The Midbar: Osage County
Some weeks, the professional Exegesis Man lacks for worthy material. A bunch of ritual sacrifices may be on tap, or a recapitulation of curses should the Israelites sway. The EM reaches and preaches, and eventually he scrapes a ditty together.
Such is not a malady that afflicts the TGH-er confronted with this week's portion. Or portions. The reading of Chukat-Balak is chockablock with stories like Raisin Bran is filled with raisins. Forget two scoops; we got five scorchers. Do we want Moses committing a mysterious mistake as he seeks to provide rock-based water? (Last
year's Chukat episode.) The fabulist, almost satiric story of a talking donkey persuading a prophet to switch up his curses? (Balak, c. 2022.) Or any of a host of other tails. Er, tales.
We're going to get into one of said stories this week — a lesser-covered incident that nonetheless is rich with meaning and evocative of a wayback story. Before we do, let us remind that subscribing a friend to this here newsletter is the best thing you can do for them this hour. Perhaps even this day. So go ahead, do that.
Didn't that feel good? Now let’s figure out what’s happening with Moses making a request of another nation with more politeness than a high-school senior at his prom date's house.
Pack up the mule, Chukat-Balak shall rule. Lessgo!
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Now let's say someone presented you these lines without any particular context.
"This is your brother. You know all the hardship I've been through. I've been exiled and suffered for a long time. God, bless Him, finally rescued me. But I need a small favor. Do you think you can help me?”
Who would you say is talking? And who would you say they're talking to? Any number of possibilities come to mind of course, but pretty much all of them are in the vein of a family member or close friend who had come upon hard times and is now reaching out for help, leaning on a shared history they hope will serve them in this moment of need.
What definitely does not come to mind is the Israelites asking for land passage through the Edomites’ territory, with said foreign enemies blocking their path to Canaan.
Yet this is exactly what Moses sends emissaries to say in Chapter 20 of Numbers in the portion of Chukat. "Ko amar achicha Yisrael" (“So says your brother Israel”), it begins in Verse 14 "atah yadahta et kol ha'telah'ah asher m'tzatanu" (“you know all the troubles in which we found ourselves”). And then goes on to recount the hardships of Egyptian slavery and ask for passage.
An oddly friendly and familiar request given that it's being made of a group that has never been aligned with Israel in any way, and is certainly unlikely to want to buddy up to them now, hearing about all the destruction that seems to follow them. The only connection between these two peoples is that many hundreds of years before the Edomites descended from Esau, Jacob's brother. Hardly anything that should matter to these folks. And it's not like those two were the paradigm of brotherly love to begin with.
No, more likely the Edomite leaders, Republicans and Democrats and Independents, will eye this request warily, as a threat. Which is precisely what they do, responding with almost Chuck Norris-ian ferocity in Verse 18. "Lo ta'avor ki pen ba'cherev eitzei li'kratecha" — "you will not pass unless you want us to greet you with swords." The Israelites try again, at which point the Edomites do come out with swords, putting a quick end to that.
And the question many commentators — and even casual readers — are left with: What exactly was Moses relying on here to try to get this request approved? Many other beseechments were made for land passage from enemy nations and did not involve a call to family. So what was Moses doing here? What possible point could he be hoping to score by citing a tenuous family connection?
The Midrash Tanchuma, that collection of Aggadaic material dating as far back as the 8th century, has a creative interpretation:
"This whole subject is comparable to two brothers against whose grandfather a promissory note appeared," the Midrash says. Citing the decree that Abraham's children were fated to be slaves in Egypt — which, the Midrash presumes, was known to these descendants — it continues. "One of them arose and paid it. One day he decided to ask a favor from his brother, and he said to him, ‘You know that debt was
incumbent on both of us, right?’ But it was I who paid it. So do not refuse my favor now.’”
Kind of an audacious move, innit? "You all should have been slaves too, by God's decree, and you weren't. We were," is what Moses is saying, according to the Tanchuma. "We took a bullet for you. So it's only fair you lend us a hand after all we've been through on your behalf."
Or, put more simply: "You owe us."
The Bechor Shor, in contrast, explains this in a very different way.
"The Israelites were presenting their case the way a man tells his loved ones his troubles and his happenings so that he might pay attention and pity him," writes the 12th-century French Tosafist.
Kind of a...humble move. "We know we don't have any real claim to go through your land. But we're relatives, and we've gone through some rough stuff, and please, please, don’t turn your back on a relative who's been through some rough stuff."
Or, put more simply: “You should feel sorry for us.”
These two paths — both at least plausible in the text, both extremely different in reality — evoke some of the great family dramas of our time. Because in almost every family drama one family member needs something from another. And their attempt to get it usually falls under one of these two categories.
An entry to the family-drama genre that has always been a favorite of Mr. TGH’s is "August: Osage County." The writer-actor Tracy Letts won a Pulitzer in 2007 for his layered Oklahoma-set drama. A movie directed by John Wells appeared in 2013.
Set at the literary Weston home during a sweltering Oklahoma summer, the film has Vi Weston, Meryl Streep's sick and sharp-tongued matriarch, mourning the death of her husband, alcoholic poet Bev, after he takes his own life early in the film. (Mourning the Vi way, which generally means unleashing sharp insults on unsuspecting family members).
The greatest object of her vitriol and the film's biggest tension point involves Barbara, Vi's eldest daughter, played by Julia Roberts, who has returned home after her father’s death. Nearly two decades earlier, Barbara moved to Colorado to start a family with her academic husband, either criminally abandoning Vi (Vi's opinion) or healthily re-starting a life a safe distance away (Barb's opinion).
Throughout the film — right up to its harrowing last scenes — Vi wants Barbara to stay in Osage County, looking after her as she deteriorates mentally and physically. She is not above playing the sympathy card, noting her addictions, her cancer and, now, her widowhood. She is also not above another tactic — pointedly noting the many years Barbara has been away while her younger sister Ivy has remained. "I'm scared, and you are a comfort, sweetheart,” " Vi says to Ivy at one point, in a message meant just as much for Barbara. “Thank God one of my girls stayed close to home."
She takes, in other words, both the Bechor Shor and the Tanchuma's approach to our portion. She exaggerates her condition to induce guilt — she wants her daughter to feel bad for her. This is the Bechor Shor, who sees in the Israelites' actions a sympathy play to their estranged relative.
But Vi also believes she is owed one — 'another sibling paid her debt, now it's time for you to take out the checkbook,' she is telling Barbara. It is, in a perfect nutshell, what the Tanchuma believes the Israelites are saying to their Edomite sibling.
This is a striking through-line — the exact two ways to read what an alienated family member subtly wants from another in Chukat is followed equally and exactly by the two ways a family member tries to gain leverage in “August: Osage County.” Times changes, circumstances arise. But throughout history, our portion lays out and our movie confirms, there are two main ways for self-interested people to get what they want from relatives who are not giving it to them. And neither works out very well.
Vi, after all, is seen at the film’s end crying on the stairs in her home alone; with Barbara (and Ivy) leaving she has not gotten what she wanted and instead must brave the desert (emotional and, given the rural Oklahoma setting, kind of literal). And the Israelites, well, of course they don’t get what they want and are left to brave the desert too.
I think what our portion is indicating is what the movie is indicating: that when a family foundation is flawed, very little can repair it. That when the relationships are based on self-interest — once the dynamic centers on manipulations and machinations — nothing good can come of it.
Now, it seems like maybe that shouldn’t be the case with Israel and Edom. Because the last we heard about these two confronting each other, they actually came away in pretty good shape. Back in the portion of Va'yishlach, there was a very similar encounter when Jacob and Esau met. Like, an eerily similar one. "Va'yishlach Moshe malachim mi'Kadesh el melech Edom...ko amar achica," our portion says. "Va'yishlach Ya'akov malachim l'fanav el Eisav achiv...ko amar av'dcha Yaa'kov," the portion of Vayishlach in Genesis 32 says.
One need not be a Hebrew linguist to see the similarities. The same verbs, nouns, sentence structure — really only the proper names change. "And Moses sent emissaries form Kadesh to the king of Edom...'this is what your brother Israel says’” mirrors almost perfectly, "And Jacob sent emissaries in front of him to Esau his brother...this is what your servant Jacob says."
Throughout the episodes the same key words appear in both, like how Jacob “avar l'ifneihem," passes in front of his camp to get to Esau, the way the Israelites say they want to "na'avor g'vulecha," pass across his descendants' borders to get to Canaan. And of course in both cases the specter of war hovers.
Everything about the situations line up , thematically and lexically. Our text in Numbers seems very much to want us to compare the two episodes, again and again drawing our eye from this showdown between nations back to the episode in Genesis when their two progenitors faced off.
The Bible scholar and anthropologist Mary Douglas is among several commentators who picks up on the connection, noting "When the brothers embrace, Esau forgives Jacob the old wrong and they part with exchange of gifts. So when Moses greets Edom with a message from 'your brother Israel,' when he humbly accepts Edom's rebuff, when he concedes to Edom by going round his territory, he is re-enacting the patriarch's encounter with his brother."
I think that’s well observed. But I’d ask, to what end? Our text now seems to be saying that none of that earlier harmony is counting for much. Sure, the relationship between the avatar of Israel and the avatar of Edom was briefly better after the moment in Genesis. But as we pick things up again, our text is telling us here in Numbers, the situation is reverting. It is reverting to how it began — with Jacob grabbing Esau's heel/ blessing and Esau seeking to kill his brother. The hundreds-year peace is devolving into the war that Jacob feared all those years ago.
Yes, when a family foundation is flawed, this Chukat episode is indicating, very little can repair it. When family relationships are based on self-interest — once the dynamic centers on manipulations and machinations — nothing good can come of it. As it was from the beginning with Jacob and Esau. As it continues to be for the Israelites seeking something from the Edomites now.
Because whether the Israelites were using sympathy or obligation strtaegies with the Edomites — whichever, really, of Vi's twin tactics they went with —they were already in a fundamentally dysfunctional dynamic that, like that of the film’s characters, was bound not to succeed.
(There is a slight reprieve to all this in Deuteronomy, when God commands the Israelites not to hate the Edomite because “he is your brother.” But as Rashi notes, "don't hate him completely.” No, this is a flawed relationship — this is a Vi and Barbara relationship — and can never be truly fixed.)
Seems neat and tidy. We have our downward trajectory. Ah, but it turns out this is not the only instance of sibling dynamics in our portion. The chapter of the Edomite tension, Chapter 20, is bracketed by the narration of two seemingly random events. The Torah begins the section by telling us that Miriam dies. A rather strange way to kick off a chapter that contains within it the hitting of the rock and then the Edomite passage story.
And it ends with an equally strange event — Aaron dying. God commands Moses to walk Aaron up to a mountain and say goodbye. Another seemingly irrelevant moment in a chapter that has very little to do with Aaron at all.
But think about what Aaron and Miriam have gone through with Moses. Just a couple portions back, in Numbers 12, the pair spoke ill of Moses’ wife, resulting in tension between them and their brother. It would seem to have fractured the relationship. But then look what happens right after that — Moses prays for Miriam. After all the insults, he stands up for his big sister. “El nah r’fah nah lah,’ he says in 12:13. And they are reconciled. And shortly after that, Moses and Aaron stand up to Korach’s rebellion with a united front. And they are reconciled. The siblings’ foundation is strong, and thus even a great rift between them cannot destroy it.
And so what I think the subtextual message of Chapter 20 is brought to completion. “Edom and Israel’s sibling relationship is a fractured one, and no amount of goodwill or seeming peace can ever repair it. But Moses and his siblings’ relationship is fundamentally healthy, and no amount of tension can ever break it.”
By bringing together all these dynamics in one chapter, Miriam and Aaron bracketing a story of Edom and Israel, our text is drawing the contrast, and teaching the paradigm. It’s saying the Israelites and Edomites were a little “August: Osage County.” That’s why they couldn’t connect — that’s why siblings for the rest of time who act that way can never connect. But the Israelites also had sound relationships within them — they had sibling relationships based on selflessness. And that can withstand the deepest difficulties. The house don’t fall when the bones are good.
Finally, we're a topical bunch here at TGH and we'd be remiss if we didn't mention the holiday soon coming. Because what was the U.S.’s fight for independence from England but a rift between family members not unlike that which we have here — between colonists who wanted to wander freely and a sibling/parent who didn’t want to let them go.
And much like the stories of Israel-Edom and Vi-Barbara, that led to some pretty intense strife. But it also led to harmony in the end. It led to Moses and his siblings.
You’d think the relationship between a country and its former colonizer would carry over a lot of tension to the present day; certainly that’s true in much of the world. Not so much with the U.S. and the U.K. The two eventually became close allies. The foundation was there. And like Moses and his siblings, it could ultimately withstand the strife.
This July 4th, I wish you and your family many of the dynamics of Moses-Aaron-Miriam, and a lot less of Barbara and Ivy.
Have a great weekend, a wonderful holiday and thank you, as ever, for reading.