Dvar Torah on Parshat Masei

Well, the fighting here goes on. Every fifteen minutes or so there is something new online, on TV or radio, which moves, angers, saddens, frustrates, or scares us all, as well as so much which makes us very proud. This week's parsha, Masei, which is all about entering, fighting for, and settling the Land of Israel, certainly connects pretty seamlessly with our situation. If I had a dollar for every Rabbi who will, this Shabbat in shul, quote the following verses from the parsha, "if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those whom you allow to remain will be thorns in your eyes and barbs in your sides, and will attack you in the land in which you dwell", it would probably make quite a tidy little sum. I will not be calling on us to drive anybody out of anywhere (well, actually some: the guys shooting the missiles at us, along with their commanders; the guys with the RPGs; the guys in the tunnels with the guns, maps, Israeli army uniforms and handcuffs; and the guys forcing the civilians in Gaza to stay put, but that's about it), as the Torah is talking here about our re-entry into Israel over 3,000 years ago, while our geo-political situation today is different, and calls for different solutions. I will try to see what we may be able to learn from the parsha's discussion of fighting for, settling, and living in the Land of Israel.

The section about driving everybody out which I just quoted (Bamidbar, 33;55), is preceded by a series of very difficult verses: the list of all the encampments we stopped at during our 40-year journey from Egypt to Israel. Aside from a very short preface, which tells us that Moshe wrote down, as God commanded him to, all of the details of our travels, and a quick recap of our last hours in Egypt, what we have is a somewhat mind-numbing list, that goes like this: "And the people of Israel left Ramses and camped in Sukkot. And they left Sukkot and camped in Etam, on the edge of the desert. And they left Etam and went back to Pi Hahirot..., etc., etc., etc". The "And they left_____and they camped at_____" goes on for some forty-four verses, interspersed with a few brief highlights, such as a hint at the splitting of the Red Sea, some description of local flora, and the death of Aharon. It ends at the edge of the Land of Israel, on the Jordan River. Only then, after this long list of place names, does God begin to instruct the Israelites on what is about to come: the fight for the land, its borders, its division into tribal areas, and some laws pertaining to that division.

Why does the Torah bother with this long list of place names? What are we meant to learn from this litany of locations between Egypt and Israel? Rashi asks the question, and gives us some answers. First, he says that the list is there to tell us about God's kindness. Condemned, because of the sin of the spies, to wander a total of forty years in the desert, the Jews might have been forced to be continually on the move, never really resting or settling anywhere. This list, with its 42 encampments, when looked at carefully, and after doing a bit of math, which Rashi does for us, indicates that that was not the case, and that during the 38 year period after the sin of the spies, the Jews actually had to move only ten times, a relatively easy journey, a kindness from a merciful God. 

Rashi then adds a beautiful explanation from the Midrash Tanchuma, which says that this list is similar to what people do after a vacation, or an eventful trip - it is a reminiscence. God, by having Moshe record all the stops made along the way, is saying to the Jewish people, "we've taken a long journey together, a journey that was neccessary to really get you out of Egypt, to make you better, cure you of your slave mentality, and make you the people you had to become. Do you remember what happened here? And what you experienced there? What we did in this place?"  It's like a travelogue, an expression of the love God feels for His people, and an appreciation of where they've ended up at the end of a long, dynamic, transformational  journey. 

My good friend David Shapiro recently shared another lovely explanation of this long list: Those of us who have not yet made it to Israel, and are still stuck in the Diaspora, can look at this very long recitation of the stops our forefathers and mothers took along the way to the Promised Land, and realize that the journey may be long, and have many twists and turns, but the Jewish people got there in the end, and so can we.  What we feel when we read this section - boy, this is a long, seemingly pointless  list - is meant to mirror the experience of exile, as we try to get back to Israel, and holds out the hope and promise that, in spite of the long, daunting journey,  we will. 

In the spirit of these explanations, and very much connected to what is going on in Israel right now, and in an attempt to connect this list with the rather robust military instructions that immediately follow it, I'd like to suggest another way to understand this. The Israelites are about to engage in the momentous act of reclaiming the Land originally promised to, and lived in by, their forefathers, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. The entire Torah has been leading up to this. To help them do it, to make sure they get it right, this list of their travels from Egypt must come first, because the Israelites need to remember their past, they need to know who they are and what they have been through, if they are to move forward.  Moshe is told by God to again briefly record the exodus, and the journey from Egypt to Israel - to write, and teach,  Jewish history - as part of the planning and preparation neccessary to fight for our land.  A nation that doesn't know its past, has no idea of  what it has gone through to get to where it is, no idea as to why it is where it is, is unequipped to move ahead, not really ready to take its next step forward in history.

The Arab world  and its supporters, in their fight against Israel, are not just being silly when they deny the most basic facts of Jewish history; the existence of the Temples, centuries of Jewish sovereignity and autonomy, our ongoing presence in, and connection to, the Land, and the horrors and oppression of exile. They are, in fact, being very clever. They want to rob us of crucial knowledge, the knowledge which God told Moshe to reinforce for the Israelites as they were about to enter and fight for their land. They are trying to take from us the understanding of who we are, where we have been, and what we have gone through. Those who buy into the nonsense of  "Zionist colonialism and occupation" are forgetting the lesson of this list; that the facts of our history, the facts of our Jewish journey, are the most basic ammunition we need when fighting those who would deny the truth of who we are, where we have been, and where we belong. 

Shabbat Shalom, and please ask your shuls to say some prayers for the men and women fighting for the truth of Jewish history,

Rabbi Shimon Felix