Parshat Matot-Masei
If you’re an NFL kicker, how do you simulate the pressure of walking out for a game-winning field goal? There is a strategy for this. The special teams unit lines up, and if the kicker successfully boots the ball through the uprights at the end of practice, everyone heads for the showers. If the kick is no good, then the entire team must run sprints. Unless you can shrug off having lots of very large, powerful men furious at you, it’s not a fun experience when you miss.
This is an example of a “double condition.” That is, if the field goal is successfully converted, practice is over. And if it’s not, then it continues with more drills.
We can site another example of a “double condition” in this week’s double portion, Mattot-Masei. There we see that Moses and the tribes of Gad and Reuven struck a deal. If the two tribes participated in the war of conquest in Canaan along with the other tribes, then they could inherit land in trans-Jordan, considered better for raising sheep and cattle. If they failed to participate, then they would inherit land in Israel proper along with the other tribes.
Commenting on this condition, the Talmudic tractate Kiddushin (61a) states:
Rabbi Meir says: Any condition that is not doubled, i.e., which does not specify both the result of fulfilling the condition and the result of the condition remaining unfulfilled, like the condition Moses stipulated with the children of Gad and the children of Reuben who sought to settle on the eastern side of the Jordan, is not a valid condition and is not taken into account at all. As it is stated: “And Moses said to them, if the children of Gad and the children of Reuben pass over the Jordan with you, every man armed for battle before the Lord, and the land shall be subdued before you, then you shall give them the land of Gilead for a possession” (Numbers 32:29). And it is written afterward: “But if they will not pass over armed with you, they shall receive a possession among you in the land of Canaan” (Numbers 32:30).
In subsequent codes of Jewish law, the 16th century Shulchan Aruch actually enumerates three additional conditions: (a) the positive condition must come first; (b) the condition must precede the action, and (c) it must be possible to fulfill the action.
This type of condition, known as “the condition of Gad and Reuven”, creates a certain pressure on the one who accepts it. In other words, Gad and Reuven must first fight the war of conquest with their brethren before receiving their inheritance.
Whether this is as scary as being an NFL kicker I can’t say.
