Parshat Shavua: "Mattot" and Jabotinsky's Yahrzeit

Biblical Tribal Map

Chazal, our sages, tell us that timing is from Gd, and today at our local Shiloh Women's Shabbat class we were talking about this week's Torah Portion of the Week, Mattot.  One of the topics/events in Parshat Mattot is the request of two of the tribes, Reuben and Gad, to receive land on the eastern bank of the Jordan River. This wasn't so simple, because the conquering/liberating of the entire Land wasn't yet complete, and priority was for the western bank of the Jordean. In the end the area east of the Jordan River was divided among Reuben, Gad and half of Menashe. Yes, the Jewish People had both sides of the Jordan.

Ze’ev Jabotinsky

"The goal of Zionism is: Eretz Yisrael as a single state on both sides of the Jordan River." 
In the first years of the British Mandate in Eretz Yisrael, Jabotinsky supported collaboration with Great Britain, assuming that the latter will implement the mandate it supported in Balfour’s declaration. However, when Britain backed out from its support in the Zionist stand, Jabotinsky warned of a possible betrayal by the government of the British Mandate and advocated to rebel against it. In 1923 he resigned from the Executive of the Zionist Movement, in protest against the policy of Chaim Weizmann, which he felt was moderate towards the anti-Zionist stand taken by the British Mandate Government. The support given to Jabotinsky by youth from east and central Europe was the basis for the future Revisionist Movement.

The Betari in me quickly made the connection. Jabotinsky's Yahrzeit, the anniversary of his death according to the Jewish Calendar is in the week of Parshat Mattot which introduces us to the concept of our sovereignty on both sides of the Jordan!

“Mandate for Palestine”