Tribal Revolution

This is the culmination of everything that we’ve been reading till now. This is the culmination of all the stories of the patriarchs up until this moment. And of course, what’s a little striking is that God had to wait 500 years to become a God, so to speak. So Rabbi Akiva is right within his lane to said, you have rendered the sacred profane. The Israelites said before the Holy One, blessed be he, you redeemed yourself, as it were, as it is stated whom you redeemed for yourself from Egypt, nations and their God. So they’re playing with words, but what they’re basically saying, Rabbi, is until this moment, that the tribes were united, that the tribes were put on this choshen ha mishpat. In a sense, God was not a God. He is now at this moment creating this social edifice, this social structure . Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Tzaveh. Previously, we discussed the Ark of the Testimony, which was the focal point of the infrastructure of the temple. In today’s episode, we discussed the Israelite social structure. And at the top of the organizational chart was the high priest sporting a breastplate containing 12 gems representing the tribes of Israel. So we explore the radical and revolutionary nature of the tribal confederacy of biblical Israel. Join us for The Tribes of Israel. Rabbi, welcome back for another exciting week of Madlik Disruptive Torah. You know, it came to my mind we unfortunately live in a world of politics and politicizing everything. And the word politics comes from the Greek word polis, which means a city state. And if you think about it, all of politics, all of our social structure is based upon, to a larger or lesser extent, this concept of a city state. And what I’m going to argue today is that the Torah introduces a radically different orbit, a radically different geography of social interaction and combining people with each other. And it’s based on a tribal confederacy. Last week, we looked at how the Torah changed everything for the Jewish people in replacing the idols. We are going to explore this tribal confederacy and how it changed everything. And if you stick around till the end, we’re even going to get to the modern era where a president of Israel 10 years ago talked about the four tribes that are living in the state of Israel. And we’re going to understand a little bit about what he meant by that. What was his radical discovery. So here we are again. Rabbi, you’re ready to talk about tribes?
Adam Mintz [3:31 – 4:03]: I sure am. And, you know, tribes are fantastic. It’s, you know, the idea of a tribal confederacy as opposed to a polis, is really the difference, of course, between the west and the Middle East. Right. In the Middle East. And, you know, that’s the way the Muslims evolved through a tribal confederacy. So this is really something that’s important both in understanding the Torah, Jewish history, but also the whole history of the, you know, of this region who was so much involved in what we call politics today.
Geoffrey Stern [4:04 – 6:56]: Absolutely. And one thing that I’m going to tease you with is we’re going to discover a Christian scholar of the Old Testament who coined a phrase, he called it “retribalization”. The tribalization that he’s going to flush out for us in the Torah was a version V.2 of a second generation tribalism. And that’s going to make it interesting too, because he thought it was different, radically different from any tribalism that we’ve discussed till now. So let’s just jump right into it. We’re in Exodus 28, and it says, you talking to Moses, you shall bring forward your brother Aaron with his sons from among the Israelites to serve me as priests, Aaron, Nadav and Aviu, Elazar and Itamar. And he talks about, you’re going to have to get skilled workers, just like he did last week when he talked about skilled workers for building the Mishkan, the tabernacle. And they’re going to make vestments. These are the vestments. They are to make a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, a fringe tunic, a headdress and a sash. So as I said, this is at the top of the organizational chart was the high priest. And this is what he was to be outfitted with. And he says, you shall make these for your brother Aaron and his sons. They’ll do priestly service. And then it gets to verse nine and it says, then take two lazuli stones and engrave on them the names of the sons of Israel. Six of their names on the one stone and the names of the remaining six on the other stone. In the order of their birth. The Hebrew says, K’toldotam which could also be in the order of their narrative, in the order of this story, of everything that has led up to this moment.On the two stones, you shall make seal engravings, the work of lapidary of the names of the sons of Israel. So this is a very famous breastplate. I believe that the signet of Yale University has this Urim Vitumim. And it is absolutely this vestament. And he says, they shall be for remembrance of the Israelite people whose names Aaron shall carry upon his two shoulder pieces for remembrance before God. So this is the highest position, the most striking of his clothes and his accoutrements, and it has the names of the twelve tribes, and it gets carried on the shoulders of this high priest.
Adam Mintz [6:56 – 7:25]: The word remembrance, of course, is an interesting word for remembrance of the Israelite people. What does that mean? Whose name Aaron shall carry upon his two shoulders for remembrance before Hashem. Right. So God, somehow it reminds God of who we are. We’re going to see it today. But I’m just pointing out that that word is repeated twice in that one verse. And it’s a hard word because God doesn’t need to remember us. What does that mean?
Geoffrey Stern [7:25 – 9:40]: I love it. And of course, what was it? A scholar called (Haim) Yerushalmi wrote a whole book called Zachor. Memory in our people is a strong. Is a biggie. So in verse 15, it adds a little bit more nuance. It says, you shall make a breastplace of a decision. Choshen mishpat. This adjudicated, this was not only a bearing as a yoke on the shoulders of the high priest. Not only did he have to remember who he was representing, but this in and of itself was how he made decisions. It guided him in important moments. And it goes on to. It’s a very long description of all of the different stones, semi, precious and others. And then in verse 21, it says, the stone shall correspond in number to the names of the sons of Israel, 12 corresponding to their names. They shall be engraved like seals, each with its name for the 12 tribes. So here, Rabbi, he’s starting to mix the 12 sons and the 12 tribes. We’re going through an evolution. We are going through a transition. Clearly, this was to serve the Jewish people, not only a generation or two or three after the sons of Jacob, but into the future. And it goes on. And finally at the end, it says in verse 30, inside the breast piece of decision, you shall place the urim and turumim so that they are over Aaron’s heart when he comes before God. Thus Aaron shall carry the instrument of decision for the Israelites over his heart before God at all times. So it’s very striking. It’s a long chapter but it’s very important and it’s also a little enigmatic. Before I get your comments, I was blown away by Rashi. Rashi says, and this is, is not typical of Rashi. The ephod, which is kind of, I guess, the almost the smock upon which all of this laid, by the way.
Adam Mintz [9:40 – 9:47]: Notice in English they don’t translate it. The ephod and an ephod. Right. They act like they don’t even know what it means.
Geoffrey Stern [9:48 – 11:11]: And that’s right in line with what they’re gonna say. What Rashi says, he says, I have heard no tradition, nor have I found in the Beritah, which is the Mishnah, any description of its shape, But my own mind tells me the point is where our Talmud and our Mishnah seems to have something to say about pretty much everything here, it doesn’t have a whole lot to say. It leaves it to our imagination. But what’s fascinating is Rashi has to then put on his hat of a sociologist, of a person who watches old French ladies of rank tie on when they ride a horseback. So I think it gives us a little bit of poetic license to also deal with scholars like Norman Gottwald, who we’re going to visit in a few minutes, who also looked at what was going on from the perspective of archeology, of sociology, of modes of production, and of social interactions and hierarchies. It’s just a fascinating. What is it called? The ink blot test? Rorschach test. It’s a Rorschach test. We get to project and to trying to find ourselves, but definitely find something that’s going on here.
Adam Mintz [11:12 – 11:43]: Right. I mean, it is interesting because, you know, if we were thinking about who wears an apron, we might also think, you know, like you see the British maids, the British servants wearing special kinds of aprons. We also would identify it with the upper class. And that’s appropriate because this is something that’s done by the upper class. It is interesting. The move from women to men is kind of interesting. Right. Rashi says it’s these upper class women and this is what the Cohen Gadol wears. That’s also fascinating.
Geoffrey Stern [11:43 – 13:37]: I agree. And it also shows what a man of the world he was. He wasn’t blind sitting in the Beis Midrash all day. So there are. And in past years we’ve discussed this many, many different commentaries on what the actual utility was, how the function of this Urim v’tumim was. I’m choosing to focus on the tribal part. And I think, Rabbi, that’s the only thing that it really says it can talk about the symbolism of stones and all that, but it comes back in the beginning, in the end, we’re talking about the tribes of Israel. So there’s one commentary that actually sees the functionality has something to do with the tribes. The Bechor Shor says he gives a rational interpretation. And he says that there, behind the name of each tribe on the Hoshin was placed a piece of paper on which it is written the exact boundaries of the territories allotted to this specific tribe. So in the future, whenever a conflict would arise between the tribes over the precise boundaries, the high priest would easily solve the disputation by looking up the original boundaries recorded in the Urim Vitumim. So this is not any magic. This is like going to town hall when you and your neighbor are trying to figure out where your border is and they pull it out of the file cabinet. This was a walking file cabinet. What I love is that he literally takes the bait and ties it into the tribal structure of Israel. But I don’t think we need the Bechor Shur to do that. The only thing that we can be sure of, Rabbi, in my read this year, is that this has to do with. With the tribes, because twice it comes back and talks about, these are not just 12 stones. They have the names of the tribes on them.
Adam Mintz [13:37 – 13:59]: Right. I mean, Bechor Shur is sensitive to this idea that the purpose of the Urim Vitumim is to resolve a conflict. Right. It means as a remembrance before God. Somehow this is the way God resolves conflict. That’s not explicit in the Torah. That’s a rabbinic interpretation.
Geoffrey Stern [14:00 – 15:58]: I think he probably picked up on the word choshen Mishpat. Mishpat would typically be a judgment, a law. You go to the Beit Mishpat, you go to the court. But clearly he’s emphasizing that part. That’s good. There is a beautiful midrash in Qohelet Rabba, and it says as follows. Rabbi Nehemiah said the Holy One, blessed be. He said to Moses, go and appoint a high priest for me. Moses said before him, master of the universe, from which tribe? He, meaning God, said to him, from the tribe of Levi. Moses asked, with what shall I anoint him? He said to him, with anointing oil. At that moment, Moses was joyful. He said, my tribe is so beloved before the Holy One, blessed be he, the Holy One, blessed be. He said to him, by your life, Bechayecha, it is not your tribe, but it is your brother. That is what is written and you bring Aaron, your brother, near to you. His anointing with the anointing oil, from where is it derived? And is said from our pasuk. And then he goes with the key, he says. However, God says to Moses, Moses, his service, meaning Aaron’s service, is not service and he has liability unless the names of the tribes are engraved on his two shoulders as it is written, quoting our verse, Aaron shall bear their names before the Lord upon his two shoulders as a remembrance. Six of their names on one stone and the names of the six that remain on the other. Rav Bathe said, had they been missing one letter, they would not have served their purpose. Rabbi Oshaya taught even one.it’s kind of reminiscent of what makes a Torah kosher or not kosher.
Adam Mintz [15:58 – 16:13]: Right? I mean, that to me, this Midrash is fascinating and the last piece is really interesting. I mean, why do you have to tell me that if you’re missing something, it’s not perfect, but it’s somehow the perfection of it that carries its power and its strength.
Geoffrey Stern [16:13 – 19:03]: You know, it kind of reminds me, they say there are supposedly 600,000 letters in the Torah and there are 600,000 souls and people at Mount Sinai. And if even one is missing, but this literally says it, this is not a stretch. This is saying that Aaron is representing every one of those tribes. And if even there’s a little piece of a dot missing, He can’t go before God. He can’t do his job. And that is kind of powerful. Rabbi Bon said, in the name of Rav Shmuel Bar Nachmani, we found that the Holy One, blessed be he, went a distance that takes 500 years to traverse to make a name for himself as it is written, who is like your people, like Israel, whom God went to redeem to himself for a people to make a name for himself. Nations and their gods. Rabbi Yoseha Gal, he said, a nation and its gods. So what they’re saying is, Rabbi, this is the culmination of everything that we’ve been reading till now. This is the culmination of all the stories of the patriarchs up until this moment. And of course, what’s a little striking is that God had to wait 500 years to become a God, so to speak. So Rabbi Akiva is right within his lane to said, you have rendered the sacred profane. The Israelites said before the Holy One, blessed be he, you redeemed yourself, as it were, as it is stated, whom you redeemed for yourself from Egypt, nations and their God. So they’re playing with words. But what they’re basically saying, Rabbi, is until this moment that the tribes were united, that the tribes were put on this choshen ha mishpat. In a sense, God was not a God. He is now at this moment creating this social edifice, this social structure. And it’s that old saying, Kiviyachol. If it was not written, how could we say it? And that’s what Akiba says. But again, of course, the verse that it uses, I love, where it says, who is like your people, like Israel? Mi K’amcha Yisrael, Goy Echad B’aretz. They say this is the parchment that’s in the tephilin of God. So the two come together. And I think it gives us a little bit of a license to say this is an important moment. And the moment when the social structure was set and the Cohen gadol represented this social structure was when God became God and the children of Israel, the tribes of Israel, became a people. That’s my read this year. But in any case, it’s very powerful.
Adam Mintz [19:03 – 19:29]: No, I want to take one second about, you know, he traveled the distance it takes 500 years to traverse. You know, when. When they say something like that, it’s just remarkable, right? Because obviously it’s, you know, they’re telling a story that it’s tried to try to draw you in, to realize how remarkable and how miraculous this whole event is. It’s interesting, the little tricks they use to highlight how the miracle that’s going on.
Geoffrey Stern [19:30 – 20:23]: Yeah, I love it. And it also gets back to what I said before, when it said that the tribes had to be listed according to their stories. What they’re saying is, if I was reading it from a literary perspective, was that the stories that we’ve been reading covering the last 500 years are focused on this moment when the children of Israel, the person Israel, Jacob, become the tribes of Israel and they becomes, you know, there’s this beautiful. And I think it’s a Hasidic phrase or it comes from the Zohar, not way back from the Mishnah, that there’s the God, the Torah and the people. And here is where the people are being created and kind of institutionalized. I just love this.
Adam Mintz [20:24 – 20:32]: The Torah and the people. You might say in Dvar Torah, that God and Torah come together in the people.
Geoffrey Stern [20:32 – 20:37]: I agree. I love it. I was surprised if it only came from the Zohar and it wasn’t older.
Adam Mintz [20:37 – 20:43]: But that’s another where it was written. This is the kind of thing that God Told Moses on Mount Sinai.
Geoffrey Stern [20:43 – 23:46]: I agree, I agree. So now let’s go to our new friend Cassuto. And Cassuto says when he talks about serves as stones of remembrance for the children of Israel, a memorial and symbol that the priest ministers in the name of the tribe of Israel. This shall be the dominion upon his shoulder. And he compares it to a verse in Isaiah. Rabbi, it’s the Ol Malchut Shemayim. It’s that yoke (of heaven) that is on (his shoulders). He really brings it into. We’ll see even more so in a second into this sense that in these vestments this had to be on the shoulders. This had to be connected on both sides of the shoulders. This the yoke that Aaron had to wear. And Aaron shall bear their names before the Lord upon his two shoulders for remembrance. Later on, Cassuto goes even further, because if you noticed, when we read it, it was at the beginning it talked about the 12 tribes. And it finished talking about the 12 tribes. So Cassuto in Exodus 28:21 says, and the stone shall be according to Ya’ll, the names of the children of Israel. Twelve stones according to the number of their names, that is, of the tribes. And at each of them shall be inscribed the name of a tribe, like the engravings of a singet ring. Every one according to his name, that is, every tribe would appear according to its name. So shall the 12 stones be correlated to the 12 tribes. Cassuto is is emphasizing the word tribes here. The symbolism of the engraving of the names on the stones of the pouch has the same significance as the engraving of the stones on the sochem stones of the shoulderpiece of the ephod. He says it’s duplicate. The duplication, however, should occasion no surprise, for in such matters, repetition is not eschewed. To this day, it is customary in synagogues to depict the tribes in a number of illustrations on windows, lamps, the doors of the holy Ark and the like. More. However, the second set of engravings is not redundant. The names inscribed on the Socham stones face upward and are only before God. And it is not easy for a person standing in front of the priest to read them. To be read easily, the names must be engraved on an upright plane confronting the eyes, like those on the priest’s breast. These are not only before the Lord, but also before men. So Cassuto, what he’s saying is not only is duplication of something this important, not surprising, but the words are written and oriented in such a way that you can make an argument that in the first part, they’re oriented towards God. And in the second they’re oriented towards men, so that men looking at this priest could read it. It’s really a bridge. It’s a powerful bridge.
Adam Mintz [23:47 – 24:17]: Let me just say we saw the word Zikaron that was said twice in that verse for remembrance. It might be that Cassuto is playing off of that, that the first remembrance is for the people, that the people can read it. The second remembrance is for God, means the duplication is in the word in the Torah. He doesn’t say that, but he talks about duplication. The word Zikaron, remembrance is duplicated. That might be where he gets his whole thing from, from. It’s brilliant.
Geoffrey Stern [24:17 – 25:17]: Yeah. Well, what I thought about this year is that normally we are. So I guess the value of the semi precious stones, the beauty, it’s candy, the orum vitumim and we get sidetracked and we forget the functionality. And I don’t think you can make any case besides saying that this was having Aaron, who was this priestly caste. And certainly the Jews came out of Egypt and they knew what priests were capable of and they didn’t necessarily have to represent the people here. In no uncertain terms, he’s representing every one of the individuals in those 12 tribes. And I think that’s a lesson that you don’t have to be Darshan, you don’t have to stretch very hard. It’s peshat. It is what the most basic function of this breastplate on the priest would be and would tell us.
Adam Mintz [25:18 – 25:19]: Good, that’s great.
Geoffrey Stern [25:20 – 25:28]: So I said we were going to talk a little bit about a scholar that I discovered. I’m going to hold up his book. Rabbi, this is not a thin book.
Adam Mintz [25:29 – 25:30]: That’s a serious book.
Geoffrey Stern [25:30 – 31:07]: This is a thousand page book. And Norman Gottwald was a Christian scholar of the Old Testament. He also was considered a Marxist. But the reason he was considered a Marxist rabbi was because he looked at two important points when he analyzed the social, I would say, construction of the people of Israel. One was modes of production. He wanted to know what had changed in the world that led to this revolution. And the second was social organization and the stratification of that social organization. And he really believed, and we can buy some of it or none of it or all of it. But his argument is as follows. And it fits nicely into what other academics were saying, which is not necessarily. Were all the people that made up the tribes of Israel, did they come out of Egypt? There might have been resident groups, tribes if you will, in the Holy Land, but something happened archeologically. They found Structures broken down, people just kind of spread out. What we think of in terms of the falling of the walls of Jericho, they actually discovered there was some sort of disruption from a mode of technology and from a way of earning a living. What they found was that in this arid place, the people discovered cisterns where they were able to gather water. Any of those of you who have gone to Megiddo or have gone to Masada are aware of that. And then they also made terraces on the hills that would enable them to go up to the hills of Yehuda and Shomron and elsewhere and be able to cultivate land that had previously not been cultivated. But what he says is, and this kind of ties into the midrash, he talks about the group of Levite priests. If you remember, in the beginning, Moses is told to go and pick of his brother. And he’s all excited because he’s thinking, we’re one of the tribes. And God says, no, no, no, this is your brother. You’re going to be the tribeless, or I should say the tribe that has no property and is the glue that unites. You have cities around all of the country. You are the teachers. You are the ones who bring these 500 years of stories to these disparate tribes. But his argument is that all of these tribes were put together, and the social structure that they came up with, Rabbi, was radical. In other words, we just look at it. Maybe we’re colored by the fact that we belong in the United States of America. And we think it’s obvious that you have disparate people that are united, separate but united. We forget that the EU is still struggling with doing that. And who knows how long the United States are going to stay united. He compares the 12 tribes to the Greek city states. And he says, in the Greek city states, you had cities, not tribes. And what he means by that is when you have cities, you have structures, you have islands, you have physical things that are keeping you together. The tribes didn’t have that. And then you’re allowed. The Greeks had different religions on Sparta than they did in Athens, than they did elsewhere here. The tribes were united by one ideology. The confederacy was the primal legal community. It was military. We see this all the time. We saw it last week where the tribes are united to go into war. We see it with the two and a half tribes who didn’t want to come into the land. It was the military. And he talks about these societal things of helping, of lending without interest. And what he argues, Rabbi, is that one of the Most radical things. Actually, for him, the most radical thing he dedicated his life to, it was the structure of the tribes. And I promised you that I’d end with Ruby Rivlin. When Ruby Rivlin, the President of Israel, realized 10 years ago when he made a speech is that Israel used to be simple. It used to have a majority and three or four minorities. And he looked at the demographics and he realized, he says, all you have to do is go to kindergarten and you will find that now there are four tribes. There’s the secular Jews, the national religious, the Arabs, and the Haredim. And they’re all coming in equal. Equal. And I would argue that the same thing has happened in elections everywhere. There’s no majority anymore. It’s easier when you have a ruling majority and you have a hierarchy. And what I will argue today is, Rabbi, that This model of 12 equal tribes is not only radical then, it’s radical now. And we have a lot to learn now from the Torah because it is looking at this society through new lenses. And it’s a lens that is ancient, but we might need it now. How do we live together when there’s no majority? How do we adjudicate differences? I just found it fascinating.
Adam Mintz [31:07 – 31:33]: It is fascinating. And that’s the idea of tribal cooperation and how people could live together, how nations can live together. And that’s the politics of today. How can the United States live with other countries who are their own tribes, like the EU and, you know, and NATO and all those things? It’s all really, in a sense, tribal and how one deals with the other. This is a fascinating topic.
Geoffrey Stern [31:34 – 31:52]: I think it gives us a license to look at the Torah now with new eyes and as a way to use it as we go forward with all the moral codes and all the legislation to say, wow, what were they trying to do? And I think it’s a whole new lens on that. So thank you so much.
Adam Mintz [31:52 – 31:57]: Amazing. And don’t forget the fancy French women who rode on the horses.
Geoffrey Stern [31:57 – 31:59]: Perfect. You got it.
Adam Mintz [31:59 – 32:03]: Fantastic. Thanks and Shabbat Shalom, everybody. We’ll see you next week before Purim.