Audio Shiur:Parshat Matot-Masei: Individual Wants vs. Communal Needs
The requests of the tribes of Reuven and Gad to remain on the East Bank of the Jordan River elicits a powerful and negative reaction from Moshe. We discuss the problems related to their request, which leads us into communal and personal issues, shtiebelization, Israel politics, and even the challenge of Aliyah.
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If I can throw in my few cents on your shiur (which I listened to)
ReplyDeleteWe say 'shevet achim gam yachad' - reflecting that the composition of the Jewish people was diverse and that the tribes were different but nonetheless united - there was never only one tribe and it was also never a condition that for Reuven, Gad and chatzi Menashe to stay on the other side of the Yarden that they had to unite into a single entity.
We also see in many places the idea that the individual is of intrinsic importance is manifested in Jewish law in a multitude of areas. For example, an innocent person's life may never be sacrificed to save someone else or even a group of people. Why should anything less apply to people's spiritual lives?
Incidentally the Tnai in the parsha is not a good example to apply to community situations because what the tribes wanted to do was to give up a spiritual reward in exchange for material gain - many people leave a larger community and are prepared to make material sacrifices for the spiritual gain which is the complete opposite.
Even in this situation though if we look at the parsha rather than BGBR being told what to do - join us in Eretz Yisroel or get out- they are engaged and a solution is found that lets them do what they want while working within the wider framework of the Bnei Yisroel.
This is the model of what real leadership is all about.
Successful communities have always had a tradition of respect for the diversity and differences in other parts of the community and, apropos for this time of year, what else is sinat chinam than the ultimate expression of intolerance for others?
If you have the time I would really recommend watching this lecture http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lhl/streamed/lhlpub2/02_091008 which looks at different models of tolerance between people of different faiths and how they managed to coexist (or not).
Allow me to end with a slightly long quote from the English philosopher John Mill which illustrates the flaw of large communities operating in a democratic way.
Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs as protection against political despotism.
Mill was referring to a society that attempts to rob individuals of their individuality. What I talked about was something very different. I think that individuals need to remain part of the larger whole precisely because they have something important to contribute, which they cannot do when they go off and separate from the larger group.
ReplyDeleteAnd as I said in the shiur, it's hard to argue that the solution that they found turned out to be a good one. In the end, I believe that everyone suffered because of the selfishness of the Benei Gad and Benei Reuven.
Sounds like utilitarianism to me- the greatest good for the greatest number - and that indivduals should suffer for the greater good.
ReplyDeleteI think many would disagree that this is what is required in Jewish thought.