Mattot – Maasei

Mattot-Maasei - Yossi Chajes 

Yossi Chajes is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Jewish History of the University of Haifa. He is currently writing a book on the "Magic Taboo" in Jewish culture as well as a book on cosmological cartography in early modern Judaism. He is looking forward to leading davening & teaching sessions at a Carlebach minyan & Moishe House, in London, later this summer.

The end of the Book of Numbers brings us to the portion Massei, or "Journeys." In it, we read something of an abridged travelogue of forty years of wanderings in the Sinai. What may we find in these desert dunes and oases today?

In 33:9 we read: "And they removed from Mara [a place name, but meaning "bitter"], and came to Elim; and in Elim were twelve fountains of water, and seventy palm tress; and they pitched there." Just another transition, yes... but the juxtaposition of bitter and sweet waters has long captivated the imaginations of our holy teachers. If all the journeys adumbrated in our portion have been taken as symbolic stations of our present journeys through life, through Torah, here our masters have found a moment of special poignancy and, I might add, urgency.

R. Israel Ba'al Shem, the Ba'al Shem Tov, taught that when one saw a Jew steeped in Torah who was nevertheless behaving as something less than a mentsch, one could infer that this fellow had certainly drunk from the "bitter waters." The Ba'al Shem Tov's grandson, R. Moshe Chaim Ephraim of Sudilkov, explained further that "our Torah has both sweet waters and bitter waters", and cited as obvious proof that from time immemorial, saints and sinners alike have managed to reach the highest highs of divine service as well as the lowest lows of human degradation with a chapter and verse in hand. 

That a belief or behavior can be shown to be based on solid sources is no guarantee of its goodness. 

Our portion tellingly concludes with a reminder of new legislation revealed thanks to the daughters of Zelophehad. The latter had argued that the laws of inheritance were unfair (see Numbers 37) - not their interpretation, but the very words God had spoken to Moses. Their sense of fairness was so strong that they courageously appealed to Moses, who then took their appeal to God. God agreed with the young women. His Torah really had been unfair, and it had taken moral conviction and tremendous courage to stand up and say so to Moses.

It turns out, then, that to be a good Jew, the Torah isn't enough. You need a good internal compass. You need to know in your heart what is right and what is wrong. You cannot assume that anyone or anything (rabbi/ideology/handbook, etc.) out there will be that compass for you, for as we have seen, even the Torah itself can be wrong - and God knows it. 

God even seems happy to stand corrected. Perhaps He's even waiting to stand corrected? I would like to suggest that the true test of one's core commitment to God and Torah is to be found precisely at moments when our inner compass tells us that the Torah couldn't possibly want us to believe such-and-such a thing or act in such-a-such a manner - even when black and white words indicate otherwise. Put positively, it is our responsibility alone to make certain our Torah, the Torah of our lives, is a sweet-water Torah. 

Our inner compass is our only divining rod for the sweet waters of the Torah. Making it our guide is the true work of our journey.