[Avodah] Tribes of Differing Traits

[L. E. Levine]

The following is from the new translation of 
RSRH's commentary to Chumash Bereshis.

48 3 Ya’akov then said to Yosef: The 
All-Sufficing God appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me.

4 He said to me: Behold, I will  make you 
fruitful and multiply you and let you become a 
community of peoples, and I will give this land 
to your seed after you as an everlasting possession.

5 And now, your two sons who were born to you in 
the land of Egypt, before I came to you, are 
mine: Efrayim and Menashe will belong to me like Reuven and Shimon.

6 But the children whom you beget after them will 
remain yours; they will be named in their 
inheritance according to their brothers’ names.

It is difficult to contend that, in a family that already included eleven
sons, this small addition would be considered so significant that it could
be indicated by the words hen'ni maf'r'cha vhirbisicha.

Rather, as we already noted (ibid. [35:11]), the expression k'hal goyim — here
k'hal amim — assigns the people of Ya’akov its distinctive mission: This
people is to consist of diverse tribes of differing traits, while maintaining
complete unity through one common task. This people should represent
the agricultural nation, the merchant nation, the warrior nation, the
nation of scholars, and so forth. As a model nation, it should demonstrate
for all to see that the one great mission — common to all men
and all nations and as revealed in God’s Torah — does not depend on
a particular vocation or trait. Rather, all of 
mankind, with its rich diversity,
can equally find its calling in the one common mission.

The division of the nation into diverse tribes, and the resulting division
of the Land into different provinces for the different tribes, whose
distinctiveness is thus to be retained — that is what is indicated here
(in v. 4). Only thus is there any importance to Efrayim and Menashe
becoming two distinct tribes. Without the division into diverse tribes,
all distinctiveness would be absorbed in the consolidated mass of the
nation as a whole, just as the land would be divided among the nation
as a whole and not according to different tribes.

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