People before property

The Israelites were almost within sight of the Promised Land. They had successfully waged their first battles. They had just won a victory over the Midianites. There is a new tone to the narrative. We no longer hear the querulous complaints that had been the bass note of so much of the wilderness years.

We know why: That undertone was the sound of the generation, born in slavery, that had left Egypt. By now, almost forty years have passed. The second generation, born in freedom and toughened by the desert, have a more purposeful feel about them. Battle-tried, they no longer doubt their ability, with God’s help, to fight and win.

Yet it is now that a problem arises, different from those that went before. The people as a whole have their attention focused on the destination: the land west of the Jordan, the place that even the spies had confirmed to be “flowing with milk and honey” (Bamidbar 13:27).

The tribes of Reuven and Gad, though, have other thoughts. Seeing that the land through which they were travelling was ideal for raising cattle, they decide they would prefer to stay there.

Unsurprisingly, Moshe is angry at the suggestion: “Are your brothers to go to war while you stay here? Why would you discourage the Israelites from going over into the land the Lord has given them?’” he asks (Bamidbar 32:6–7). He reminds them of the disastrous consequences of the earlier discouragement by the spies. This decision would show not only that they are ambivalent about G-d’s gift of the land, but that they have learned nothing from history.

The tribes do not argue with his claim. They accept its validity, and suggest a compromise: “We would like to build sheepfolds for our flocks and towns for our children. But we will then arm ourselves and go as an advance guard before the Israelites, until we have established them in their home. Meanwhile, our children will live in fortified cities, for protection from the inhabitants of the land. We will not return to our homes until every Israelite has received his inheritance. We will not receive any inheritance with them on the other side of the Jordan, because our inheritance has come to us on the east side of the Jordan” (Bamidbar 32:16–19).

We are willing, in other words, to join the rest of the Israelites in the battles ahead. We are prepared to be the nation’s advance guard, in the forefront of the battle. We are not afraid of combat, nor are we trying to evade our responsibilities to our people. It is simply that we wish to raise cattle, and for this, the land to the east of the Jordan is ideal.

Warning them of the seriousness of their undertaking, Moshe agrees. If they keep their word, they will be allowed to settle east of the Jordan. And so it was (Yehoshua 22:1–5).

That is the story on the surface. But as so often in the Torah, there are subtexts. One in particular was noticed by the Sages, with their sensitivity to nuance and detail.

Listen carefully to what the Reubenites and Gadites said: “We would like to build sheepfolds for our flocks and towns for our children.” Moshe replies: “Build towns for your children, and sheepfolds for your flocks, but do what you have promised” (Bamidbar 32:24).

The ordering of the nouns is crucial. The men of Reuven and Gad put property before people: they spoke of their flocks first, their children second. Moshe reversed the order. As Rashi notes:

“They paid more regard to their property than to their sons and daughters, because they mentioned their cattle before the children. Moses said to them: ‘Not so. Make the main thing primary and the subordinate thing secondary. First build cities for your children, and only then, folds for your flocks.’”

A Midrash makes the same point by way of a verse in Kohelet: “The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left” (10:2). The Midrash identifies “right” with Torah and life: “He brought the fire of a religion to them from His right hand” (Devarim 33:2). “Left,” by contrast, refers to worldly goods: “Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor” (Mishlei 3:16).

Hence, infers the Midrash, the men of Reuven and Gad put “riches and honor” before faith and posterity. Moshe hints to them that their priorities are wrong. The Midrash continues: “G-d said to them: ‘Seeing that you have shown greater love for your cattle than for human souls, by your life, there will be no blessing in it.’”

This turned out to be a consistent pattern throughout much of Jewish history. The fate of Jewish communities, for the most part, was determined by a single factor: their decision, or lack of decision, to put children and their education first.

Already in the first century, Josephus wrote: “The result of our thorough education in our laws, from the very dawn of intelligence, is that they are, as it were, engraved on our souls.” The Rabbis ruled that “any town that lacks children at school is to be excommunicated” (Shabbat 119b). In the first century, the Jewish community in Israel had established a network of schools at which attendance was compulsory (Bava Batra 21a) — the first such system in history.

The pattern persisted throughout the Middle Ages. In twelfth-century France a Christian scholar noted: “A Jew, however poor, if he has ten sons, will put them all to letters, not for gain as the Christians do, but for the understanding of G-d’s law — and not only his sons, but his daughters too.”

In 1432, at the height of Christian persecution in Spain, a synod was convened at Valladolid to institute a system of taxation to fund Jewish education for all. In 1648, at the end of the Thirty Years’ War, the first thing Jewish communities in Europe did to re-establish Jewish life was to reorganize the educational system.

In 1849, when Samson Raphael Hirsch became rabbi in Frankfurt, he insisted that the community create a school before building a synagogue. After the Holocaust, the few surviving yeshiva heads and chassidic leaders concentrated on encouraging their followers to have children and build schools.

It is hard to think of any other religion or civilization that has so predicated its very existence on putting children and their education first. There have been Jewish communities in the past that were affluent and built magnificent synagogues — Alexandria in the first centuries of the Common Era is an example. Yet because they did not put children first, they contributed little to the Jewish story. They flourished briefly, then disappeared.

Moshe’s implied rebuke to Reuven and Gad is not a minor historical detail but a fundamental statement of Jewish priorities. Property is secondary, children primary. Civilizations that value the young stay young. Those who invest in the future have a future.

It is not what we own that gives us a share in eternity, but those to whom we give birth and the effort we make to ensure that they carry our faith and way of life into the next generation.