מטות - מסעי

Since we had some success with me just throwing out a question last time, I’ll try that again this week. For some of these I have some ideas, and for some I will be trying to figure it out along with you. For all of them, I would love to hear your thoughts, and will share some of the responses here on the blog.

• Hashem commands the people to avenge the Midyanim, and destroy them. Besides the larger (too large for now) issue of warfare in the torah, the verb “nekom” automatically brings to mind the prohibition of “Lo tikom” – that we are forbidden to take revenge. In fact, we know that Hashem describes himself as a “Kel kana v’nokem” – a God of vengeance. And that we are implored to follow n His ways (v’halachta b’drachav”). How can we align God’s vengeance, as well as our mandated vengeance when properly commanded, with the general prohibition against nekama?
  
• On the issue of the 2½ tribes who stay on the other side of the Jordan , see this http://www.vbm-torah.org/parsha.58/42mm.htm article by Rabbi Nati Helfgott (which I haven’t yet read, but building off of an older Tradition article that I enjoyed).
  
• I once had a conversation with someone about the Midrash that the mother of the Kohen Gadol would go to the arei miklat with milk and cookies (so to speak) to try to keep the captives from praying that her son die. (Of course, the accidental killers in the cities of refuge were obligated to stay there until the death of the Kohen Gadol.) He thought that the message was how easily we are distracted by trivial desires away from what is truly important. These people were imprisoned in the cities, away from their homes, and their quest to escape would be undercut by some snacks.
  While I think this is an important message, I took something different from the Midrash. It is easier to only daven for your own self-interest when the person who might suffer from the fulfillment of your request is only abstract (I want to get into college, not I want her place in college). By visiting the refugees, the Kohen Gadol’s mother humanized him. I understand that you are inconvenienced, the man whose demise you are wishing for is real, with a mother who loves him. That makes it far more difficult to trivialize his potential death. We see this all the time whether it be in holocaust studies or modern PR for any number of causes.
  What do you take from the Midrash?
  
• The Gemara in Bava Batra (119b) states that the b’not Tzelafchad were “Chachmaniyot, Darshaniyot and Tzidkaniyot.” Chachmaniyot because they waited to approach Moshe until he was learning the subject of inheritance. Darshaniyot because they made the following argument: If we (daughters) count, give us a nachala, if not, let our mother do Yibum. Tzidkaniyot because they only married people who were worthy. Then it says that none of them married until they were over forty. What is this all about? I'll tell you that my theory is built off of a Gemara earlier in the same perek that says that someone who marries a woman should examine her brothers, because the sons are like the mothers' brothers. What do you think?