Hello and welcome to another episode of Covenant and Conversation with me, Rabbi Sachs.

In each new episode, we'll explore a Jewish idea from the Hebrew Bible based on the Torah reading of the week.

Matut priorities. The Israelites were almost within sight of the promised land. They'd

successfully waged their first battles. They'd just won a victory over the Midianites. There is a new

tone to the narrative. We no longer hear the querulous complaints that had been the base note of so

much of the wilderness years. We know why. That undertone was the sound of the generation born in

slavery that had left Egypt. By now, almost 40 years have passed. The second generation generation born in slavery that had left Egypt. By now almost 40 years have passed.

The second generation, born in freedom and toughened by conditions in the desert, have a more

purposeful feel about them. Battle tried, they no longer doubt their ability with God's help

to fight and win. Yet it is at just this point that a problem arises

different in kind from those that had gone before. The people as a whole of now have their

attention focused on the destination, the land west of the River Jordan, the place that even

the spies had confirmed to be flowing with milk and honey.

The members of the tribes of Ruvan and Gad, though, began to have different thoughts.

Seeing that the land through which they were travelling was ideal for raising cattle,

they decide that they'd prefer to stay there to the east of the Jordan and propose this to Moses.

Unsurprisingly, he's angry at the suggestion.

Moses said to the Gaddites and Ruvianites are your brothers to go to war while you stay here.

Why would you discourage the Israelites from going over into the land the Lord has given them?

He reminds them of the disastrous consequences of the earlier discouragement on the part of the spies.

The whole nation will suffer. This decision would show not only that they're ambivalent about God's gift of the land, but also that they have learned nothing from history.

The tribes don't argue with this claim. They accept its validity,

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