Parshat Vayechi: The Uniqueness of the Twelve Tribes - Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

[Music] we're finishing the Book of Genesis and we know of course that the book of braus does not have that many mitzvos in it right how many Commandments of the 613 are in the book of braches three three right what what are the three right so the first one is right uhuh and one one more right very excellent very good so three out of the 613 are in this Kish the first is procreation to be fruitful and multiply the second is circumcision and the third is we don't eat the negative commandment we don't eat from the sciatic nerve that's why you can't get a good serine steak essentially uh because uh removing the uh sciatic nerve from the hindquarters is extremely difficult and therefore most in most Jewish slaughter houses they just sell the hindquarters to the goam now the thing is this though so the purpose ofishas is obviously not to teach me that much halaka because there is that much law in it but it does teach me about the basic values of Judaism and it teaches me um the overall aims and of course it gives us the foundational history not only of how the world was created but how the Jewish people were created through the lives of ab and yov and the tribes and of course you know people say you know I know in always have all sorts of debates and discussions how do you know the Torah is from Heaven you know all of these issues that that are discussed let me point out uh maybe a non-intellectual type of proof that people sometimes give and that is hey the Torah must have been written by God because if we were writing Our Own Story we would never tell it in such a negative way meaning to say there are so many things we did wrong that you know certainly uh we would have covered it up but Hashem is the god of Truth and we need to examine everything that happens the good and the Bad and the Ugly and to understand of course that on one hand the the OS and the MOS and theim are infinitely greater than than we are and even the things that look like sins have to be understood in a deeper way but still we learn from the mistakes as well as the as well as the successes so now I just want to focus a little bit in this last para before yakov's death he calls together his sons and he gives each tribe or each son that's going to be the founder of a tribe A distinct blessing and and this highlights the idea that he doesn't simply generically bless his children but each one is different each one is distinct we see the same thing with Mosher Renu in the very last par of the Torah before mosh Renu dies in Z that's the para we read on Simas Torah every tribe gets a blessing tribes are apparently a big deal in the Torah uh each tribe had its own section of land in the land of is Israel each tribe had its own Nai its own Prince they had their own flag in the desert they had separate places and in fact let me just uh give you a a very very sad story in our history but but it it also illustrates the importance of tribes in the Book of Judges so in the Book of Judges uh this this was the period of time after the death of yahushua before we had a king so we were ruled by a succession of judges and there's a constant refrain in the Book of Judges in those days there was no Mel over 300 year period there was no Mel is there was no king in Israel is be an everybody did whatever they wanted you can interpret it positively but but the simple context of the verse is that the the Novi is really describing Anarchy and lawlessness and dis respect for Hashem and hashem's Torah because there was no leadership and in connection with that it gives us a story that is truly horrifying but it makes a fascinating political point that is at the end of the Book of Judges there was a man who was traveling with his concubine and he wandered into the territory of The Tribe of Benjamin and uh he got himself lodgings and she was kind of left outside and that night uh she was raped and attacked by many people gang raped so to speak and she was left for dead and the next morning he comes out and he finds this woman killed murdered so what he does again what he what he himself does is a very bizarre thing he cuts her up into 12 pieces he kind of sends a piece to each tribe and saying do something about this they violated her they murdered her there must be justice so the tribes demanded that shavid bin Yamin identify and extradite the wrongdoers shavid bin Yamin refused to do that so you know what happened there actually was a Civil War in which all of the tribes declared war against bamin and the tribe of binyamin which of course was greatly outnumbered but they managed to fight but they were almost totally decimated very very few benjaminites were left and even those that were left the people the Jewish people made a vow that no man shall give his daughter to Ben bite which would have meant in a relatively short time in entire tribe of Israel would have become extinct now we don't realize because we don't have such a tribal identification because most of us don't know what tribe we're from that this is actually a cosmic tragedy because you have to understand that God's covenant with the Jewish people are not only with the Jewish people as a whole but there's a covenant with each tribe and if one tribe is missing that's it that's why the gamor actually says we have a promise from God that not only will the Jewish people never be destroyed but there will always be remnants of every tribe there will never be an entire tribe that is wiped out now uh eventually this vow was an olded and in fact according to tradition the date that this vow was anold that nobody would marry bites was the 15th of and one of the reason reasons why you may have heard that the 15th of is a very very joyous day is because that is when the tribes were able to freely marry into each other again and that's a great great source of sim those of you that are fans of uh D Vinci Code type literature uh may have come across uh an actual statement uh that uh some historians have posited that the there there were large numbers of the tribe of bites who because of this war they fled the land of Israel and they settled in France and England and in fact the official history of the royal family of Great Britain United Kingdom is that they are actually descended they they claim Jewish they don't claim they're Jewish obviously they're Church of England but they claim that they are descended from the benjaminites now some people consider this to be crazy Dan Brown type you know made up made up stuff but the truth of the matter is there are some MOS there are some sources in mfor uh some of them even seem to have kazal that we don't really have but they they seem to be quoting midrashim that actually talk about a large group of inites fleeing to the European continents and settling there this is way I mean this is way before there was even a bik this remember remember how early this is this is not after the destruction of the temple this is before the building of the temple this goes all the way back and the like now why why am I digressing with this very very sad uh story because ramban offers a very interesting comment why didn't shavid binyamin simply turn over the bad guys we're not assuming the whole tribe was evil and corrupt that wouldn't be right so the ramban says there was a matter of principle here shavid binman looked at every tribe as a Sovereign Nation yes we United uned because we have the same religion but just like laav you know you can be a Catholic in France and you can be a Catholic in Germany so too you can be a Jew in the country of binyamin and a Jew in the country of Yehuda and therefore they argued you have no right to demand extradition of wrongdoers every tribe has the Sovereign authority to try its own wrongdoers so really the civil war was fought this Civil War was fought as a matter of to establish the idea the ramban says that the Jewish people are one nation they are not a bunch of separate countries that are united by a religion but they are a nation and what happens with any segment is relevant to the whole nation now without getting too far a field this was the identical issue lail of the American Civil War uh it is a a mistake to say that Lincoln fought the Civil War over the issue of slavery yes it is true that the South had slavery and the north didn't have slavery it's also true that Lincoln was personally against slavery uh you know he thought it was a very bad thing but he would not have brought the United States into war over slavery the the main issue was secession where the southern states took the position that every state is its own government and we have the right to leave this Union because we're not part of one country in fact the word state in international law means a country are you talking about the state of Israel the state of whatever it is I mean the technical word for what we call the state would be a province right the fact that United States and in fact reporters uh historians have said a very fascinating grammatical point before the Civil War the words United States were a plural noun the United States have in mind States after the Civil War it became a singular noun the United States is very very interesting a different concept so the point that you see from all of this is that tribes are a big deal now today our tribal Consciousness is very very attenuated unless you're a CO or a Ley and even then you're not sure uh you know I don't know if I'm from a Ru or a Shimon or Yehuda or isar and let me just clarify because you might be thinking well wait a second here don't we talk about the 10 tribes being exiled the lost 10 tribes and they were exiled 100 more than a 100 years before the destruction of the temple and the only tribes that remained was Yehuda and Benyamin and Lev so doesn't that mean by definition if I'm not a Coen or a Ley I got to be from y and Benyamin no that that's actually not true because although it is true that the kingdom of the 10 tribes was destroyed it was always the case that there had been migration and within the southern Kingdom of the two tribes there were people from all sorts of tribes moreover there are some opinions that even say the 10 tribes themselves were reunited we're not sure they're different opinions in the gamorra but the point that you need to know is any one of us that is not a Coen or a Ley we could be any one of the other tribes you can be a or Zan or anim or a manhe so but nevertheless since we don't know our tribe so our whole sense of tribal Consciousness is very attenuated and yet in the Torah it seems to be a big deal so the question and of course when mashia comes it'll be a big deal again the redivision of the land in accordance with tribes that's going to happen again it's not going to be the same boundaries interestingly enough we have the boundaries in the book of yahushua which were the initial boundaries uh but in the book of ycel there will be a different division of the lands but it will still be a tribal division did you want original will have no PR in M well the tribes will be the same tribes but but the land they will get will not be the land they got in the time of Yeshua they will they will get separate will disc in the tribe that yes yes yes you will yes so the question I want to raise is why is tribes even a good thing I mean isn't it just another factor that introduces disunity and disharmony among the people I'm a Jew without our tribal affiliation there's enough division that we fight over so now we're bringing in something else I'm a Ru I'm a Shimon I mean we're all Jews isn't that all that matters why is there a whole concept of shtim and and n and are flags and you can't live here because you know this belongs to and you're supposed to be somewhere else what is that so the truth of the matter is there actually is something very profound that is being communicated here and that is when we talk about Community we talk about akas we talk about Unity we talk about togetherness we talk about coming together as one there are two different different ways you can describe that I'm going to use a secular expression there is the Aus that comes via melting pots and there's the Aus that comes via a salad bowl there's Melting Pot unity and there is salad bow Unity Melting Pot Unity is which was the model that applied let's say in the United States uh in the uh first half first 2third maybe of the 20th century and unfortunately it was applied in the state of Israel uh for the first uh two or three decades after the founding of the state is based on the concept that if you want to create a community you must obliterate differences and distinctiveness give up your culture give up your language just become like the prevailing culture a Melting Pot all of the differences get burnt away think about cholent right cholent okay cholent initially might be meat and barley and potatoes but by the time it's Tuesday or Wednesday into the next week you got a glp that is indistinguishable that is what Melting Pot is based on Melting Pot is based on a Model that communities are created by obliterating individuality and becoming one a salad bow is a different type of unity there you have even if it's Israeli salad that's cut up very small but still you know uh you got lettuce you got Tomatoes you got Peppers you got onions you got mushroom whatever you whatever you put in different colors different textures different types of tastes there may be an acidity and there may be a sweetness and there may be a sourness and saltiness whatever it would be that you create the beauty of molding dispari ingredients together in which each one has its own individuality but the beauty is the harmonization of that individuality to create a whole that is greater than the sum of the individual parts that's a very different model than the Melting Pot The Melting Pot obliterates individuality it achieves Community by destroying the individual the salad ball creates Community but by celebrating and accentuating the uniqueness of each contributor now you can use a lot of different metaphors to describe this I use the food metaphor salad bow but we can talk about a symphony that the beauty of a musical composition is not repeating the same note a 100 times but it's precisely through the harmonization of all of these different elements or you can talk about a tapestry or you can talk about a mosaic any type of metaphor you use or a garden the beauty of a garden is not when you simply have the same flower a million times if you would have a million roses that you know that may be pretty on some level but it's surely not as beautiful as seeing different colors and different fragrances coming together this rosai is what we mean by tribes we are one nation we have one Torah we have one God but God does not want our community to be predicated on a blindlessly Tor student and Zulan who also had to learn rest assured devoted was involved in business and commerce what is Yakov Ain saying there is not a sameness here each person connects to aish in their own unique way with a common commitment to Torah and that creates the beauty of the Jewish people and by extension therefore if there is a concept of tribal uh individuality it also applies to us as individuals as well now this creates some difficulties because like anything else if you take one idea to the extreme without combining it with the other idea there is going to be Distortion so for example if I take the notion of individuality to an extreme you don't have a community everybody's doing their own thing everyone what do they say you know um a few years ago in the state of Washington there was supposed to be an anarchist convention a Convention of anarchists who were protesting the World Trade Organization right the World Trade Organization was trying to make kind of a worldwide rules for trade and the anarchist felt there shouldn't be such rules but the anarchist demonstration couldn't take off because they were Anarchist they couldn't get organized kind of interesting Paradox how do Anarchist how do you have an anarchist organization can't do it basically I'm an anarchist you don't tell me what to do so so the problem basically is the problem basically is that individuality have taken to an extreme number one becomes extremely narcissistic even in religious matter meaning you kind of identify oh uh I will I will do for God what makes me feel happy elevated spiritual that's how New Age spirituality what makes you feel good the problem there is everybody does their own thing there is no religion there is no community and number two are you serving God or are you serving yourself if religion is defined Mind by whatever makes me feel good then that's a pretty egotistic religion the god that I'm serving is me not serving God what did they say there was a um Harvey Cox who was a professor at Harvard he was a Protestant professor of theology he wrote a book about religion in America and in one of his uh book one of his people that he interviewed was a woman named Sheila and Sheila said she believes in God God but she does not believe in organized religion so the religion she practices is Sheila ISM so I once heard from a very very uh intelligent Rabbi that he said that it's lucky that her name wasn't Judy or the religion she would have practiced would be Judaism now in truth as a matter of fact that's exactly how Juda Judaism is often practiced even by people whose name isn't Judy and that is whatever I think is hey I'm Jewish and I think X Y and Z so that's Jewish philosophy I'm a Jew that has a philosophy equals Jewish philosophy right uh but obviously Judaism is also about submission to God and it's about the formation of community but the point is it is not about obliteration of individuality that is the lesson of the tribes that you achieve Community precisely through fostering your individuality in a relationship of cooperation and love and submission to God as well as to the Jewish people now that's a challenge because it's easy to go to one extreme and say I will just be a conformist although I won't call that easy because eventually gets very very frustrating inside or it's easy to say I'll just march to my own drummer but to March to your own drummer and at the same time be part of the band that's a bit of a challenge that is the walking on a tight rout Judaism never has the easy way because it requires that you take the good from both sides of the equation and bring them together and integrate them so this is the Big Challenge now I know you might be thinking hey what do you mean I'm I'm I'm now talking about Orthodox Torah Judaism as you know fostering the creativity of the individual I don't see it that way I just see rule after rule after Rule and ritual and ritual ritual after ritual and uh a lot of people dress the same they're dress in black and white or or or I see we don't you see we don't impose a a rigid standard there either uh but you know if I would be thinking about things that Liberate the individual Torah Judaism might not be the first thing I would intuitively assume does that but you see that that's a very big mistake uh there was a great poet non-jewish an Indian poet who won the Nobel Prize for literature in the 1920s tagari and tagari was not writing about Judaism I don't even know how many Jews he knew but he once described the human soul in a very Vivid and beautiful way he said every human soul has deep and beautiful music within that Soul we are like a violin string now imagine a violin string that I simply take off the violin and I put it on the kitchen table it's totally free liberated unencumbered not tied down what type of music can you get from a totally liberated violin string can't get anything at all when you tie it down and you seemingly confine it and you enslave it no metaphorically speaking that's when the music within comes out and tagari said this is a metaphor for human existence we think unlimited Freedom will let me become the person I'm able to become let me achieve the beauty that is within me but freedom without that direction without that framework without that guidance nothing comes out even secularly you know this is very very true you know if you ever listen to a jazz musician that's doing improvisation doing riffs as these just amazing spontaneous things and you know you want to do that so you go out you buy a trombone and you immediately just want to start blowing sounds because that's all he's doing he just blowing sounds nothing good is really going to come out keep in mind that before you do those improvisations uh there was a time where that musician probably had to spend a lot of time playing scales and doing grunt work and doing routine things and doing things that just seem to be routinized all creativity and spontaneity comes because there was a Mastery and a discipline and a submission before Picasso could paint the abstract paintings he had to draw all sorts of regular things I mean he was a natural genius as well so you have to understand that indeed the ultimate goal is each of us develops our own unique relationship to God we fly but in order to do that we need to have knowledge we need to have skills we need to have a framework we need to be tied down to the violin so the music within us can be expressed right so this is the Paradox of Life uh that you need to be enslaved that's a strong word in order to be free the one who thinks he's free is really a slave and the one who knows he's a slave to the almighty actually becomes free and this is what kazal say the TR kazal say it explicit itly in no one is truly free except the one who learns and by extension lives by the Torah and that's not just a homy or a nice thing to say it's recognizing that freedom needs to be linked to commitment and discipline that goes beyond your self-gratification because when you live for hedonistic Pleasures whatever makes me feel good you're not free you're a slave to yourself and that's the biggest ens slaver where I simply can't control myself wherever I feel is what pulls me it's as if there's something in you that's just making you do this making you do that that is not freedom freedom is when a 5-year-old kid who's offered a candy a 5-year-old can say can't take it because it's not how many 5-year-olds are capable of that freedom is when you want to do something that's not so good because everybody else that you know is doing it and you say no or you do something good even if everyone else you know is not doing it but you do it because it's the right thing that's a free person a free person is a person who is strong enough to make decisions that are not always going to be popular that aren't always going to be be accepted that is what a free person is to Simply go with the crowd or go with your gut or go with your feelings or go with whatever you want to do that's not Freedom that's simply being enslaved you can be enslaved by other people you can be enslaved by by your own negativities okay so this is the the Paradox Judaism is very much about creating my own individual connection with the almighty but within the framework of submission toes and this I would suggest to you is the Paradox and the Paradigm of why there are 12 individual tribes within the collectivity of am Israel Hashem doesn't want a cholent a Melting Pot of the Jewish people Hashem wants a salad bowl tapestry Mosaic Symphony of am Israel and that's why although by definition the introduction of the concept of tribes brings in a potential for disunity and polarization when it's taken to an extreme like like the story of the benjaminites who took their tribal affiliation and kind of said we're separating from the nation in point of fact it is the highest greatest deepest level of unity and Community where each can learn from the other each contributes according to their unique uness that is why within the Torah World there have been and there still are many many beautiful strands whether it's casus whether it's muser whether it's rationalism like the rambam tradition whether it's cabala the mystical tradition and none of these are false because there are many many legitimate now again I'm not dealing right now with what are illegitimate ways there are such a thing like that as well but there are many many legitimate ways of coming to God all of which are predicated on keeping the Torah the Torah is like the minimum that you need but once you have Torah then there are many many different ways of coming to God and each person is supposed to try to discover the way that is most appropriate that is best for them that feeds their soul that gives their soul sustenance and nutrition okay so that was uh one thought I wanted to share with you kind of the the important role of and how that applies to us as individuals now another thought I want to share with you is that in yakov's blessings so there is of course a special blessing given to the tribe of Yehuda actually that's not a tribe yet but Yehuda as a person which goes over to his tribe and this is Hally a very very important it says Shuda the scepter of Authority shall never depart from the tribe of Yehuda and what Yakov ainu is doing here is Yakov ainu is actually saying that the kingship and the monarchy of the Jewish people shall be given to the tribe of Yehuda that is why David H and the whole davidic line including mashiach come from the tribe of Yehuda in fact there's a very we just had khaka there's a very very famous discussion of the ramban taka in this week's paraa where the ramban talks about the anonimous destruction of the Honan Dynasty the heroes of the Kaneka story are the mbes the macbes are from the family known as the kashim and the kashim were sikim they were righteous they were holy they were able to defeat the yanim and rededicate the BAM mikdash and reestablish the Torah and they established an independent haonan state in ER Israel that lasted for more than 150 years till the Romans came in and yet paradoxically the ammonian were utterly wiped out there is no remnant of them and the ramban says how could it be so that such righteous people were utterly destroyed and the r B rights because they did one sin and the sin was when they defeated the avanim they made themselves monarchs they proclaimed themselves and were proclaimed as the Kings and that was not proper because malus has to go to the tribe of Yehuda a descendant of David am and they should have looked for such a descendant they should after they won the war they should have abdicated right and the ran says that was sinful because they violated Lo yasur sh now it's true that throughout the biblical period from from there were in fact two kingdoms right the southern kingdom was ruled by the davidic line the northern kingdom was ruled by the Israelite Kings and they were not from the davidic line well it's very true the ramban says that in fact was sinful the ramban says the whole institution of Mal is was in fact a violation of this law again I have to say the Rana is a very big Kish because although it is true that many of the Israelite Kings were not righteous in fact most of them were not but it never indicates in the NVM that their sin was the mere fact that they were King their sin was idolatry their sin was murder the ramban is madesh that it's not only what they did that was bad it was the very fact they remained as kings that were bad they should have gone back to the davidic line that's actually a very big and theuk uh do not imply that so clearly but this is what the ramban says malus is given to the tribe of Yehuda the question you might raise is that if we were to ask to choose which brother would be most suitable for malus we might have thought Yosef would be a pretty logical choice on a superficial level yose has executive experience right we're always looking for experience he knew like people saying the president say I was a governor I can be president and I know how to run a budget Etc uh even Donald Trump I run you know million dollar billion dollar businesses so Yosef ran a country politically he has experience more importantly spiritually yoseph was the one who was able to survive all of the trials and tri tribulations he both uh lived the life of a slave and he remained faithful to Hashem and then he reached the Pinnicle of power which is even a bigger Challenge and he remained faithful to hasem he didn't become arrogant he didn't leave hes ysep is the role model against sin Why not pick Yosef so it's very very interesting that a thought that the say other they say the following a Mel is supposed to be a spiritual role model now that's not to say every King was a spiritual role model we certainly had bad kings there's no question about it uh many many kings were were not good but the in theory what Hashem wants in a m is HEM wants a m that will not just be a political leader but will inspire us will teach us not So Much by his formal teaching because aik is not a MAG Shar in Yesa but will teach us by the nobility of his life how to serve Hashem in a proper way ysf would not have been the perfect role model for us in that way precisely because he is so perfect when Yosef is confronted with very very powerful sexual Temptation when po Fire's wife really wants him ysph has the unbelievable strength to just say no to quote Nancy Reagan Yosef represents the sadic who when he is confronted with the Yara just overpowers it ignores it doesn't listen to it that's phenomenal that is why he is called Yosef sadic but in many ways to have a role model who is so strong that he succumbs all Temptations is not an ideal role model for us because I look at people who are models of perfection and I say that's not me I mess up I make mistakes I fail Yehuda when Yehuda faces the same nission of a woman it happens to be his daughter-in-law but he doesn't know that it's a prostitute and he's Nik and he succumbs and then he sees his daughter-in-law pregnant and he thinks she committed adultery with somebody and he's about to burn her at the stake and she would not reveal his identity not to humiliate him she just says the man that gave me this deposit so to speak is the man and then he realizes it's him and he says she is more righteous than me than I am Yehuda represents the model of the person who sometimes fails sometimes makes mistakes but teaches us that even when you fail you don't give up hope you don't throw in the towel you get up again you do chuva you come back to God that was the role model that Hashem wanted us to see in a flesh and blood king because we all make mistakes but what happens sometimes is we sometimes think I've made mistakes already what's the use I'm beyond repair I might as well keep on going in the way that I'm going yehudah teaches us that Hashem does not demand Perfection but Hashem demands that when we do mess up we get up again and we try to fix the next day and even the next minute and therefore that is the lesson you know there's a whole genre in Jewish uh Rel you know English literature about gdan biographies biographies of great rabbis you know you know we have bi of all sorts of great rabbis and this you know I I enjoy this myself uh but R hutner the great Ru hutner once complained that gdan biographies all sounded the same they talk about the phenomenal Genius of the four-year-old you know when he was three he knew Kish and when when he was four he finished the talmud and when he was five he did the USI and you know Etc now some of these stories are actually true some of them are not some them are true I mean that some of some of the rabbis were phenomenally brilliant in amazing ways but D hutner said those are great great stories but in some way they can't really inspire you because you look at that you just say they're so different than I am so I just admire them in awe but it doesn't call upon me to be anything because I can't be that Butner said there may be something under under the surface that we're not aware of we're not aware of the struggles these people have were there times that they had questions we know the Kim in his 70s and 80s and older trained himself to fall asleep if someone spoke lanara that's how attuned he was but what was the when he was 15 or 16 we don't realize that gdm are not just born even if they're born with great mental abilities abilities do not make you a GTO it's a helpful characteristic to have but it's not it's certainly not a sufficient characteristic and it may not even be a necessary characteristic a person becomes great because they work on themselves rosha Feinstein who was the most gentlest of people once said I I don't know if it's true but he said it he said that by Nature he had a very bad temper he get got angry at people for all the time but he said he worked on himself to become a different person and rautner said sometimes the true greatness of a person is not when you simply look at the finished product but when you see the struggles and the mistakes and the failures and how a person didn't get crushed from those failures but went on again that's a message I can hear because I mess up and I fail I need to hear that you can keep on going and you don't get discouraged and that is why Hashem wanted kingship to come from a person who failed and stumbled but came back to God even more so than the person who never made a mistake okay because one person is so beyond me I can't connect the other could be a role model so uh that that's what the PK says inim I'm sorry in Mish very famous PK in Proverbs come the righteous man falls seven times many many times but the key is he always gets up he doesn't allow his Spirit to be broken and that is how he becomes great okay so I wish you uh all well and have a good good week a good shabas and take care [Music]