From: Netvort@aol.com
Sent: Friday, July 29, 2005 2:59 AM
To: JoshHoff@aol.com
Subject: Netvort : parshas Mattos, 5765






                  
                  Some People are so Open - Minded that their Brains Fall Out

                     By Rabbi Joshua (openly known as The Hoffer) Hoffman


 Rav Zevi Yehudah Kook, zt"l, late Rosh Yeshivah of Mercaz Horav in Jerusalem, was wont to tell the story of an encounter he had, as a young man, with the Hebrew and Yiddish writer Micha Josef Berdichevsky. Although Berdichevsky was born into a rabbinic family and spent a year studying in the Volozhin yeshiva, he was a well- known heretic and his writings were, unfortunately, very influential among Jewish youth at the time. Rav Zevi Yehudah and Berdichesky happened to be traveling on a ship somewhere in Europe, and Berdichevski approached Rav Zevi Yehudah, wishing to talk with him about his father, Rav Avrohom Yitzchok Kook,zt"l,  and his philosophy. Not wishing to deal with Berdichevsky, Rav Zevi Yehudah was very laconic in his replies to him. When Berdichevsky said that he heard that Rav Kook was a very interesting person ,and that he tried to superimpose holiness onto the mundane, Rav Zevi Yehudah replied, " Yes, but not onto tumah (impurity). "

 This story came to mind when I read  an article in the current issue of The Jerusalem Report (August 8, 2005). The article concerns a religiously observant man in Jerusalem who has a picture-frame business, and has the curious practice of finding meaning in the pictures he is framing by applying the technique of gematria, or the calculation of the numerical value assigned to the various letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The author of the article writes that the particular work of art he had framed by this man was a portrait of a temple that was dedicated to a pagan goddess of ancient Egypt. The circumference of the frame in centimeters, it turned out, had a gematria equal to that reached when the sumtotal of the author’s two Hebrew names was subtracted from the combined number of sentences in the parshiyos of Bamidbar and Naso. Therefore, said the store-owner, whenever he looked at the painting, he should keep that fact in mind, so that he could thereby draw spiritual inspiration from it! This desperate effort of the well-meaning store-owner to give some meaning to a painting which he was not happy with, when seen with the story of Rav Zevi Yehudah in the background, can help us understand an episode in this week’s parsha.


 The Torah tells us that, after the war with Midian, some members of the tribes of Gad and Reuven approached Moshe and asked that they be permitted to settle on the eastern bank of the Yardein (Jordan), which had a great deal of grazing land that could accomodate their abundant cattle. Moshe replied, " Shall your brothers go out to battle while you settle here?…" (Bamidbar 32:6). The petitioners assured Moshe that they would, indeed, join their brothers in battle for Eretz Yisroel. Before going to battle, they would build enclosures for their cattle and cities for their children on the eastern side of the Yardein. Moshe told them that if they would, indeed, do what they said, then they could settle on the eastern side. The rabbis, as cited by Rashi, noted that when they originally told Moshe the obligations they would take upon themselves, they mentioned their cattle before their children. Moshe told them that their children are more important than their cattle, and they should mention them first, and, when they accepted their obligations, they did, indeed, mention their children before their cattle. While most commentators understand the ordering  original phrasing of the proposal by the tribes as a mere slip of the tongue that indicated a certain psychological mind-set, Rabbi Yosef Salant, in his Be’er Yosef, writes that, initially, the two tribes did, indeed, plan to put more effort into building enclosures for their cattle than they would spend in providing dweling places for their families.

 Rabbi Salant explains that according to the rabbis, Sichon and Og went out to battle the Israelies, leaving their land empty, with their cities and their houses intact. When they were defeated in battle and lost their cities, the victors simply walked into the cities and found before them all the houses they would need. Therefore, the tribes of Reuven and Gad felt that they would only have to put in an effort to provide enclosures for their cattle. Any adjustments that would be needed in the cities and houses left by the previous inhabitants would be minimal. Moshe, however, argued that this could not be. There is a fundamental difference between the lifestyle of idol worshippers and the cities and houses they build, and the life style of the Jewish people, whose lives are guided by the Torah and constantly informed by their relationship with God. A people guided by the Torah could not dwell in the same houses that had previously housed objects of idolatry that were worshipped by the families that dwelled in them. Therefore, the tribes did, indeed, need to place their primary efforts in building cities and  homes for their families that would conform with the lifestyle they were to follow. The tribes accepted this criticism of Moshe, and accepted this task upon themselves.


 Based on Rabbi Salant’s explanation, we can understand why Moshe then added half of the tribe of Menashe to those who would settle on the eastern bank of the Yardein. The Ramban says that when Moshe saw that the land there was larger than what was needed to accommodate the tribes of Reuven and Gad, he asked if any others would like to settle there, and Menashe volunteered. However, other commentators say that it was specifically the tribe of Menashe that Moshe wanted to join the other two tribes. The Netziv, for example, writes in his commentary Ha’amek Davar to Devorim, 3:16 that Moshe asked  the tribe of Menashe, which included many Torah scholars, to serve as a kind of spiritual guardian over the other two tribes. The famed Rabbi Gavriel Zev Margolis, spiritual leader of the Adas Yisroel shul on New York’s Lower East Side from 1911-1935, and known popularly as ‘R. Velvele,’ mentions, in his Toras Gavriel, a midrash that relates the presence of half the tribe of Menashe on the eastern side of the Yardein, and the other half on the western side, to the conflict between Yosef and his brothers that Menashe helped to intensify. Rav Velvele adds that it is for this reason that, when the Torah mentions the half tribe of Menashe in our parsha, it is traced back to Yosef. Based on Rabbi Salant’s understanding of the mistake of the tribes of Reuven and Gad, I would like to suggest a different explanation for tracing Menashe back to Yosef in this context.

 The Midrash Rabbah to parshas Vayigash records that the wagons provided by Pharaoh to transfer Ya’akov and his household from the land of Cana’an to Egypt had images of idols carved into them. Yehudah therefore burned these wagons, and Yosef sent out other ones on his own. This is why the Torah records that Ya’akov saw the wagons that Yosef sent, rather than the wagons that Pharaoh sent. The commentary Moshav Zekeinim mentions another midrash which says that Ya’akov saw the name of Yosef carved onto the wagos, and that is why he believed that Yosef was, indeed, alive. My teacher, Rav Aharon Soloveichik, zt"l,  understood this to mean that Yosef himself removed the images of the idols that were carved into the wagons, and replaced them with his own name, signifying his official imprimatur. Thus, Yoseif understood that the same wagons used by Pharaoh in Egypt could not be used by his family in moving there. All traces of idolatry had to be removed from them before his family could use them. This action of Yosef reflected the stance he took during his entire sojourn in Egypt, resisting the influences of Egyptian culture while serving in Pharaoh’s court. Menashe, who served as Yosef’s interpreter, learned this approach from his father, and transmitted it to his family. Therefore, it was specifically the tribe of Menashe that would be able to guide Reuven and Gad in removing the traces of idolatry left in the cities vacated by Sichon and Og when they went out to battle the Jewish nation.

 At the end of parshas Mattos,  when the Torah records that Reuven and Gad built cities in the land they were given, we read, " the children of Reuven built …Nevo and Baal-Meon with altered names" (Bamidbar 32:37-38). Rashi explains that Nevo and Baal-Meon were names of pagan deities, and the Amorites would call their cities by the names of these deities. Therefore, when the children of Reuven built their cities there, they altered the names, to remove any trace of the idolatry that had been practiced there. In light of our explanation of the role of Menashe on the eastern bank of the Yardein, we can perhaps speculate that it was their influence which led the children of Reuven to make these changes, so that the cities they built would be fit for inhabitancy by people whose lives were to be guided by the Torah.  



 Please address all correspondence to the author (Rabbi Hoffman) with the following address - JoshHoff @ AOL.com.

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