Looking out the window I can see the billowing peaks of the mountains that border Boulder Colorado. Absolutely amazing. Bat Ayin and the Boulder Community Shul "Aish Kodesh" are holding the first annual Rocky Mountain Torah Retreat in this fine city. The energy gathered for the event is incredible. Men and women of all ages are here to delve into Judaism, to celebrate the search, to push our limits.
We kicked off the morning with a class on one of this week's parshas, Mattot. In the middle of the parsha, we find the tribes of Reuven and Gad coming forward to request from Moshe an inheritance of land on the east side of the Jordan. This request is not received favorably. "What, you're going to let your brothers go to war to claim the land of Israel as theirs without you? Didn't they fight along side you to win this land outside of Israel that you now want to posses?! You're no better than the spies of the previous generation. And just as their refusal to inhabit Israel led to the death of the generation, your refusal will destroy us all again!" In no uncertain terms, Moshe was reminding Reuven and Gad what their whole journey in the desert these forty years has been leading up to…the inhabiting of Israel. And now they had the chutzpah to jeopardize that mission.
The tribes respond by assuring Moshe that they will fight at the front lines, leading the nation into battle, and only returning to their portion (east of the Jordan) after the rest of the tribes had settled in Israel. Seemingly, this satisfies Moshe. "Fine, do as you say and you may have the portion you desire." What? Moshe had spent his whole life focused on bringing us into the land, and now he was allowing these two tribes to bargain their way out?
To try and answer this question, we looked at four classical commentators, each of whom assert that Moshe wasn't condoning their desire to live outside the land of Israel, rather, the tribes just had a different understanding of the divine command to live in Israel. The Ramban felt Moshe recognized that fear was really behind the tribes' request. Like the spies, they feared living in a land that would require so much of them spiritually, a land where G-d would be hidden in the natural world. The Ohr HaChayim saw a failing in the tribes' commitment to the national struggle. "All land is G-d's land and G-d has the power to let us 'conquer' it or not. Don't tell us we must struggle to conquer the land alongside our brothers, for there is no struggle. G-d provides us with our inheritance through miracles on the battlefield anyway." Akedat Yitzchak comments on the absense of G-d's name in the language of the tribes. They see their future as determined not by G-d, but by their own physical efforts. The Midrash Tanchuma finds a hint to this attitude in the first words of the chapter "makneh rav." Reuven and Gad saw themselves as such formidable shepherds, herdsmen of great strength and wealth, that they couldn't see beyond this self-reliance. This land in Gilead, east of Israel, was the only land that could sustain a flock as huge as theirs. But was their wealth really as great as they saw it. Perhaps they were stuck in the trap of self-perception. When we revel in our own achievements, the Midrash tells us, without looking for how we were helped along the way to that success, we can blow things out of proportion and miss the big picture.
For the Sfat Emet, the root of "makneh" is "kaneh," the same root found in "kinyan," meaning a deep connection -- to the point of possession. The tribes knew Moshe wasn't going into the land, but they also knew that Moshe's intense relationship with G-d made his actions eternal…there would never be another prophet like Moshe. The tribes, therefore, wanted to receive their inheritance directly from Moshe. Joshua would take the reigns from Moshe, but the tribes weren't interested in an Israel inheritance from one who was a mere successor. They'd rather have an inheritance that would last, even if it would be outside of Israel. Or was it.
At the end of the session, Rav Natan took the class in a new direction. What if the other side of Jordan really was a part of Israel. What if Reuven and Gad realized the potential in that place for holiness and knew that it was their job to settle it and incorporate it into the spiritual dynasty of Eretz Yisrael. The Zohar talks about "an awakening from below." We are living in a world where the sparks of holiness are disemminated throughout the world -- Israel itself is divided, and it's very difficult to identify anything as objectively holy. The Tribes were taking the initiative of elevating the sparks of holiness they found in Gilead. Israel was and always will be holy, but does that mean that holiness can't exist elsewhere? When the Torah came down to us on mount Sinai, G-d was telling us that it's up to us to use the Torah's wisdom to find holiness not only in Shabbat and prayer, but in Boulder, Colorado; in Star Wars; on I-95 where someone just cut you off.
Everyday we're presented with the same challenge Reuven and Gad faced. We have a conception of where we need to be right now, and what we can do from there (hopefully) to infuse the world with a bit more holiness. All we know is our subjective experience, but as we "awaken" these sparks and stake a claim to the new worlds of holiness that are born, we are following in the footsteps of those tribes -- redefining our borders, and redefining the limits of our potential.