Reuben, Where Art Thou?

 

“Today,” Moses tell the Israelites, “you have become the people of the Lord your God” (Deut 27:9) Our Rabbis asked: What did he mean by “today”? Wasn’t Israel chosen to be God’s own people forty years earlier, at Mount Sinai? There God had told the Israelites that if they accepted to keep the terms of His covenant—that is, to obey the laws included in the Torah—then, “You will be My treasured possession [chosen] from among all peoples (since the whole land is Mine); you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod 19:5-6).

 

In fact, even before that time, had not God already chosen the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as His own? The song that Moses sings in Deuteronomy 32 (Ha’azinu) seems to state that this special status went back even earlier, to the time when God was first assigning different territories to various peoples; apparently, that was when Israel became “the Lord’s portion… Jacob [became] His own allotment” (Deut 32:9). If so, why does Moses say in this week’s reading that “Today you have become the people of the Lord”?

 

The Rabbis’ answer was simple. What Moses meant was, “Let each and every day be for you as if you had just entered into a covenant with Him.” In other words, it was not enough that your ancestors had accepted to be His people (with all the laws and commandments that this involved), but each and every day you ought to renew this commitment by reciting the Shema morning and evening and keeping the other laws of the Torah.

 

In order to make the matter clearer and more concrete, immediately after this Moses told the Israelites that when they arrived at the city of Shechem, they were to recite a series of blessings and curses. Six of the tribes were to go up Mount Gerizim for the blessings, and six on the facing mountain, Mount Ebal, for the curses. (The Torah lists only the curses, which included some of the most serious transgressions in ancient Israel; perhaps the blessings were bestowed on those who refrained from committing these offenses.) The offenses thus included making a carved or molten image for purposes of secret worship; insulting one’s parents (the opposite of honoring father and mother); moving someone’s landmark or boundary stone; and so on.

 

There is one curiosity connected to the tribes that were assigned to stand on the two mountains. The six assigned to the “blessings” mountain, Mount Gerizim, were Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. Those assigned to the “curses” mountain, Mount Ebal, were Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphthali.

 

The mystery here is Reuben. After all, he was Jacob’s firstborn son, the one who consequently heads the list of most biblical genealogies. Shouldn’t his tribe have been honored by being assigned to Mount Gerizim, standing next to those of his closest brothers, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, all of them descended (as Reuben was) from Jacob’s first wife, Leah?

 

Ah, but Reuben had committed a grave offense, sleeping with Bilhah, his father’s concubine. How then, the Rabbis asked, could his tribe be allowed to stand on the “blessings” mountain, when their ancestor had violated precisely one of the gravest offenses listed among the “curses,” “Cursed be he who lies with his father’s wife, since he has exposed his father’s garment” (Deut 28:20). For that reason, they said, his tribe was assigned to Mount Ebal.

 

Shabbat shalom!