Menachem Mirski
Thoughts on Parashat Matot-Masei
“United we stand, divided we fall” is a phrase used in many different kinds of mottos, most often to inspire unity and collaboration. Its core concept lies in the collectivist notion that if individual members of a certain group with binding ideals.
It’s a collectivist phrase that represents, I believe, the absolute minimum of collectivism in society that is necessary to be in place in order for a society to survive. Every society in order to survive needs to have a common story every individual can get behind. It is particularly important in case of extremely individualistic, atomized – as some say – and at the same time divided into identity groups, western societies. We can and should be diverse, we need to respect individual freedoms because it is the cornerstone of our Western civilization on which our success was built. But we need a common story, a common system of values, everyone will accept. Without a common, uniting narrative the in-fighting in our societies will never stop.
Our Torah portion talks about this unity indirectly but in many different ways. Our parasha first talks about nedarim and sh’vuot – vows and oaths:
If a householder makes a vow to יהוה or takes an oath imposing an obligation on himself, he shall not break his pledge; he must carry out all that has crossed his lips.
(Numbers 30:3)
Keeping vows and oaths is necessary to maintain peace on a very fundamental level. Peace is a core element of unity – a necessary condition for unity. Breaking vows leads immediately to conflict. Even on an extremely individual level i.e. when I break a promise I made to myself, I feel uncomfortable, to say the least. My internal peace is ruined. The same refers to the level of human-human interaction, between two people or between families – it inevitably leads to conflict and destroys, at least temporality, peace and relationships between people.
Then the Torah talks about a division of the spoils (Numbers 31), and a proper, just division of Promised Land (Num 32-34). This is also about peace, peace between tribes of Israel. At the end of our parasha, which is at the same time the end of the Book of Numbers, the Torah talks about the cities of refugee, i.e. six walled cities in which people who, to use modern language, committed involuntary manslaughter, could find a shelter that would keep them safe from the revenge from goel ha’dam – avenger of blood – a killer hired by the family of a victim to “settle accounts”. All this was aimed at preventing the escalation of violence and thus we are returning to the idea of maintaining peace at a more local level – between families.
And here I’m getting to my main point: in order to maintain peace between people we need to strive for this peace on all these levels, starting from individual relationships with each other, through keeping our families and communities together, and ending at the social/national level. Infatuation with the idea of universal world peace, between all peoples in the world without having enduring peace on these more fundamental levels is ludicrous. We are doing pretty well on a daily, superficial level of interaction between people – with people we interact casually at a store, gas or charging station, public office etc. Maybe that’s why our human world is not falling apart before our very eyes, because the level of malice, contempt and hate between individuals and groups in our societies on a deeper, emotional and ideological level, is enormous. So before we can dream of universal peace, we must first repair our human societies at all these lower, fundamental levels. However, I deeply believe that we can do it.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Mirski
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