The quest for authenticity is one of the enduring challenges of living as social beings within a community. We are constantly judging one another and being evaluated by one another and noticing the actions and character traits of one another. How do we cultivate an inner spiritual life when we know that our outer actions are being scrutinized by our friends and neighbors? This dynamic is particularly fraught for people like us who live within a religious community. If I participate in tefilah here in our shul, I can cultivate my relationship with God…but I also impress the rest of you with my piety. If I host a Shabbat meal, I cultivate the attributes of kindness and generosity within myself and refine my character…and I collect the gratitude of my guests. How is genuine religious life possible among those who observe mitzvot within a community that values mitzvot?
This question animated many of the spiritual giants of the Jewish people, especially in the Polish Hassidic tradition and the Lithuanian schools of Mussar – or character education. The Lithuanian Mussar schools tried to train their students to scorn and pay no heed to the opinions that other people have about us. The Hassidic masters, taught us to avoid judging and evaluating other people.
If you see someone else committing a sin,” the Hassidic masters taught, “and the sight of that other person’s misdeed makes you angry, or judgmental, or leads you to condemn them, it is no accident. Rather, providence has guided you to witness that particular sin so that you should scrutinize your own devotion to that very same mitzvah. The violation that you see and that irritates you might be extreme, and your own failings in that same mitzvah might be more modest, but the aggravation or indignation that is aroused within us when we judge someone else, should be transformed into self-scrutiny and our own insufficient devotion to that mitzvah.
Our relationships with our children are sometimes another way to obtain a glimpse of our own authentic selves. The religious and ethical and behavioral messages that we choose to emphasize with our children, and the messages we chose not to share with our children, can reveal our own priorities.
I have a friend whose parents allowed him to paint his bedroom. In many different colors. When he was in high school. His mother reasoned that she expected her children to observe Shabbat and kashrut. She had expectations that her children study Torah and attend shul with regularity. She didn’t feel any need to impose further arbitrary rules on her children like “don’t invite your friends to come over and paint your bedroom.”
I recently returned from a three week trip to Israel. This was the first time I had been in Israel with my family in 11 years and the first time that our younger children had ever been there (and Noam has no memories of living in Israel as a toddler). After spending just a few hours in Jerusalem with our children, I realized that I was making choices with the motivation of creating experiences for our children so that they would come to love Israel. Like buying them lots of candy. At least two out of the five told us that they want our family to move there and when they made that request, I felt pride and the satisfaction that comes from knowing that I had been successful in the task of inculcating that love to my children.
I don’t think that I would have articulated that goal before we left for Israel, but day-by-day it beecame clear to me that I was making choices with that goal in mind. And, in retrospect, I learned something about myself.
The relationship of one generation to another, and both generation’s connection to Eretz Yisrael is one of the themes of the Torah reading this morning.
After a census of the tribes, remember this is the book of “Numbers” Moshe is instructed regarding pertinent details of the division of Eretz Yisrael among the tribes:
לָאֵ֗לֶּה תֵּחָלֵ֥ק הָאָ֛רֶץ בְּנַחֲלָ֖ה בְּמִסְפַּ֥ר שֵׁמֽוֹת׃ לָרַ֗ב תַּרְבֶּה֙ נַחֲלָת֔וֹ וְלַמְעַ֕ט תַּמְעִ֖יט נַחֲלָת֑וֹ אִ֚ישׁ לְפִ֣י פְקֻדָ֔יו יֻתַּ֖ן נַחֲלָתֽוֹ׃ אַךְ־בְּגוֹרָ֕ל יֵחָלֵ֖ק אֶת־הָאָ֑רֶץ לִשְׁמ֥וֹת מַטּוֹת־אֲבֹתָ֖ם יִנְחָֽלוּ׃
“Among these shall the land be apportioned as shares, according to the listed names: with larger groups increase the share, with smaller groups reduce the share. Each is to be assigned its share according to its enrollment. The land, moreover, is to be apportioned by lot; and the allotment shall be made according to the listings of their ancestral tribes.”
There is a dispute about the relevant moment at which the shares were apportioned. Were the tribal allotments equal and land divided within tribe based on the size of each patriarchal clan? Or were the tribal allotments themselves different in size depending on the population of the tribe? And, was the relevant census the number of adults at the time of the exodus, or the number of adults at the time of the entry to Eretz Yisrael.
Rashi, explains that the phrase אַךְ־בְּגוֹרָ֕ל יֵחָלֵ֖ק אֶת־הָאָ֑רֶץ לִשְׁמ֥וֹת מַטּוֹת־אֲבֹתָ֖ם יִנְחָֽלוּ “the allotment shall be made according to the listings of their ancestral tribes” is a significant and unusual mechanism by which the land was aportioned:
שִׁנָּה הַכָּתוּב נַחֲלָה זוֹ מִכָּל הַנְּחָלוֹת שֶׁבַּתּוֹרָה, שֶׁכָּל הַנְּחָלוֹת הַחַיִּים יוֹרְשִׁים אֶת הַמֵּתִים וְכָאן מֵתִים יוֹרְשִׁים אֶת הַחַיִּים
The land is inherited in a different way than any other division of property. Normally, those who are alive inherit from those who are deceased, whereas here, those who are deceased inherit from those who are alive. How does this work: If there were two brothers who left Egypt and between them there were four sons in the generation that entered Eretz Yisrael, one brother with three sons and the other brother with one son, each of the four sons then takes one portion of land. That land is then retroactively given to the father of thsoe two brothers, the grandparents of the four cousins, and the two brothers then divide those four portions equally between the two of them. The only son of one brother would claim two portions, and his three cousins would share two portions between them.
This is a very complicated way to allocate a country’s farming land. What can it teach us? Notice how the Torah insists that the land should be apportioned to adults. Those who were younger than twenty at the time of the exodus were not included in the division of land. But only those younger than twenty at the time of the exodus lived to enter Eretz Yisrael and the portions that were divided among the adults was shaped by their children. It is the presence and participation of the adults at the time of the exodus that determined the future place of their children within the Jewish people and literally and concretely earned them a place to live in Eretz Yisrael. But the existence of those children among those standing ready to enter Eretz Yisrael defined how their parents’ generation would itself relate to the land.
The choices that adults make, do not only set the course for their children’s lives, they define core aspects of the lives of adults ourselves.
וְכָאן מֵתִים יוֹרְשִׁים אֶת הַחַיִּים the generation that passes is defined by its relationship to the generation that follows.
This dynamic is powerfully displayed just a few verses later when the daughters of Tzelofhad bring their case before Moshe. Their father had no sons. Jewish inheritance law had not yet clarified that daughters inherit in the absence of sons and it was their questioning Moshe that clarified that law. They become heroines of the Jewish people, their names recorded in the Torah for all time, because of their advocacy on behalf of their children. They are praised and their love of Eretz Yisrael is demonstrated by their desire to create a connection between their unborn children and their dead father.
וְכָאן מֵתִים יוֹרְשִׁים אֶת הַחַיִּים the generation that passes is defined by its relationship to the generation that follows.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 