found a home independently….
To this should be added his comments on 30:4 (earlier in the
section on a woman’s vows):
The moral greatness of the woman’s calling in life itself demands entering and adopting herself to a position in life created by another. The woman herself does not provide the house. She enters the home provided by the man and rules in it as the happiness-bringing administrator of all that is to be found there, in the sanctity of manners, and morals and feeling directed towards God. Still more than the man has the woman to guard against making restrictions, abnormal arrangements in the course of her life, they could permanently stand in the way of the fulfilment of her calling…
The power of a father or husband to annul a vow is not about the individual. A woman can make a vow, but that vow cannot go against the current or future possibility of creating a peaceful home by creating a conflict with her husband (or future husband). And we know that a woman can make a vow because it is clearly stated that a vow made by a widow or a divorcee is binding.
Understanding of the distinction between individual need and societal need is also important to understand the ruling at the end of Masai that states: “And every daughter that has an inheritance from the tribes of Bnei Yisrael shall marry one of the tribe of her father” (36:8). To maintain the larger society, property had to stay in its rightful portion, to its proper tribe. One must look at it from that point of view rather than a modern, feminist point of view as the suppression of women’s independence. If that had been the goal, then God’s immediate response through Moshe would not have been: “They may marry anyone they wish. But they shall marry into a clan of their father’s tribe.” The first statement is a woman’s right to make her own decisions, a very important point of Jewish law.
Twenty-first century society places a great deal of emphasis
on making oneself happy. The Torah ideal, however, is to use one’s
position in the world to find fulfillment and build toward shalom, then one can be happy. Yes, there
are limitations, but those limitations – those rules and roles – are meant to
help the larger society attain the ultimate goal of a society dedicated to
Hashem.
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