Free Agency: Parshat Mattot-Mas'ei

Numbers 30:2-36:13

Sorry for the lack of post last week.

Also, I'll be posting my d'var for this week about the Torah portion, not the Haftarah.

Something very important for our people happened yesterday.

Last night at 9:27 pm, LeBron James made his announcement that he would be joining the Miami Heat, ending the weeks of speculation about what he would do with his free agency. He explained that he made his decision based on a variety of factors. In the end, LeBron said that he “had to make sure that [he] was making the right decision for no one else but [him]self.” LeBron found himself at the end of this last NBA season in a state of free agency. A basketball player temporarily without a home. No contract. No team.

Many cities tried to court him to their court, each one offering him a contract and provisions and most likely promises that he could be most successful there. The championship that has eluded him for seven years, they would tell him, would become a sure reality. In the end, LeBron would have to pick the place that he felt was the best fit, for him to be successful.

Free agency happens when a contract expires and players are free to look around for better places to play. Places that are a better fit.

Though I am not sure basketball was on their minds, the tribes of Gad, Reuven and one-half of the tribe of Manasseh ask to be made free agents in their covenant with God in the midst of this week’s Parasha. 'Let us live on the east side of the Jordan,' they ask Moses. 'The land here is better for our cattle, and we are, after all, cattlemen. We know that the land on the other side of the Jordan is great and all, but we feel we can be most successful here. We will thrive here. We will survive here. We want to live here. We love our homeland, but this is better for us. We have to make the right decision for us.'

Like any good Team Owner, Moses contemplates this and realizes he now has a bargaining chip. If you want to be free agents, he tells them, you have to promise that you will first cross the Jordan River and help your brothers to conquer the land. “Are your brothers to go to war while you stay here?” (Num. 32:6) Essentially, Moses is asking for a guarantee that the tribes of Gad, Reuven and the half-tribe of Manasseh carry out the terms of their already existent contract. They have to enter the land. They have to make their way into the land and fight alongside their brothers. Once that has been accomplished, they, in essence, become free agents in the land grab of Canaan.

LeBron had a big decision to make. Should he stay in Cleveland, his home team and home town, or should he utilize his free agent status and go elsewhere? By asking to live outside of the boundaries of the Land of Israel that are established in this parasha, are these two and a half tribes being disloyal to the home team? Will the other 9.5 tribes be burning their jerseys and calling them traitors and narcissists?

Do we need to live in Israel in order to be a part of the Jewish people?

Back then, the answer from Moses was a qualified no: 'you can live on the other side of the Jordan, but you need to be here for us when we need you.’ Do we get the same consideration these days? When we go to Israel, do we get the sense that people there feel we are less than what we could be, because we have made a choice to live outside the boundaries of the land? Do we feel that way about ourselves?

When my family moved away from Israel in my infancy, my uncle railed against my father telling him that his children would grow up not knowing Judaism, not having Jewish homes and not having a connection to their past. Well, it is clear that my uncle was mistaken. Without going into a deep family tree, I will simply tell you that between me and my siblings and our cousins, my brother, sister and I are perhaps the most connected to our Judaism, though there is still a stigma for living abroad. Living in Galut, living in the diaspora or in exile is looked down upon by many.

The Israeli author A. B. Yehoshua caused an uproar when, in Washington DC 2006, he proclaimed that the future of the Jewish people was only in Israel. He claimed that diaspora Jews were merely playing at Judaism. Interestingly, he also commented that his identity had little to do with Judaism per se, but was rather based entirely on the fact that he was Israeli. He believes that Jews in Israel lead a more fully Jewish life than is possible in the diaspora.

One of the problems with that statement has to do with what it understands as the definition of what means to be Jewish. In Israel, there is one way to do Judaism, well two. Secular and Religious. Though Reform and other liberal, humanist, and modern understandings of Judaism have made inroads in Israel, it is largely in the absence of Israel’s influence that religious variety and a spectrum of creativity, belief and understanding has flourished. Babylonia, Spain, Germany and the United States should all be credited with expanding the notions of what Judaism means and how it can function.

The extreme opposite end of the spectrum, the anti-Yehoshua statement might even say that the ingathering of exiles has destroyed the variety of Jewish voices and customs, opting for the one Israeliness that Yehoshua values above all others. Much of Judaism’s greatest achievements have come from diaspora communities. And, in fact, it is only because of the diaspora that Judaism was able to reinvent itself again and again to remain a powerful force for morality, justice, and law. When Judaism exists in a variety of milieus, it benefits from the best those places have to offer. When Judaism exists in one place, particularly in a place with a narrow understanding of what Judaism means, it has a possibility of suffocation.

What Moses understood, unlike A. B Yehoshua seems to by his 2006 statement, is that both sides of the Jordan are important. The variety of voices lends to a creativity and vibrancy in Judaism that cannot be paralleled. When the Gadites, the Reuvenites and half of the Mannashites ask to stay where they can be of the most success and the most good, it is good for the entirety of the people. They do not ask to be cut off from their brethren. They just want to play for another city.

Free agency allows the player to go where they are best suited, where they can be the most successful, and ultimately, where they can thrive. A league with one team might win all the championships, but it certainly isn’t very meaningful.

Shabbat Shalom.

Chazak, Chazak v'Nitchazek!