Parshas Matos/Maasei - flatterers and cynics

In his book Torah Today (B’nai B’rith Books, 1987) Rabbi Pinchas Peli shares an interesting interpretation of a few verses in this week’s parsha that discuss how the Jewish people should treat accidental and deliberate killers, once they establish a sovereign nation in the land of Israel. We are first instructed: “Do not pollute the land in which you live, for the blood that was spilled in it …” (Numbers 35:33), while the next verse tells us: “Do not defile the land in which you live wherein I reside, for I God dwell among the children of Israel.” (35:34).  Rabbi Peli points out that the Hebrew words in the initial phrase in 35:33 can also be correctly translated as: “You should not flatter the land.”

Rabbi Peli suggests that, with the variant translation, we are presented with two dangerous approaches that we may take towards the people residing in the Land of Israel. Some of us may adopt a ‘flattering’ attitude that the Jews in Israel are always correct, justified, and morally upright, thereby ignoring critical failings and shortcomings that are bound to crop up in any group of people  – Jews included. On the other side there will be those of us who are prone to ‘defile’ the land, by unfailingly criticizing the Jewish government or people in Israel and focusing predominantly on any perceived or potential faults, without fair attention to the many redeeming qualities of the Jewish community. In both situations we lose size of the human realities of the Jewish people and their considerable merits.

Our task then is to love the land of Israel and our fellow Jews residing there, while being mindful that every human system is a ‘work in progress.’ We should note the times when our brothers and sisters in Israel fall short of our shared values but, as family members, we should voice our concerns cautiously and with an appreciation of their many merits and the difficult challenges they face.