Wisdom of the Torah transcends Time and Provides New Insights

By BEN ADLER

Parashat Pinchas (Numbers 25:10-29:39)

Torah is life. It courses with an elusive energy that can sustain the reader, but it is also fed by the reader who brings a wealth of personal experience and insight to the text. The Torah is a powerful piece of literature but it becomes something more when it is read in light of our struggles, victories, hopes, and dreams. Reading Torah is a two-way street. It is an ever-flowing spring, constantly providing insights and inspiration for our lives, but also revealing more of its wisdom the more knowledge and experience we bring to it.

One of the benefits of reading Torah through the lens of social justice is that we not only find texts that support and strengthen the connection between Judaism and ethics, we also discover new ways of understanding these very old words. An example is found in this week's parashah, Pinchas. In Numbers 26:52-56, we find the procedure for how the land is to be divided up among the tribes when they enter the Land of Israel. But the passage contains a contradiction, long noted by commentators. The text first tells us that the land will be apportioned according to population; that is, a tribe with more people will get more land while a tribe with fewer people will get less land. Then the text goes on to inform us that the territory will be divided by lot, meaning each tribe will be given a random section of land, regardless of whether it is appropriate for the number of people in the tribe. These two methods are contradictory. If one allocates the land randomly, without reference to any of the characteristics of the tribe, how can one give more land to a larger tribe and less to a smaller one? And if the apportionment is done based on population size, what need is there for a lottery? Various medieval commentators have offered suggestions, but the best resolution to this problem is the one provided by the modern scholar Jacob Milgrom, who bases his interpretation on Abravanel, the 15th century Spanish commentator¹. The lottery is used to determine the geographic location of each tribe within the Land of Israel while the distribution based on population is used to decide how much land each tribe should get. Each tribe should get enough land to sustain its population, but no tribe should be able to use its size to acquire a preferential location.

The Torah is a product of an agrarian society, and the text reflects these origins. The story of the entrance of the Israelites into the Land of Israel is a utopian tale. The people have a fresh start in their new land and the Torah sets out to create a society based on fairness and equity. No tribe should be forced to dwell on a territory that cannot sustain its people, but at the same time no tribe should be allowed to seize a prized area because of its strength in numbers. This is not the only instance in which the Torah dictates a set of rules meant to ensure an equitable and sustainable agricultural society. The best example is the laws of shemitah, the sabbatical year, when the land must lie fallow and debts must be released. These examples of biblical social justice seem distant to those of us who live an urban or suburban lifestyle, but they are highly relevant to the rural poor who live in the Global South today. Land and land reform are vital issues for subsistence farmers all over the world. The Torah's utopian land distribution instructions resonate with modern-day small farmers who struggle against the kind of entrenched power that the Torah sought to avoid. Unlike today, when wealthy corporations and families are able to seize control of most of the money, land, and power, the Torah instituted legislation meant to create an egalitarian society where a group, class, or individual could not dominate.

Parashat Pinchas provokes us to think about how land is distributed in our world. It is noteworthy how the text uses the present and the past to determine the best course for the future. "Each [tribe] is to be assigned its share according to its enrollment," (Num. 26:54) that is according to the census that was just completed. But at the same time "the allotment shall be made according to the listings of their ancestral tribes" (Num. 26:55) which came into being generations before. In order to move forward, the nation must assess the present realities while taking note of cherished traditions. A society that is enslaved to the past cannot grow, but one that concerns itself only with immediate problems has no foundation. We must certainly listen to those who live on the land, understand their history and their customs, but we must also face the realities of a constantly changing world. The great challenge, raised by the Bible millennia ago, is to find a path that integrates both the past and the present in a vision of the world perfected.

While the Torah can teach us much about how to approach life, sometimes the stories of the people we meet can spark profound insight into the ancient text. These individual and communal narratives deepen Torah by making it personal. In January 2006 I participated in the AJWS Rabbinical School Delegation to El Salvador. Most of our time was spent in the town of Ciudad Romero, a community with a narrative that resonates with the story of the exodus from Egypt and the entering of the Land of Israel. Most members of the community were forced to flee their town during the bloody civil war in El Salvador in the 1980's. They literally lived in the wilderness in Panama for years until they were able to return to their country. While they were not able to go back to the part of El Salvador from which they came, they were allowed to settle in Ciudad Romero as a part of the land reform that was central to the peace accords ending the civil war. Today, using sustainable agriculture, they live on land that can support them. Unlike in the past, when a small number of families controlled the land in the area and the peasants were farm hands and tenant farmers with no independence, the villagers are able to grow crops to feed their families. While they are not a tribe and were not given the land of their ancestors, they were nonetheless able to settle as a group in one area. Their sense of community and solidarity has sustained them through difficult times, has made them strong, and has helped them to succeed. The community is an example of how modern land reform can work and how the wisdom of the Torah can transcend time and distance.

 

¹ Jacob Milgrom, Numbers: The Traditional Hebrew Text with New JPS Translation (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1989) 480-482.

Reprinted with permission from American Jewish World Service.