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220  forty-two Going Ahead Parashat Matot (Numbers 30:2–32:42) Lisa Edwards The peculiar relation between Camp taste and homosexuality has to be explained. While it’s not true that Camp taste is homosexual taste, there is no doubt a peculiar affinity and overlap. Not all liberals are Jews, but Jews have shown a peculiar affinity for liberal and reformist causes. So, not all homosexuals have Camp taste. But homosexuals, by and large, constitute the vanguard—and the most articulate audience —of Camp. This analogy is not frivolously chosen. Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense; they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony. —Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp” In the early years of resettlement in prestate Palestine, khalutzim, “pioneers,” founded the first kibbutz, Degania, in 1912 just east of the Jordan River.1 They borrowed the word khalutzim from our Parashat Matot (Num. 32) and, more significant to them, from its reappearance in the book of Joshua. In Joshua, the khalutzim—men of fighting age belonging to the tribe of Reuben, the tribe of Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh —make good on the promises they had made to Moses at the end of the book of Numbers: to be the vanguard troops, who go in front into the battles after the Israelites cross the Jordan. Once the conquering has happened, Joshua in turn makes good on the promises Moses made to these two and a half tribes: he lets them keep the rich allotments of land east of the Jordan, just outside the Promised Land, where they have already settled, raising their families and their cattle (see Num. 32 and Josh. 13). This high-powered negotiation happens in our parasha. As the book of Bemidbar (Numbers) nears its end, we find the Israelites encamped in the steppes of Moab, at the Jordan near Jericho, assessing their damages, booty, and captives after fighting against the Midianites. The forty years in the wilderness is also drawing to a close, as is the life of the Israelite leader Moses, though readers know that more battles await once the Israelites enter the Promised Land. With this lull in the action, the Gadite and Reubenite leaders come to Moses and other community leaders and ask to stay where they are rather than go to the Land: “it would be a favor to us if this land Parashat Matot 221 were given to your servants as a holding; do not move us across the Jordan” (32:5). Moses immediately suspects them: “Are your brothers to go to war while you stay here?” (32:6). The condemnation, threats, warnings, promises, and negotiations go on in some detail for most of the chapter, but an agreement is eventually reached. Moses does not live to see it fulfilled, but readers do, if we read beyond Torah and cross into the Promised Land ourselves by reading the book of Joshua, the first book of the next section of the Hebrew Bible, the Prophets. The Zionist pioneers/khalutzim, inspired by the Reubenites, Gadites, and half the tribe of Manasseh, take their story one significant step further. Though they too served as a vanguard, helping to protect settlements elsewhere; when they crossed the Jordan, they stayed in the Promised Land and helped to settle it instead of opting for the suburbs/diaspora as their ancestors had done. Bible scholar Robert Alter, among others, opts to translate the Hebrew khalutzim as “vanguard,” rather than the more familiar “shock-troops” or the more Israeli “pioneers .” Vanguard summons up more questions for us, coming as it does from avantgarde .2 Who are these people who lead the way, who push the boundaries—sometimes violently—making it safer for those who come after? How interesting that this vanguard only agreed to serve after Moses yells at them. Presumably they wanted to stay outside the Land, as many do, to remain in their “comfort zone.” All people need comfort, but there are times when we are—sometimes unwillingly —pressed into service. Just by being who we are, we may find that we are leading society in a new and necessary direction. Take the reluctant fighters of the Stonewall Rebellion, for example, who, legend has it, fought back only when their comfort zone was infringed upon, only when their well-being, and that of their community, was endangered...

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