Parashat Masei (at ) contains what we might call a map in prose. This map describes the extent of the Promised Land that the Israelites will soon enter. The boundaries are defined as follows:

• The southern boundary runs through the Negev Desert about 30–45 miles south of Beersheva, so that the northern part of Negev is within the Promised Land.
• Much of the western boundary consists of the Mediterranean Sea. Moving southward, the western boundary continues along the riverbed called the River of Egypt (נחל מצרים), Wadi El-Arish today, which runs west of the Gaza Strip.
• The northern boundary runs through current-day Lebanon, probably starting slightly south of Beirut and extending east.
• The eastern boundary’s northern flank is somewhere to the east of Damascus. It then moves westward to Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee), and continues south along the Jordan River and the Dead Sea.

But next week’s parashah, at , provides a different description of the Promised Land’s borders, also found in more detail in . According to the map those passages share, the Promised Land is considerably larger:

• The western boundary is still the Mediterranean and the River of Egypt.
• The northern boundary is not clarified with great specificity, but it seems to extend up to Asia Minor (today’s Turkey).
• The eastern boundary is the Euphrates River in northeastern Syria.
• The southern boundary is not spelled out, but it may extend all the way to the Gulf of Eilat.

The most important difference between the two maps involves Transjordan, which was inhabited in ancient times by two and a half Israelite tribes: Reuben, Gad, and part of Manasseh. Several passages elsewhere in the Bible agree with one or the other map. , and 22 describe how each of the twelve tribes received their own territory under the supervision of Joshua. These chapters assume the map from this week’s reading in Numbers, treating Israelite tribes in Transjordan as residing outside Israel’s territory. But other passages agree with  and , regarding the Transjordan’s inhabitants as within the Promised Land (, , , and ).

How can we account for the presence of these two “maps” in the Torah? Modern biblical scholars such as me believe that the Torah was formed when scribes combined several documents that had been written by groups of sages, priests, and prophets from ancient Israel. All of them were mediating and interpreting messages from God and traditions they received from their ancestors. The more limited map of the Promised Land from this week’s parashah stems from the Priestly school of ancient Israel, whom we call the P authors. The other map appears in Deuteronomy, which was written by Levites, and in sections of Genesis and Exodus written by scribes called the J and E authors.

The differing opinions regarding borders lead each school of thought to view certain events differently from the other. Where did God change Jacob’s name to Israel? J and P both remember this important event: In J (), this event happened at Penuel, in Transjordan. But that version of the story is problematic for the Priestly authors, because in their view, Penuel is located outside the Promised Land, and one would assume this momentous event took place inside the Land. In a P passage (), God bestows the name Israel on Jacob and his progeny at Bethel, on the west side of the Jordan River.

Similarly, in this week’s Torah reading: when P tells us about the tribes of Reuben and Gad settling in Transjordan, they make it clear that their settlement there it is a concession. God permits them to live there only if they help conquer the Promised Land too (:16ff.); the key word repeated in verses 20, 23, 29, and 30, is אם, “if.” When Deuteronomy tells us about this same event at the end of next week’s parashah (3:12ff.), the tribes’ settlement there is neither conditional nor a concession. The land east of the Jordan is God’s gift to those tribes; the key verb is נתתי, “I have given you” (vv. 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, and twice in 20). The men from these tribes still fight in the Israelite army, but their receipt of their land in Transjordan is not contingent on their doing so.

We can notice a consistent מחלוקת or debate in the Torah about the extent of the Promised Land. The Torah provides two conflicting maps of the Land, along with two sets of texts that consistently view events through the lens provided by the one map or the other.

What do we learn from all this?

First, of all, it is significant that the debate occurs at all. The boundaries of the Land of Israel according to the Bible are not set in stone; there is more than one biblical view of its correct or ideal boundaries. Similar flexibility regarding the boundaries shows up in the Book of Kings. After Hiram the king of Tyre provides lumber and gold with which Solomon had the Temple built, Solomon transferred twenty towns in the Galilee to King Hiram to pay for these materials (). This story gives rise to another disagreement, however. Later biblical historians who wrote the Book of Chronicles regarded the idea that the king of Israel could give up parts of the Promised Land in the conduct of international diplomacy as problematic, and so they altered the story so that Hiram granted the towns to Solomon (). (However the later version does not quite explain why Hiram would pay Solomon in return for goods that Hiram sent to Solomon!)

The variety of views grows even larger in rabbinic literature. The Mishnah asks what areas are covered by the laws of shemittah, the command to let farmland lie fallow every seventh year (). It rules that the Land of Israel within which land must lie fallow does not correspond to either biblical map. Instead, these laws are fully in effect only in the limited area settled by the Jews who returned from the Babylonian exile. In areas that had been settled by the Israelites centuries earlier in the time of Joshua, the laws of shemittah are partially in effect. And what of areas of the Land (according to either biblical map) that were not settled by Israelites at all—that is, Syria and Lebanon? The Mishnah rules that the laws of shemittah are not in effect there at all. For the Sages of the Mishnah, political realities play a role in defining the extent of the Land for halakhic purposes.

There is some flexibility regarding the boundaries of the Land. The Torah gives more than one map. The Mishnah assumes that the boundaries change over time.

But the whole debate is premised on a bedrock assumption: although the boundaries can shift, there are boundaries. Whatever their disagreements over details, all the biblical authors agree that there is such a thing as the Promised Land, and it’s located on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Some Jews in modern times (for example, in Germany in the 19th century) wanted to eliminate notions of Promised Land and sacred space from Judaism. For the varied authors of the Torah, such a purging is just not possible. Like it or not, land matters to Judaism. There’s flexibility regarding where and how it matters, but not on the question of whether it matters at all.

This lesson goes beyond geography. The same basic idea that comes out of comparing this week’s Torah reading with next week’s applies more broadly in Judaism: There are boundaries. We can debate where they should be located; sometimes, they move. But the debate starts from the acknowledgement that boundaries are important to us as Jews.

This lesson is one that has particular import for Conservative Jews. The project of our movement is to bring Torah and its observance into the modern world. As we do so, it’s crucial to recall that in מַסְעֵינו, in our journeys, we’re not free as Jews to go anywhere at all. This is something Jews on the right and on the left both need to accept. Jews on the right need to realize that boundaries can be flexible, and the Bible is okay with that. Jews on the left need to realize there are boundaries, so that not every change we want to make is acceptable.

One might have thought that a list of geographic place-names, a map in prose, might be a little, well, boring, or even irrelevant. But a careful look at what seems boring in this week’s Torah reading turns out to be instructive. In the ways they differ, and in the ways they don’t, the Torah’s varied maps of the Promised Land serve as instruction, as guidance, as Torah for us modern Jews.

This Commentary was originally published in 2019.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Do you see the honeycomb pictograph of the New York Times Spelling Bee as a random assortment of letters or the beginning of patterns?[1] People react differently to the building blocks that comprise their world. These reactions shape their worldview and sense of being. The elementary school students whom my colleagues and I teach develop their spiritual signatures by observing their world and finding their place in it. We encourage them to notice, look closely, and consider how the elements relate to one another. Their curiosity often serves as the engine of their discovery.

This week’s double Torah reading specifies 42 locations where the Israelites camped between leaving Egypt and entering Canaan. While the list could be seen as pro forma, a beloved teacher of mine—Dr. Eliezer Slomovic—always insisted that God is not a blabbermouth; everything in Torah is imbued with meaning, even a list of 42 place names. Toward the end of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a supercomputer famously reveals the Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything to be the number 42. The numerical parallel to the 42 Israelite encampments provides a serendipitous opening to consider how the seemingly mundane might be the gateway to a wider awareness of something greater than ourselves.

My students often ask questions like “What’s God?” as they add to their verbal and experiential lexicon. An awareness of something greater is one of many definitions of spirituality, and concrete tools like Harvard’s “See Think Wonder” strategy help develop it. “See Think Wonder” works beyond the classroom for which it was designed; it encourages us to observe our surroundings, reflect on what we’ve seen, and allow our minds to delve into realms of possibility. Its designation as a “thinking routine” is appropriate when contemplating the Israelite journey with its repetition of wilderness sojourns and an unchanging diet. The years between Egypt and Canaan were not just for a generation to die out, but for a generation to gradually instill a practice, honing an outlook on the whetstone of seeming sameness.

By adopting this mindset, everyday experiences become triggers for discovery. There is nothing negligible. We notice details we might have otherwise missed, consider multiple interpretations, and generate questions that fuel our desire to learn more. This practice nurtures a habit of mindful engagement with the world, where each moment becomes a potential source of wonder.

The repetitive pattern of halting and traveling described in Numbers 33 is more than just a historical record: it serves as a metaphor. It mirrors the rhythms of our own lives—periods of rest and stability interspersed with times of movement and change. This cadence invites us to consider how we approach these transitions. Do we simply move from one stage to another without much thought? Or do we approach each with intentionality? If we see the divine presence in the everyday details of our lives and come to each new moment with the goal of adding to our perception and perspective, we might recognize that we are being led on an ongoing process of becoming.

Wondering in the wilderness is different from wandering there. Wondering bespeaks interest and reflection, fascination and awe; wandering implies aimlessness. Consider whether the ground on which Moses stood was holy because he’d wandered to where the bush grew, or whether his expression of wonder and curiosity transformed the nature of the place where he stood.

We are given the opportunity to embrace living in the present. This can ignite momentum towards believing.

The words in bold might embolden us to put more of the pieces of our journey into play, serving to both anchor and propel us. They may root us by providing focus and meaning to our experiences and advance us by inspiring us to continue moving, growing, and seeking.

To come full circle, what do the NYT Spelling Bee and the detailing of the 42 encampments of the Israelites in the desert have in common? Each prompts us to recall that life unfolds in stages and that we often find connections when we sit with something for a bit. The “Shuffle” feature that rearranges the letters reminds us that in life we benefit from seeing from different perspectives. And lastly, while some days you’re a Genius and some days are just a Good Start, every day brings yet another chance.

Addressing the child’s question, “What’s God?,” our parashah suggests that God is not confined to one place or experience, but encountered throughout our journey. The Torah shows that life, like the Israelites’ journey, isn’t linear. It’s a mix of progress and retreat, clarity and confusion. We all face uncertainty and spiritual dryness, but these wilderness experiences shape who we’re becoming. In both physical and spiritual wildernesses, we gain unique insights into our spirit and divine connection. Moments of awe often reveal what truly matters.

The reality for both children and adults is that being open to discovery affords opportunities to see our world and make meaning of it. Adults might rephrase the “What’s God” question as “Is there more than what I see?” and our double parashah nudges us to look to our path for answers, rather than our destination. Meandering obliviously, conversely, may stunt our growth. If we feel called to truly notice the stops and starts of our path, though, our wonder will give way to lives of purpose and significance.

Two generations overlapped in that wilderness, both led by cloud and fire; one was the aimless wanderer that had crossed the Sea of Reeds on dry ground while the second was the purposeful wonderer that would cross the Jordan on dry ground. We’re presented with two ways of journeying in the wilderness of our lives. Which generation do you want to be?

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

[1] The New York Times Spelling Bee is a puzzle in which players try to make words from a set of seven unique letters while using the center letter at least once.

At the end of the reading for this Shabbat() and in four other passages in the Torah(,��, Num. 15:32–36, and Num. 27:1–11), the Israelites and Moses confront a situation in which the law is unclear, or in which some Israelites seem dissatisfied with the existing law. Moses asks God to clarify the law relating to the situation, and God responds to Moses’s request. For example, a story in last week’s Torah reading() tells of the daughters of a recently deceased man named Zelophehad, who had no sons. Because women could not inherit under the existing law, his landholding was set to pass to his closest male relative. As a result, his land and his name were going to disappear forever. The daughters approached Moses to ask why their father’s name should be lost, and they requested the right to inherit his land so that the family’s plot, and hence Zelophehad’s name, would endure.

The daughters’ query was not open-ended. They respectfully presented an objection to the existing law of inheritance, and they made the solution they were looking for explicit. God’s response when Moses brought the question to God’s attention is fascinating. God did not declare, “I am perfect, and My law is perfect, and who are these women to tell Me how to run My universe?” Instead, God agreed to their plan: כֵּן בְּנוֹת צְלָפְחָד דֹּבְרֹת (“The daughters of Zelophehad speak rightly,” ). God agreed to modify the existing law of inheritance to allow a sonless man’s property to be divided among his daughters. That way, the property would stay together, forever associated with the deceased man’s name. This story from last week’s parashah presents the law as malleable and open to improvement.

As if to underscore this point, the revision God issued to the law of inheritance is itself revised in this week’s Torah reading. In , the leaders of the tribe of Manasseh (to which Zelophehad’s family belongs) approach Moses to point out a wrinkle in the solution that God set forth back in . What would happen, under the revised inheritance law, if one of the daughters marries a man from some other Israelite tribe? In that case, the children of that marriage will inherit Zelophehad’s land, and a piece of Manasseh’s territory will pass into the permanent possession of the other tribe. The tribal leaders object to the apparently unforeseen consequence of the legal revision reported in last week’s parashah.

Again, God does not respond angrily, insisting that there can be no consequences unforeseen by God’s all-seeing eyes. Rather, God responds precisely as God had done earlier: כֵּן מַטֵּה בְנֵי־יוֹסֵף דֹּבְרִים (“The tribe of Joseph’s sons speak rightly,” ). The originally imperfect law had been improved in light of the daughters’ plea, but the tribal leaders’ subsequent plea reveals that God had not improved it enough. So the amendment is amended: the daughters may inherit, but not if they marry a man from outside their tribe. If they are to exercise their right to inherit, they must marry members of the tribe of Manasseh. In that case, Zelophehad’s land will stay with his descendants through the female line, while also remaining with his tribe. This amendment does not undo the earlier revision; before that revision, the land would have gone to Zelophehad’s closest male relative. Under the new law, the daughters may marry a much more distant member of their tribe, and the children of that more distant relative will end up owning the land. But the amendment to the amendment solves the problem that concerns the tribal elders.

In presenting these stories of legal revision, the Torah acknowledges without embarrassment or discomfort that what God has wrought is not always set in stone. The law, we might say, is 1.0, and it can be upgraded—as can the upgrade. The narrative makes clear that God does not find this insulting. God seems perfectly satisfied with a situation in which the Israelites participate along with God in allowing the law to develop over time.

Much the same thing can be said about the world itself in the Torah. As has been widely noted, the opening chapter of Genesis is in many respects a classic example of an ancient Near Eastern creation account, sharing with its Mesopotamian counterparts several features of plot and style. But  differs in some crucial respects. Many ancient Near Eastern creation myths conclude with the construction of the highest god’s temple by the lower-ranking gods. To a reader who has noticed the many elements of the ancient Near Eastern creation myths in , the world created there appears lacking, because it never arrives at its expected culmination, the erection of God’s palace or temple. That absence is remedied several thousand years later with the completion of the Tabernacle in the last two chapters of the Book of Exodus.  by extensive verbal parallels, which indicate that  and  are the bookends of one long story that reaches its culmination in .

The world that God created in , then, was deliberately imperfect. It was “good”—and parts of it were “very good” (as  states several times)—just not perfect. God seems to have regarded Godself as free to desist from bringing creation to its ultimate goal, and it was the task of the Israelites to complete the work. Significantly, the deficiency is made right not by the gods who build the divine palace in other ancient Near Eastern myths, but by human beings.

In light of the story of Zelophehad’s daughters, it becomes clear that what is true of the world that God created is also true of the law God gave Moses: God’s handiwork wants improvement, and the expectation of the Torah is that the Israelites will provide it. This idea is not only present in the Bible. It is also central to Kabbalah. Especially in the teachings of one of the greatest Kabbalists, Isaac Luria (1534–1572), Jews are responsible to help God improve the world, and they do so by observing the mitzvot or commandments. Luria calls improvements generated by observing commandments tikkun.

We can restate the message of the story from today’s parashahin Lurianic terms: The original law needstikkun, as does the original cosmos. Enacting thattikkunis the role of the people Israel—today, no less than in Moses’s own time. This classically Kabbalistic, and also classically Conservative, idea was well phrased by Abraham Joshua Heschel in his bookGod in Search of Man:

“There is a partnership of God and Israel in regard to both the world and the Torah: He created the earth and we till the soil; He gave us the text and we refine and complete it. ‘The Holy One, blessed be He, gave the Torah unto Israel like wheat from which to derive fine flour, or like flax from which to make a garment’ [quoting Midrash Tanna devei Eliyyahu Zuta 2:1]” (274).

This week, as we read about Zelophehad’s daughters, is an ideal time to commit ourselves anew to this partnership, and to the responsibilities it entails.

This commentary was originally published in 2017.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

In Parashat Mattot Chapter 30, we learn that if a woman makes a vow, her father or husband can invalidate it on the day on which he hears about it. If he does not invalidate it that day, he is culpable if she breaks it. The only women who can make their own vows and not have them invalidated by a man are divorcées and widows.

At other moments in my life, I would have glossed over this section, determined to focus on something more inspiring, and less offensive. Now, I am leaning into it.

What changed? This year the Hendel Center embarked upon a Gender, Torah, and Tradition Fellowship. We engaged 22 people including students, faculty, alumni, and a board member and spent a year exploring how we make meaning of patriarchal texts in an egalitarian movement.  The Conservative Movement has embraced egalitarianism. We also have not discarded traditional texts that center the male experience and consider women as a category that must be understood in in relation to men. Our group included people who are queer and people who are straight. It included people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth and people who do not.  It included people who see the world through a gender lens, and people who have the luxury of never having to consider if the Torah and the rabbis thought they were people or chattel.

Our goal was to see how we might be transformed by participating in a group discussion of texts that made clear that women do not have control of their own bodies and circumstances. Would we feel differently about these texts by studying them together? Would we understand Jewish tradition differently? Might we teach differently?

One of the participants, Laynie Soloman, the Associate Rosh Yeshiva at SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva, asked the group early on to pay attention to what happens in our bodies when we encounter a text that challenges us because of who we are. They taught Pirkei Avot 1:5 about giving tzedakah to people who are hungry. As an aside, that text directs you not to speak with women for it leads you down a bad path.

I would ordinarily use this text to teach about generosity and giving tzedakah as a requirement of living a religious life. But since it is linked to a text that considers women dangerous, I must make a choice. Do I edit out the line about women? Include it and risk losing the group because they will decide Judaism must be backwards? Find an entirely different text to make the point and relegate this one to the trash heap? None of these choices feel particularly good. Contemporary Jewish educators make them all the time.

Our group members shared how we experience difficult texts in our bodies. We also shared what we need to keep going: a hevruta with whom we can acknowledge the hurt; a teacher who would acknowledge the pain and even share some of their own challenges with the text. And finally, someone added, the faith that if I keep on going the rewards will be great; the text will be rich. Our tradition is bigger than any single passage. 

This was not revelatory to me. What was revelatory was how much less lonely it felt to encounter the text after having learned with this group for a year.

This time when I read that almost all women cannot make a vow that can stand on its own, I noticed that I felt angry. But I did not skip it. It tugged at my heart. It also coincided with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. So, I was doubly mad to read about a woman making a vow and having a man nullify it.

I discussed it with Dr. Marjorie Lehman, who leads the 91�첥 Rabbinic Literature and Cultures Department, who encouraged me to explore how the rabbis of the Talmud understood vows. There I found two patterns. It turns out they were uncomfortable with the very idea of a vow. The rabbis believed the punishment was severe for broken vows, thus they concerned themselves with trying to reduce anyone’s risk of making a vow they couldn’t keep. They certainly were not going try to increase the opportunities for women’s vows to stand. The other interesting trend I noticed was that the rabbis were focused on how a woman’s vow might impact sexual relations with her husband. In tractate Nedarim they explore the ways in which a woman’s vows could negatively impact her sexual relationship with her husband. The rabbis’ fear of broken vows mitigated my anger some since I could imagine the rabbis doing their part to minimize anyone’s risk. The teaching from Nedarim that aimed to protect the men from sexual disappointment or the risk of not having children to inherit their names sat less well with me. It felt like an instance of women being treated as chattel.

Parashat Mattot afforded me an opportunity to experiment with our hypothesis that it is more productive to lean into a difficult text than to avoid it. I sat with it, expressed some anger, and the text did not fall apart. Neither did I. Then I reached out. I read feminist commentator, Judith Romney Wegner, who wrote Chattel or Person? The Status of Women in the Mishnah. I was in good company struggling to understand how the rabbis conceived of women and why. 

What started as anger at a text that prevented me from independently making a vow led me to think more deeply about the nature of vows. Vows are complicated to the rabbis, even dangerous. By the Middle Ages we developed a tradition of reciting Kol Nidrei on Erev Yom Kippur. We annul the vows we will make between individuals and God in the coming year, for fear that if we inadvertently break them we will suffer severe punishment and death. 

I now have a group of 22 people with whom I have history of studying hard texts, sharing the visceral feeling those texts create, and continuing with the belief that something good is just around the next page. This year I will bring this learning along with me to Kol Nidrei. I will be grateful for the vows I do make this year and the care the rabbis put into protecting all people from being bound to vows we could not keep.

And the next time I encounter a text that challenges my essence, I will plunge right in and bring my hevrutas with me.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Mattot opens with a chapter on the subject of vows. A vow is a person’s promise to God to behave in a certain way so that God, in response, will grant one’s requests. When Jacob was fleeing from Esau, he took a vow that if God protected him on his journey and returned him home safely, he would give back to God a tenth of whatever God gave him (). A vow thus gives a person a sense of control over his or her own life. Surprisingly, fourteen of the seventeen verses in  address the topic of women and vows. The Torah makes the point that a father or a husband may cancel the vows of a daughter or wife. It follows that men have to keep the promises they make, while women are often prevented from doing so.

But one verse of this chapter leaps out at today’s reader.  says that if a widow or divorcee makes a vow, she has to fulfill its terms. No longer subordinate to a father or husband, she must keep her promise. Her word is as binding as a man’s. Quite an impressive rule for a patriarchally configured society!

Just as the double Mattot-Masei portion begins with women, it ends with women. Earlier in the book of , the daughters of Zelophehad petitioned Moses to assign to them the parcel of land he would have assigned to their father, had he lived to enter the Promised Land. Moses was stumped by their request and goes off to consult with God. The famous answer from on high is—ken b’not Tzelofehad dovrot (the plea of the daughters of Zelophehad is just) (), i.e., these women have a valid claim. They will receive their father’s parcel and his name will not be blotted out.

But in the last chapter of Mattot-Masei, we read a story that is a mirror image of the one above. The men of Menasseh, Zelophehad’s tribe, approach Moses and say that his decision regarding the five women could redound to the men’s detriment. If the women who inherit land in Menasseh’s tract marry a man from a different tribe, they will take their land with them. It will thereby diminish Menasseh’s holdings, and that would be unfair. To my mind, this is an audacious claim since the inheritance rules of the Torah so strongly favor men in every other circumstance. Land passes from father to sons, one generation to the next. Women are not part of the inheritance equation. Even so, these men did not hesitate to complain about the one inheritance advantage afforded women.

Given this background, how are we supposed to read the last chapter of Numbers? Should we take it at face value, that the men of Menasseh are right, even praiseworthy, for defending their tribal inheritance? Or should we see it as satire, by which I mean that the chapter actually mocks these men for being so small-minded, trying to deny women the one gain they were given? I favor the second option. We cannot avoid noticing that exactly the same phrase that appears in  about the women, appears again in 36:6 about the men—ken matteh v’nei Yosef dovrim (the plea of the Josephite tribe is just). This time these words are uttered by Moses at God’s bidding, not directly by God. Moses tells all of Israel that the five daughters of Zelophehad will have to choose a husband from the tribe of Menasseh (36:5–6). That way the land will not leave the tribe. On a superficial level, the message of the chapter is that Moses had to clip the wings of the daughters of Zelophehad. They won their case of inheriting their father’s land but were then informed of the strings attached. I suspect, however, that on a deeper level, the chapter disparages the men who could not tolerate even one small favorable decision for women.

This skeptical reading is buttressed by a mishnah.  presents one detail of the laws of inheritance. It discusses the case of a man who dies leaving both sons and daughters: if his estate is large, says the mishnah, the sons inherit all of it, but they have to maintain their sisters from it until they marry; if the estate is small, it all goes to support the daughters and the sons have no choice but to go begging at the door. Admon, an early sage, comments, “bishvil she-ani zakhar hifsadeti” (just because I am a male, should I lose out)? He is referring to this one set of circumstances in which a daughter’s share of her father’s estate would exceed that of a son. The irony, of course, is that sons are given a huge advantage over daughters in all other matters of inheritance. It is rare for daughters to benefit at the expense of their brothers. Even so, Admon begrudges women this one small victory, because, in the zero-sum game of inheritance, men are being treated, in this one instance, as less than equal.

I suspect that the mishnah is poking fun at Admon. The obvious similarity of his distress to that of the men of Menasseh leads me to conclude that the sage’s comment is actually a riff on the story told in . Just as in that case men resented the fact that women gained the upper hand in one case of male disenfranchisement, here too a man expresses a very similar sentiment regarding one case of male disenfranchisement. In this instance it’s easy to see that Admon is behaving in a petty manner. By including Admon’s words, the mishnah connects him to the men of Menasseh. By implication, the mishnah thinks that they, too, are behaving in a petty manner.

What is the overall message today of the double portion of Mattot-Masei? , the opening chapter of the double portion, takes single women seriously and treats them as fully equal to men. , the closing chapter, says that there will always be men who will try to deny women equality. But such men will not be able to roll back women’s gains, even if they succeed in obtaining, on occasion, a small concession. This is the high note on which the fourth book of the Torah concludes.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

The Land will test the people—with power and wealth, with conflict and war. They will become responsible for self-policing—how will they handle divisive and ambiguous cases such as manslaughter? One person has caused terrible harm to another and their family. Perhaps they never intended to kill, but still, they have caused tragic loss of the most permanent sort. What consequence can restore a sense of justice for the offender, the victims, for society and for God?

Numbers 35 includes an extended passage dedicated to this presumably minor concern—the treatment of killers accused, but not convicted, of murder. The Torah declares that Israel must establish six cities of refuge, three within the Land, and three in Trans-Jordan, to which unintentional killers may flee (vv. 1–29).

The cities of refuge are unlike anything known to modern society. They signal that a person who unintentionally kills another ought not escape significant consequences. After all, they have killed someone, and so they must live in exile for an indefinite period, until the death of the High Priest. The purpose of their exile is not mere punishment but also rehabilitation. There they will have time to ponder the impact of their negligence on the victim even as they reestablish themselves in a new community.

First, they are put on trial. If found guilty of murder, the Torah prescribes execution. But the Torah immediately sets a high evidentiary bar for determining guilt for murder. There must be two eyewitnesses to the crime; one will not suffice (v. 30). Shedding the blood of an innocent person is said to “pollute the Land.” This biblical concept goes back to the story of Cain and Abel, when God declares that Cain will be cursed by the land that “opened its mouth” to absorb the blood of his brother (Gen. 4:11). Here too the Torah warns that improper killing, even as a punishment, can pollute the Land and lead Israel into exile (Num 35:33).

If a killer is executed with insufficient evidence or imperfect process, then the Land becomes polluted. Conversely, if a wealthy killer is found guilty of murder, but is given the opportunity to buy back their freedom, this too pollutes the Land. Likewise, a person found guilty of manslaughter, not murder, is not allowed to buy their freedom (v. 31). They too must seek exile in the city of refuge, or else the Land will be polluted. The purpose here is to purify the Land by repairing the moral damage caused by violence. Restorative justice in biblical terms is not only about restoring the soul of the offender, but also about restoring the entire society to a just basis. Without such restoration, the only option is national exile.

Twice the Torah prohibits the taking of kofer, the ransom paid to avoid punishment, which is from the same root as kapparah or kippur, atonement. But can one truly atone for violence with money? It might be tempting for the killer to offer, and perhaps for some aggrieved families to accept, payment in place of punishment. Indeed, the Rabbis allow the giving of kofer in other circumstances, as when an ox gores a person. The owner of the ox must pay kofer to atone for the loss (M. Bava Kamma 4:5). But a human who kills a human has committed either murder or manslaughter, and money alone cannot atone for their violent act. As the Talmud notes, both verses are necessary, one for murder, and one for manslaughter (BT Ketubot 37b).

Money can be a tool for restitution of financial damages, and it can be used positively for charitable purposes. But when money allows wealthy offenders to evade consequences, a protection unavailable to poor offenders, then justice is denied. Taking kofer is akin to a bribe, and bribery erodes the moral fiber of a society.

Kofer has another sense—denial. A person who denies owing a debt to another is kofer bakol—in total denial. A person who denies the unity of God is kofer be’ikar—in denial of the essential truth. In later rabbinic texts, kofer comes simply to mean a heretic. We see that an initial positive association of kofer with kapparah, atonement is pushed aside for more negative associations with denial and heresy. Why might this have happened? Atonement implies introspection, remorse, and responsibility. Denial indicates the opposite: brazen disregard for the lives and property of others.

In recent years Americans have begun to pay more attention to the intersection of race, poverty, and incarceration. There is a persistent and pernicious differential in the treatment of criminal offenses by people depending on their class and color. White offenders are more likely to be reprimanded over minor offenses that for people of color would garner harsh treatment such as arrest and even physical assault. Wealthy defendants can post bail and mount effective defenses while poor defendants are left to languish in jail and then prison. Money corrupts criminal justice, creating a two-tier system where some citizens suffer severe consequences while others are able to escape with impunity.

Because criminal justice in America is often more punitive than restorative, and because it plays out so differently for people of privilege, we have a crisis of confidence. Poor people lack the resources to post bail and to mount competent legal defenses. Even brief incarceration can cause cascading calamities of unemployment, mental and physical illness, homelessness, and consequences for entire families. We are in a crisis, but we have an opportunity to reform our criminal justice system and point it back toward the higher ideal of restorative justice.  

In warning Israelite society not to accept kofer for violent crimes, the Torah anticipates the role that wealth may play in shielding offenders from the consequences of their misconduct. In this and other contexts the Torah warns the people of Israel not to pervert justice, but to apply it equally. The cities of refuge are an early example of restorative justice. They honor the lives of the victims by forcing offenders into exile. They treat all offenders equally, regardless of class, and prevent wealthy people from buying their freedom. And for the offenders, living out their uncertain sentence in exile, the cities of refuge are an opportunity for reflection and remorse. In place of kofer, denial, they provide the time and structure to achieve something precious and deep: kapparah, true atonement.

The cities of refuge may not be practicable today, but as a metaphor for equal justice and restoration, they are timely. The Torah is not interested in the wealth or standing of the victim of the crime, and it offers no avenue for wealthy offenders to evade responsibility. It honors the life of the victim and forces even unintentional offenders to experience dislocation so that they can reflect on the harm they have caused. This is what restorative justice looks like.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Parashat Masei (at Numbers 34) contains what we might call a map in prose. This map describes the extent of the Promised Land that the Israelites will soon enter. The boundaries are defined as follows:

• The southern boundary runs through the Negev Desert about 30–45 miles south of Beersheva, so that the northern part of Negev is within the Promised Land.
• Much of the western boundary consists of the Mediterranean Sea. Moving southward, the western boundary continues along the riverbed called the River of Egypt (נחל מצרים), Wadi El-Arish today, which runs west of the Gaza Strip.
• The northern boundary runs through current-day Lebanon, probably starting slightly south of Beirut and extending east.
• The eastern boundary’s northern flank is somewhere to the east of Damascus. It then moves westward to Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee), and continues south along the Jordan River and the Dead Sea.

But next week’s parashah, at Deut. 1:7, provides a different description of the Promised Land’s borders, also found in more detail in Gen. 15:18–21. According to the map those passages share, the Promised Land is considerably larger:

• The western boundary is still the Mediterranean and the River of Egypt.
• The northern boundary is not clarified with great specificity, but it seems to extend up to Asia Minor (today’s Turkey).
• The eastern boundary is the Euphrates River in northeastern Syria.
• The southern boundary is not spelled out, but it may extend all the way to the Gulf of Eilat.

The most important difference between the two maps involves Transjordan, which was inhabited in ancient times by two and a half Israelite tribes: Reuben, Gad, and part of Manasseh. Several passages elsewhere in the Bible agree with one or the other map. Josh. 13, 14, and 22 describe how each of the twelve tribes received their own territory under the supervision of Joshua. These chapters assume the map from this week’s reading in Numbers, treating Israelite tribes in Transjordan as residing outside Israel’s territory. But other passages agree with Deut. 1 and Gen. 15, regarding the Transjordan’s inhabitants as within the Promised Land (Exod. 23:31, Deut. 11:24, Josh. 21, 2 Sam. 24, and 1 Kings 4–5).

How can we account for the presence of these two “maps” in the Torah? Modern biblical scholars such as me believe that the Torah was formed when scribes combined several documents that had been written by groups of sages, priests, and prophets from ancient Israel. All of them were mediating and interpreting messages from God and traditions they received from their ancestors. The more limited map of the Promised Land from this week’s parashah stems from the Priestly school of ancient Israel, whom we call the P authors. The other map appears in Deuteronomy, which was written by Levites, and in sections of Genesis and Exodus written by scribes called the J and E authors.

The differing opinions regarding borders lead each school of thought to view certain events differently from the other. Where did God change Jacob’s name to Israel? J and P both remember this important event: In J (Gen. 32:27–30), this event happened at Penuel, in Transjordan. But that version of the story is problematic for the Priestly authors, because in their view, Penuel is located outside the Promised Land, and one would assume this momentous event took place inside the Land. In a P passage (Gen. 35.6–15), God bestows the name Israel on Jacob and his progeny at Bethel, on the west side of the Jordan River.

Similarly, in this week’s Torah reading: when P tells us about the tribes of Reuben and Gad settling in Transjordan, they make it clear that their settlement there it is a concession. God permits them to live there only if they help conquer the Promised Land too (Num. 32:16ff.); the key word repeated in verses 20, 23, 29, and 30, is אם, “if.” When Deuteronomy tells us about this same event at the end of next week’s parashah (3:12ff.), the tribes’ settlement there is neither conditional nor a concession. The land east of the Jordan is God’s gift to those tribes; the key verb is נתתי, “I have given you” (vv. 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, and twice in 20). The men from these tribes still fight in the Israelite army, but their receipt of their land in Transjordan is not contingent on their doing so.

We can notice a consistent מחלוקת or debate in the Torah about the extent of the Promised Land. The Torah provides two conflicting maps of the Land, along with two sets of texts that consistently view events through the lens provided by the one map or the other.

What do we learn from all this?

First, of all, it is significant that the debate occurs at all. The boundaries of the Land of Israel according to the Bible are not set in stone; there is more than one biblical view of its correct or ideal boundaries. Similar flexibility regarding the boundaries shows up in the Book of Kings. After Hiram the king of Tyre provides lumber and gold with which Solomon had the Temple built, Solomon transferred twenty towns in the Galilee to King Hiram to pay for these materials (1 Kings 9:11). This story gives rise to another disagreement, however. Later biblical historians who wrote the Book of Chronicles regarded the idea that the king of Israel could give up parts of the Promised Land in the conduct of international diplomacy as problematic, and so they altered the story so that Hiram granted the towns to Solomon (2 Chron. 8:2). (However the later version does not quite explain why Hiram would pay Solomon in return for goods that Hiram sent to Solomon!)

The variety of views grows even larger in rabbinic literature. The Mishnah asks what areas are covered by the laws of shemittah, the command to let farmland lie fallow every seventh year (����𱹾�’i�� 6:1). It rules that the Land of Israel within which land must lie fallow does not correspond to either biblical map. Instead, these laws are fully in effect only in the limited area settled by the Jews who returned from the Babylonian exile. In areas that had been settled by the Israelites centuries earlier in the time of Joshua, the laws of shemittah are partially in effect. And what of areas of the Land (according to either biblical map) that were not settled by Israelites at all—that is, Syria and Lebanon? The Mishnah rules that the laws of shemittah are not in effect there at all. For the Sages of the Mishnah, political realities play a role in defining the extent of the Land for halakhic purposes.

There is some flexibility regarding the boundaries of the Land. The Torah gives more than one map. The Mishnah assumes that the boundaries change over time.

But the whole debate is premised on a bedrock assumption: although the boundaries can shift, there are boundaries. Whatever their disagreements over details, all the biblical authors agree that there is such a thing as the Promised Land, and it’s located on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Some Jews in modern times (for example, in Germany in the 19th century) wanted to eliminate notions of Promised Land and sacred space from Judaism. For the varied authors of the Torah, such a purging is just not possible. Like it or not, land matters to Judaism. There’s flexibility regarding where and how it matters, but not on the question of whether it matters at all.

This lesson goes beyond geography. The same basic idea that comes out of comparing this week’s Torah reading with next week’s applies more broadly in Judaism: There are boundaries. We can debate where they should be located; sometimes, they move. But the debate starts from the acknowledgement that boundaries are important to us as Jews.

This lesson is one that has particular import for Conservative Jews. The project of our movement is to bring Torah and its observance into the modern world. As we do so, it’s crucial to recall that in מַסְעֵינו, in our journeys, we’re not free as Jews to go anywhere at all. This is something Jews on the right and on the left both need to accept. Jews on the right need to realize that boundaries can be flexible, and the Bible is okay with that. Jews on the left need to realize there are boundaries, so that not every change we want to make is acceptable.

One might have thought that a list of geographic place-names, a map in prose, might be a little, well, boring, or even irrelevant. But a careful look at what seems boring in this week’s Torah reading turns out to be instructive. In the ways they differ, and in the ways they don’t, the Torah’s varied maps of the Promised Land serve as instruction, as guidance, as Torah for us modern Jews.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

According to Walter Brueggeman (Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks), the broken cisterns represent a corrupted ideology, distorted and unsustainable, that the people are using to deny reality and the need for change. Like Jeremiah, Brueggemann argues that healing and hope are dependent on stripping away denial, confronting reality, and experiencing the concomitant grief.

Food for thought:

• What are the sources of true nourishment and vitality that our society is abandoning?
• What values and ways of being do we cling to that will never be sustaining and healthy?
• What realities must be confronted and losses grieved in order to change course?

Listen to the haftarah brought to life as it is declaimed in English by renowned actor Ronald Guttman by .