Timeless Torah

It is certainly no accident that one of the two Biblical portions that we publicly read this week bears the name of Mattos. This section, always read during the Three Weeks wherein we mourn and re-experience the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash and the onset of Galus, carries with it a singular lesson for these trying times.
As is well known, the name of each section of Torah has significance. According to the mystical writings of the Shaloh, not only is the name thematic for the entire reading, it also is relevant to the Jewish calendar date with which it coincides.
Mattos, translated here as tribes, is used elsewhere in the Torah to mean staff or stick. Indeed, the word Mattos in our weekly reading is an anomaly. Usually the Hebrew word utilized for tribe is Shevet. What makes this even more curious is that upon consulting a Biblical dictionary you will discover that Shevet is also translated as stick, or more commonly, branch. So here we have two words for tribe, Mateh and Shevet; the first also meaning stick, the second, branch. Undoubtedly, you have already figured out that this too (like the name of the Biblical portion) is no accident.
The tribes of Israel are sometimes referred to as a Mateh (stick) and on other occasions as a Shevet (branch). But what exactly is the difference between the two? The gnarled stick has obviously traveled quite a distance from the tender green shoot it once was. Its supple spine has stiffened into a column of inflexibility, its porous skin has woodened into a core-deep hardness. The springy bough has become a stick.
But if the stick has paid the price for leaving home, it has also reaped the rewards. The tender shoot gained backbone and stature. It learned to stand its ground, and no longer be swayed by every passing wind and breeze. Its spell out in the cold toughened it and made it a force to be reckoned with. The tender sprig has solidified into a formidable staff.
The Torah has two names for the tribes of Israel: shevatim and mattot. Both names express that the tribes of Israel are limbs of the “Tree of Life,” offshoots of the supreme source of all life and being. But each represents a different state in the Jew’s relationship to his roots.
The Shevet Jew is still fastened to the Tree of Life with its life-juices coursing through his veins. The Shevet Jew is in a state of visible connection to G-d, sustained by a recognizable Divine involvement in his life. The Matteh Jew, on the other hand, has been uprooted from the tree. He is the Jew in exile, “A child banished from his father’s table” who wanders the cold and alien trails of Galus. Deprived of his supernal moorings, the Matteh Jew is compelled to develop his own resistance to the storms of life far from the ancestral forest that once nourished him.
This week’s Biblical portion occurs at the end of a forty year odyssey during which time the Israelites had experienced rebellion, strife, attacks, plagues, and a host of other calamities. The reading also coincides with the three saddest weeks of the calendar. The question at this juncture is, would the Jews be able to cope with the trials and tribulations of diaspora?
The Torah therefore uses in this section the term Matteh, for it informs us that we can endure. True we yearn for the day when we will once again be a fresh, vital branch united with our roots, but we now know that we have the inner strength of the hard staff. To use an American idiom, “We can stick it out.”