The Weekly Sedra – Parshas Masei

The Rebbe says:

1. This week’s Torah portion discusses how the Land of Israel should be divided up between all the Twelve Tribes,.

2. The Rebbe now asks the first of two questions regarding this:

We find two contradictory instructions regarding the division of the Land of Israel. On one hand the Torah tells us that the land shall be split up logically, as the verse states, “To the many you shall increase its inheritance and to the few shall you decrease its inheritance”. However on the other hand we find that the Torah tells us to split the land according to a lottery which is above logic and reason, as the verse states, “This is the land which you shall divide by inheritance as a lottery”.

How can we reconcile these two opposing directives?

3. The Rebbe now asks the second question:

Rashi (an acronym for Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki) describes the lottery for us and tells us that the names of the Tribes were written on twelve different tickets, and twelve areas described in terms of their boundaries were written on twelve other tickets, and Elazar the Kohen would be wearing the Urim VeTumim (the High Priest’s breastplate) and would say by the Holy Spirit (Ruach Hakodesh), “If such-and-such Tribe comes up in the lottery, such-and-such a demarcated area shall come up with him”.

The obvious question is, if Elazar the Kohen already decided which Tribes should get which plots of land, why was there a need for a lottery?

4. The Rebbe begins to explain:

We will understand all of the above by first discussing and understanding the three elements of the Torah:

The Torah is described as 1) an inheritance, 2) a sold object, and 3) a gift. Each one of these elements of the Torah will be easily understood once we analyze the simple meaning of an inheritance, a sale, and a gift.

Inheritance is something which does not depend on the situation of the inheritor, as the Mishnah states, “A child of one day old can inherit his due portion”. An object which was bought obviously had to have been paid for by the buyer. Moreover, in these two areas of an inheritance and a sale, the one getting the object has to have a connection and a relationship to it; the inheritor is a relative to the one giving the inheritance, and the buyer exchanged his own money for the object.

However this is not the case with a gift. With a gift it is possible that the one receiving the gift has no connection to the one giving the gift and he is only receiving it because of the giver’s great kindness.

So too with the Torah, there are these three different aspects:

1) There is the part of Torah which is an inheritance to every single Jew, as it says, “Moses commanded us the Torah, an inheritance of the congregation of Jacob”, and therefore, being that every Jew is a part of the congregation of Jacob he automatically inherits the Torah.
2) There is the part of Torah which is sold to us and this is the understanding that we have in Torah; just like you must work to buy an object that is for sale, so too with understanding the Torah, we must work to understand it.
In other words, these two parts of the Torah are dependent on the person; it comes as a result of who we are (an inheritor) or as a result of our minds capabilities (a buyer). (This is just like we said regarding a normal inheritance and sale).
3) There is however a part of Torah which is a gift to us from above which is not like the other two parts of Torah; this part of Torah is not dependent on us, it is a gift from Hashem, and therefore this level is higher than our limitations.
This third aspect of the Torah is also called “a lottery”; just like a gift is something which is not dependent on the understanding of the receiver, so too a lottery is something which is not dependent on the understanding of the receiver.

5. The Rebbe continues the journey of answering the above questions by continuing this discussion:

Even though a gift is given solely from the giver and is not dependant on any work from the receiver, our Sages still tell us that, “If he (the giver) had not received any previous benefit from him (the receiver), he (the giver) wouldn’t have given him a gift”. In other words, the receiver did do something for the giver, however this only caused the giver to have good feelings toward the receiver, it didn’t force the giver to give him a present and he (the receiver) cannot demand this gift because of the benefit he gave him (the giver).

The same is true with the level of Torah which is a gift: First we must do all that we can in order to cause a good feeling towards us from Hashem, and only then does Hashem wish to give us a gift which is higher than any of our limitations. A proof to this can be found in the words of our Sages who say that when Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses our teacher) went up to receive the Torah he would learn Torah and forget what he learned time after time until the Torah was given to him as a gift. In other words, first Moshe Rabbeinu had to do all that he could on his own, and only after that did Hashem give him a gift.

This is also true regarding a lottery: Our Sages tell us that if a lottery is done honestly and properly Divine Providence will assure that the lot falls correctly. In other words, even though the lottery is being drawn with Divine Providence, we still need to first draw it honestly and properly.

6. The Rebbe now finishes off and answers the questions:

Now we can understand why the division of Eretz Yisroel (the Land of Israel) had to be done specifically by lottery:

The Torah states that the Land of Israel is a land which, “The eyes of the L-rd your G-d are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year”. In other words, Eretz Yisroel is a land in which G-dliness shines and is revealed there without the concealments of this physical world.

Now, for there to be a place in this physical and coarse world where G-dliness is revealed and shines brightly this is surely not due to our achievements but as a gift from Above, as our Sages tell us, “Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai said, the Holy One Blessed is He gave three good gifts to the Jewish people, the Torah, the Land of Israel, and the world to come”. This being the case, the division of the Land of Israel also had to be done according to lottery which is higher than logic and is a gift from Hashem.

Also, just as we explained earlier that the level of gift and lottery in the Torah only comes after the work of the person, so too here, the lottery of the division of the Land of Israel only came after Hashem told them to work; “To the many you shall increase its inheritance and to the few shall you decrease its inheritance”.

Translated and adapted by Shalom Goldberg. Taken from Likutei Sichoc volume 13, first Sicha.