Here is a D'var Torah for Parashiyot Mattot-Masei, the end of the book of B'midbar (Numbers), specifically chapter 32.
The best two-word opening to a story probably in the whole Bible is cattle — lotsa! ומקנה רב umikneh rav. To me it’s right up there with “In the beginning” and “God tested Avraham.” The first word is cattle — probably we should say herds so you’re not only thinking cows — and the Masoretes who standardized the chanting and punctuation put a pause after herds ומקנה umikneh, and slowed down the word lotsa, רב rav. These words come before we even hear who the people are in this particular story, perhaps to emphasize something about those people, the tribes of Gad and Reuven, joined by some or all of Menashe. Which is that their self-definition has a lot to do with their herds. The Hebrew word for herds, מקנה mikneh, comes from the root kanah which means to acquire or possess, and we might want to hypothesize that these are the extreme materialists among the Israelites.
They come before Moshe and Elazar, Moshe’s nephew the current Kohen Gadol, the high priest, and they say: This place where we are right now, across the Jordan River from the land we are going into, is great for our herds, and we would like to have our tribes live here and not over there on the Israel side.
At this Moshe seems to go kind of ballistic. He says that he cannot believe what they are asking. How could you not take part in what we’ve been waiting for, and not fight with your fellow citizens. It’s the end of 40 years of wandering, and the whole reason they have been wandering for 40 years is because the people followed the words of the ten scouts who advised them that they should not be going into the land — and now we’re almost there and you want to replay this again? How could you once again set an example that the rest of the people will want to follow? You don’t think maybe God won’t add even more years of wandering?
It is tempting to say that this is a fundamental conflict of values, between spiritual values and material values. Eretz Yisrael is a special place, Moshe knows, not because it’s the easiest place to herd or cultivate. And as he’ll say later, not on bread alone do people live. And here in front of him are the tribes of mikneh, of possessions and material. Of course Moshe is going to be upset.
But the Netziv of Volozhin spots a different kind of tension here. He notices that Moshe in his response to the people of Gad and Reuven shifts the language from the herds to the heart, from mikneh to lev. The Netziv suggests that the people of Gad and Reuven and Menashe are expressing fear, and it’s not a fear of war. They are afraid of Hashgachat Hashem, of Divine “hashgacha” in the Land of Israel.
Now you may know this word hashgacha from the world of kashrut — hashgacha means supervision. You hear about a restaurant and want to know “What’s their hashgacha?” A kosher supervisor is called mashgi’ach or mash’gicha.
But hashgacha has a broader meaning: being noticed by the Divine, individually and in all of our actions.
The materialism of these tribes, says the Netziv, is a cover for a spiritual fear. They are afraid of living life as though their every moment were worth noticing. As though every action, every intention, has a cosmic significance.
They are afraid that their lives can’t have that significance, that they aren’t worthy of being watched by the Divine and seen in that way. So they try to define themselves in terms of the external markers of a good life — prosperity, which is good, and safe homes for their children. They use the language of mikneh to say: We’ll be satisfied if we’re doing well in the aggregate, if we’re productive. We’ll give our tithes; just let us count what we do and calculate at the harvest; we’ll mark the harvest year with everyone but if it’s okay just watch us from a bit of a distance, you the rest of the tribes and God also.
This fear of hashgacha, that our hearts and our lives won’t stand up to being seen by the Divine — I wonder if Moshe doesn’t see through that right away.
I wonder if Moshe didn’t make a show of accusing them of something, and getting hot and in their face. Because look what happens: Immediately the tribes come back and say: No, no! We’re not going to abandon the people. We will fight with them for the land, in fact we’re going to lead them into the land, and we will be the first to gear up, and only when we have secured this national mission will we go back and join our herds and our kids. (Yes, they talk about the herds before the kids.)
And Moshe goes over this twice, once in the positive — are you saying you’re going to go and lead the people and…. — and the tribes repeat it. They say it in the positive and the negative — if we go as fighters into the land, and with the rest of the people…. and if we don’t then we understand what it says about us, and the consequences of that. And Moshe brings them to Elazar the Kohen, and repeats what they said, and has them say it again once more.
In Jewish law this has become known as “the stipulation of the tribes of Gad and Re’uven”, t’nai b’nai Gad uv’nei Reuven — which is when you make a pledge or an agreement in both the positive and the negative, which is a legal thing to make words airtight.
But I think what Moshe is really doing is smoking them out, and causing the people of Gad and Reuven to declare that they are more than they realized. They are people of herds, yes, but also people of solidarity, and commitment, and passion, and energy, and people who can see a picture beyond their own neighborhood. Moshe gets them to say it, and then he says it back to them. More than once. And in front of someone else.
Moshe is saying and showing: This is what hashgacha looks like. This is what it’s like to have someone look into your heart, into more of your actions than you might have chosen, into more of your intentions. It’s at first a bit of a shock to the system but I bet it feels good — to hear me say out loud what I am seeing of you that’s deeper, and to hear yourselves say it also.
This was a demonstration of what it is like, to live under Divine hashgacha, and hopefully you will embrace that.
I think Moshe was saying to them that their materialism was not superficial. These people may lead with mikneh rav, lotsa cattle, but even the Divine is described in our Amidah prayer in the same language, as konei hakol — everything is Divine possession, Divine material.
To the extent these tribes are people of mikneh, it can be a good thing. Through herds they will perpetuate the people and the land they graze, they will feed, they will tithe. It’s through material things that you experience not only surface joys but deeper ones, and as Michael Walzer has written there is in the Torah a spirituality of milk and honey, of the seven species of grains. There is a material life that is infused with spirituality, and in fact all spiritual life in Torah is through our bodies and our things. So be people of mikneh and hashgacha, both at once. Don’t say it has to be that you’re either a superficial materialist or you have a spiritual life. Don’t see these as two opposed value systems when they do not have to be.
As we finish up the book of B’midbar (Numbers), getting ready to be ever closer to the end of the Torah, so too we ourselves are getting ready to be closer to the new year. We all deserve to believe our lives are worthy of Hashgachat Hashem. That we lead lives and have hearts worth being seen in all their moments, and that it brings God joy to see all those moments. We all deserve someone like Moshe to shock us when we act more superficial than we really are. Someone to make it less scary to say what is deeper in us, our truths and our pains, and to say them back to us.
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