Mattot/Masei

Margaret Holub - August 3, 2024
Numbers 30:1 - 36:13 — sixth aliyah Numbers 34:17 - 35:9

Let’s do some crazy stuff here: our sixth aliyah speaks of the six cities of refuge — arei ha-miklat — to which manslaughterers can run to avoid vengeance. These cities of refuge, we learn, are part of the land holdings granted to the Levites. In addition, we learn in verse 7 that the Levites are to be granted 42 additional cities, to be disbursed throughout the holdings of the other eleven tribes, for a total of 48 disbursed cities. Chapter 35 begins by describing the layout of the future Levite settlements. It’s a little like Portland, dense housing in the center city to be surrounded by a migrash, a green space with zoning restrictions. There is a contradiction in the Torah text itself about whether the depth of this viewshed space is supposed to be 1,000 amot or 2,000 amot. I of course looked up the length of an amah — it seems from all sources from Wikipedia to the Orthodox Union say that an amah is somewhere between 1.57 feet and 2.1 feet. So at minimum the depth of the empty space would be 1308 feet and at maximum 1750 feet. Not gigantic.

Verse 3: the cities shall be theirs for dwelling, and their open space shall be livehemotam, lirkhusham u’l’khol khayatam. Our chumash translates this as “for their animals, for their wealth and for all their needs.”

Rashi says the migrash is intended to be a vacant space for a noi, a viewshed, an aesthetic enhancement. Beautiful open space around the center city. The Levites are not permitted to build a house or plant a vineyard (hear that, Anderson Valley vintners…) Targum Yonatan, the translation by Yonatan ben Uzziel from Hebrew into Aramaic — which is used as a kind of commentary to figure out the meaning of biblical words, asks the question: if it is for behemotam — their livestock, then what are chayatam — their animals? Chayot are usually understood to be wild animals, as contrasted to behemotam, cows, sheep, goats and so on, herd animals. Targum Margaret notes that the word is chayAtam — singluar — their ANIMAL, not their animals. “Chayah” means both animal and life. This open space is for chayatam, their life-force, their animality — call it wildness.

We know this wonderful word chayot from the chayyot ha-kodesh — the holy animals that sing back and forth antiphonally KADOSH KADOSH KADOSH ADONAI TZVAOT — M’LO KOL HAARETZ KVODO around the throne of God in the Upper Realms while we imitate them by going up and down on our tippy toes.

Chayah is also considered by some kabbalists to be the fourth level of soul elevation, existing in the widening funnel above the head.

The Levites, unlike the other eleven tribes, are not granted land for farming and grazing (though they do apparently have some kind of behemot, some kinds of herds — who knows?) Unlike their sibling tribes, the Levites are tending to the souls of the Israelites. The priests and those who administer sacrifices, keep the lamps lit in the mishkan and the altar swept — all of these are levites. They are in charge of holiness. Instead of farmland they are given these 48 cities with surrounding viewsheds, unsettled wild space.

So the 48 Levite cities each have some surrounding space for chayah — maybe for Upper Realms, for singing around the Divine Throne, as it were — a place to live surrounded by sacred space. Maimonides makes the point that these 48 cities are intentionally spread around the landholdings of the other eleven tribes in order to infuse a bit of the sacred into every tribe’s plots and fields.

Okay, now we get weird. As I’ve been poking around preparing for the women’s retreat I came upon this wild and wonderful passage from Likutei Moharan, from Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav. Those of you who will be with me at the retreat will encounter this text again in a different context. But it’s worth seeing twice!

Rabbi Nachman lived in the mid-eighteenth century in various places in the Pale of Settlement. He was in the third generation of Hasidic masters — a giant, wild, ecstatic, oscillating soul. I often find his teachings hard to understand on a logical plane. But I can feel their energy and their radiance. I especially love this one — my new textual best friend!

Rabbi Nachman has been chatting on for awhile here about heresies and conundrums. A heresy would be just what you’d think — ideas put forth that contradict Jewish teachings. Conundrums… he gives an astonishing example:

In the Talmud, in tractate Menachot, a terrible story is told: Moses is trying to wrap his head around the fact that he is going to die. God engages with him in his struggle. At one point God says to Moses, one of these days there is going to come a guy who will be so amazing that he will even be able to teach from the taggim, the serifs on the tops of the letters in Torah. God takes Moses into the future, into the study hall of Rabbi Akiva. Moses is astonished and humbled. The story continues:

Moses returned and came before the Holy One, Blessed be He, and said before Him: Master of the Universe, You have a man as great as this and yet You still choose to give the Torah through me. Why? God said to him: Be silent; this intention arose before Me. Moses said before God: Master of the Universe, You have shown me Rabbi Akiva’s Torah, now show me his reward. God said to him: Return to where you were. Moses went back and saw that they were weighing Rabbi Akiva’s flesh in a butcher shop [bemakkulin], as Rabbi Akiva was tortured to death by the Romans. Moses said before Him: Master of the Universe, this is Torah and this is its reward? God said to him: Be silent; this intention arose before Me.

The beautiful Rabbi Akiva, who could teach from the curlicues on the top of the Hebrew letters, was tortured and murdered by Roman executioners. Moses, as any of us might as well, came heartbrokenly before God and cried out, “Master of the Universe, this is the Torah and this is its reward?”

That, says Rabbi Nachman, is a conundrum.

Now we turn to Rabbi Nachman:

Show slide — Likutei Moharan 64

The creation came into existence by means of the spoken word, as it is written (Psalms 33:6) “By the word of God the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth their entire host [was created].” The spoken word contains wisdom, because the whole of speech is but the five articulators of the mouth. Through them all the things of the entire creation came into existence, as it is written (ibid. 104:24), “You created them all with wisdom.”

Let’s understand this much: the world was created by speech. Everything that exists exists because of the world of language, of what can be spoken.

The spoken word is the demarcation of all things. [God] circumscribed His wisdom in the letters, such that certain letters demarcate one thing, while other letters demarcate something else. But there in the Vacated Space—which surrounds all the worlds, and which is, so to speak, vacated of everything, as explained above—there is no spoken word at all, and not even intellect without letters, as explained above. Thus the conundrums that stem from there are in the aspect of silence.

So okay, the world of that which was spoken into being is finite, demarcated. We’re talking here about “Let there be light… let there be day and night, let there be animals…” and so on. And beyond that is chalal ha- panui — VACATED SPACE. We know this word chalal from the lovely n’kavim n’kavim khalulim khalulim in the asher yatzar prayer of the morning blessings — vessels and cavities. Chalulim, empty spaces, voids.

In this world there is that which was created through Divine speech — the material world, even the upper worlds — all of which can be investigated, explored. And then beyond that there is khalal ha-panui, Vacated Space.

Because I’ve been hanging out with this passage for awhile — and then reading about the 48 levitical cities with their central settled space and then their surrounding open, unsettled, wild space, where you can graze your animals but can’t build — I am struck in this impressionistic way by that image in both places of the settled center and wild Beyond — maybe like the structure of a cell, which has a nucleus densely populated with chromosomes and then a surrounding liquidy area that breathes in and seeps out chemicals from the bloodstream.

Rabbi Nachman says that CONUNDRUMS can’t be solved in the central settled space of words and created things. They must be sent out to that wild, unsettled space of silence. Those most painful questions can’t be settled into structures. “Not even intellect without letters.”

But then what?

This is analogous to what we find of Moshe: When he asked regarding the death of Rabbi Akiva, “Is this the Torah, and is this its reward?” they answered him, “Be silent! Thus has it arisen in thought” (Menachot 29b). That is, you must be silent and not ask for an answer and solution for this question. This is because “thus has it arisen in thought,” which is more exalted than speech. Therefore, you must keep silent regarding this question, because it is in the aspect of “arisen in thought,” where there is no speech to answer it. The same is true of the questions and conundrums that stem from the Vacated Space, where there is no spoken word or intellect, as explained above. They are thus in the aspect of silence; one must simply believe and keep silent there.

That ultimate conundrum: why torture? Why murder? Why hostages? Why mass killing? Why famine? Why bombing? Why the extinction of species? Why ecocide? Why?

This is why it is forbidden for anyone other than the tzaddik who is the aspect of Moshe to enter and delve into these words of heresy and the conundrums. For Moshe is the aspect of silence, in the aspect that is called “heavy of speech” (Exodus 4:10), the aspect of a silence more exalted than speech.

Rabbi Nachman was a great believer in the role of the tzaddik ha-dor, the Saint in Each Generation — which, needless to say, he thought was himself in his own time. He believed that in every generation there was a tzaddik, a holy being, who was gifted with the ability to travel into that uncharted space of silence. They are like Moses, who, we know, was k’vad peh, heavy of words — whom Rabbi Nachman believed had a gift for going to the wordless place. The tzaddik, who is the “aspect of Moses,” is capable of bearing these heresies and conundrums into the place where they can be illuminated.

Rabbi Nachman again:

Therefore, the tzaddik who is the aspect of Moshe, the aspect of silence, is capable of delving into these perplexing words, which are the aspect of silence, as explained above. He should especially delve into [them], in order to elevate the souls that fell into there, as explained above.

The Tzaddik NEEDS to delve into this perplexing space, the aspect of silence. She NEEDS to carry our conundrums into that wordless and wild place — because the rest of us who are heartbroken and confused and, has v’halilah, without faith, are unable to metabolize the heartbreak and cruelty we see around us, and so we fall into despair — which, Rabbi Nachman of all people knew to be the enemy of the life of the spirit. We NEED for a tzaddik to carry our conundrums beyond the world of words to that place of beauty and mystery and to solve them there.

But today there is no tzaddik ha-dor. There are no priests, no levites, no mishkan, no levitical cities with their open spaces. Now we are scattered all over the world, and it may feel like there is no one to turn to when we are heavy with conundrums and heartbreak.

But the genius of living Judaism is that, when the structure of the priesthood fell, the practice of prayer and study rose in its place. When the structure of the Hasidic courts, each with their central tzaddik, came apart, we learned that all could pray with ecstasy, beyond words. We could all dance.

When the central mechanisms for rising out of the created world into the mysteries, into the silent space, became obsolete, over and over they have been replaced by the collective souls of the community in prayer, in study, in song, in practice. None of us is Moses. Even Rabbi Nachman wasn’t Moses. None of us is even Rabbi Nachman.

Elie Wiesel retells this famous Hasidic story:

When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov saw misfortune threatening the jews it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted.

Later when his disciple, the celebrated Maggid of Mezritch had occasion for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say, Master of the Universe, Listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer.” And again the miracle would be accomplished.

Still later Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say, “I don’t know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient.” It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.

Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: “I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is tell the story, and this must be sufficient.” And it was sufficient.

We may not know the location, the fire and the prayer, in the words of the story. But we know that there is a place outside each of the 48 cities of the levites. We know that these levite cities were scattered throughout the land to bring spiritual elevation to the everyday world. We know that there exists a wild and wordless space out beyond the created world. We know that this beautiful, wild, wordless space can bring healing and resolution.

We may not know how to get there and exactly what to say when we arrive. But we know about this sacred space. And we know we can bring our grief and our helplessness to it. And it will be sufficient.