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✷ to be read on July 6th⎮ 30 Sivan ✷︎

Matot ("Tribes") begins with Moses describing the laws of oaths. The Israelites then battle with the Mdianites, allocating the spoils. The tribes of Reuben and Gad request to dwell outside of the Land of Israel. Masei ("Travels"), the final portion of the Book of Numbers, enumerates the places that the Israelites traveled in the desert. God tells Moses exactly where each tribe will live and clarifies the laws of murder. The daughters of Zelophehad receive their inheritance.

In response to Parashat Matot & Parashat Masei, Sam Shonkoff asks "How do we continue to embrace the Torah and proclaim that “all her paths are shalom (peace)”? For, as he observes, Matot begins with sexism and continues with genocide when thousands of Israelites invade Midian and kill every man and return with captured women, children, and treasure. Moreover, Moses is angry upon their return because his soldiers failed to sufficiently slaughter: he bids them to kill every captive who is a non-virgin female or a male child. Shonkoff resolves this conflict via a meditation on the true meaning of shalom, which he contends is etymologically rooted in the word shalem meaning "whole." The pursuit of shalom, he contends, begins in our effort to reconcile ourselves to the world and to reconcile the fragmented world onto itself. Hence his drash, while dated and insufficiently self-reflective in its reference to Darfur, offers a message about the capacity to abide in and with complexity if peace is to be had - a message perhaps sorely needed in this moment in which many find themselves conceiving of of conflict in terms of two opposed sides rather than a situation in which the possibility of peace requires the acknowledgment of mutual dependence.