(for the week of July 3rd, 2010/21 Tammuz, 5770)
Parashat “Pinchas”
Numbers 25:10-30:1
Few things in human experience have proven to be as freighted with meaning as land and land ownership. Even a cursory review of history demonstrates how frequently human beings have sacrificed lives, our own and others, for the sake of land. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by this reality. For starters, in agrarian societies, having land on which to farm or graze your flocks was a matter of life and death. Politically and economically, land ownership also can be used as one metric to organize human relationships and the division of power in a society. From a psychological and spiritual standpoint, land ‘grounds’ us (bad pun intended). Having a piece of land that belongs to us, a piece of land to which we belong, attaches the meaning of our fragile, transient human lives to a reality that seems more permanent. It gives us a place to “be from.”
Almost all of these potential meanings for land and land ownership turn up in connection with Pinchas. Numbers 26:52-56 finds God instructing Moses about the method for allocating property among the twelve tribes once they finally reach the Promised Land. It’s a somewhat confusing passage. Verse 53 suggests the assignment of land to individuals based on a just completed census of the people. Verse 54 adds the idea that larger tribes should receive more land and smaller tribes less land, each according to the size of their populations. Then, verses 55 and 56 ordain the use of lots to assign land to tribes and individuals, regardless of how large or small a tribe is. To make matters more complicated, Rashi*, following the BabylonianTalmud**, suggests that the economic value or fertility of the land also was taken into account. Thus, a larger but less fertile piece of land might not have been worth as much as a smaller but very fertile piece of property.
The Talmud also gives us this evocative description of the process by which Eleazar the Priest used lots to assign land. “Eleazar was wearing the Urim and Tumim***, while Joshua and all Israel stood before him. An urn [containing the names] of the [twelve] tribes, and an urn containing descriptions of the boundaries were placed before him. Animated by the Holy Spirit, he gave directions, exclaiming: ‘Zebulun’ is coming up and the boundary lines of Acco are coming up with it. [Thereupon], he shook well the urn of the tribes and Zebulun came up in his hand. [Likewise] he shook well the urn of the boundaries and the boundary lines of Acco came up in his hand.”**** The mysterious and almost magical nature of the ritual reinforces the Divine source of this system for land distribution. In fact, Rashi quotes an alternative midrash that has the lots, themselves, proclaiming out loud which tribe and district should go together (picture the sorting hat in Harry Potter)!
The point, I believe, is that the possession of land always has been a powerful biological, economic and political reality as well as a deeply meaningful symbol for human beings. Valuing land based on its relative fertility, assigning each individual an equal land holding while also thinking about the relative size of tribes, these are questions of political and economic justice. But the insistence that there is a Divine hand mysteriously guiding the allocation of land (via the agency of the priesthood and the divination devices), this interpretation grows from the sense that our connection with the land must grow out of and express something more than economic or political calculations. Such interpretations reinforce the idea that we are intended for the land and the land is intended for us by God.
There certainly can be positive consequences of such a theology. If we hold the land because God wants us to do so, perhaps, we will feel a greater obligation for responsible environmental stewardship. In addition, if, as the Torah so often suggests, our right to land ownership is conditional on creating a just society on the land, this theology provides yet another powerful incentive for our obligation to pursue justice. Finally, as I noted earlier, such meaningful connection with a place can provide one more psychological and spiritual anchor against the threatening winds of existential futility.
Yet, both history and contemporary events suggest that, just as often, attributing Divine intention to the allocation of property can breed terrible hatred, violence and destruction. Ironically, the same reality that can provide us with a spiritual anchor and spur us towards acts of economic, political and environmental justice also can be the source of terrible disconnection, war and injustice. Given the high probability that human beings will continue to attribute great meaning to any land we call our own, the crucial question seem to be not whether we will continue to connect the land we own with powerful meanings and promises but which promises and meanings we will choose to nurture.
**See Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Baba Bathra, 122a.
***Urim and Tumim are somewhat mysterious divination devices discussed in the Torah as tools to be used by the priests in interpreting God’s will. See, for instance, Exodus 28:30.
****Ibid. This translation is taken from Hebrew-English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud, Baba Bathra (London, The Soncino Press, 1989).
