Joshua v. Pinchas Our Traditions Choice

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Our Torah scroll, and every other Kosher Torah scroll, has certain anomalies in the text. Were these seemingly strange errors not present, the Torah scroll would not be seen as fit for use, for these scribal oddities have become themselves part of the tradition of understanding the text.

The most famous of these anomalies is in Deuteronomy in the text of the Sh’ma. Our new blue prayerbook, Mishkan Tefillah, reproduces them in its text. In the words of the Sh’ma, the Ayin in Sh’ma and the Daled in Echad are written much larger than the other letters. This is to slow us down and prevent a misreading. A daled and a reysh for example look almost the same. The enlarged daled prevents us from reading the text incorrectly and not pausing to understand the significance of the statement that God is One.

Another famous anomaly comes where Jacob and Esau are reunited after many years of separation. The text says that they embraced each other and kissed, but over the word kissed there are a series of dots. According to tradition these are the teeth marks of Esau’s biting Jacob’s neck. Clearly some scribes were less optimistic about the possibility of reconciliation, They wouldn’t change the text of the Bible but they were able to find a way to read conflict even into this moment.

In our Torah portion this week, there is a tradition of breaking the vav in the word shalom in Chapter 25:12. This is where Pinchas is rewarded with a covenant of peace. This vav ketiah, this vav written in at least two separate pieces, suggests that peace is fragile and can be broken by zealous fanaticism. It is part of the ambivalence our tradition has expressed towards Pinhas.

As Arielle has pointed out, even the Bible itself expresses this ambivalence, rewarding Pinchas with an eternal covenant, but in the next section, having God tell Moses to chose someone else as his successor.

We have seen the negative effects of religious intolerance and fanaticism in our time and so are very wary of Pinchas. We have also seen how texts such as these can be used by those who focus on the one sentence in the Bible and ignore its general lesson.

One of the major white supremacist hate groups in the Unites States literally does this, calling itself the Phineas Priesthood and encouraging the performance of what they call, “Phineas acts”, violent activities against perceived enemies. The murderer of Medgar Evers, the civil rights activist, identified himself as an adherent of this group as did more recently the murderer of a physician in Florida who performed abortions.

Joshua is put forward in our tradition as an alternative to Pinchas.

It is interesting to consider in what way he is different. It is not that Joshua is a pacifist. After Moses’ death, Joshua will lead the people into many battles, and in general Judaism is not a pacifist religion. Jewish law holds that there are situations in which one can take a life in order to defend one’s own life or the life of others. One must always seek an alternative to taking another life, but where no alternative exists, one is duty bound to save the innocent. In addition the death penalty exists in Jewish law, though it was meant for the most exceptional circumstances, once in 70 years as one rabbi says, and safeguarded with so many legal restrictions as to be almost impossible to impose.

Still Joshua is different from Pinchas in some very significant ways.

First, we are told that Joshua was someone who, according to Yalkut Shimoni, an early commentary on the Bible, would be able to “bear with each person according to his disposition.” Rashi , the famous medieval commentator, understood from this that he could recognize individual differences, and tolerate and communicate with Jews with different needs and desires.

Joshua understood that the role of the leader is not to impose his own sense of right and wrong without reference to the law, but to be someone who encourages everyone in the community to seek the good in their own way.

In addition Joshua is different than Pinchas in his use of violence and war, not as an immediate unthinking response, but only as a last alternative. A good leader will lead to peace not war- and so we are told that when Moses looked for a leader, he looked for someone, “ who shall take them out and shall bring them in” implying that he would lead the same number in as were lead out, that is that he would avoid warfare.

Finally a good leader is filled with spirit, as we are told about Joshua, that he was “ish asher ruach bo”, a man within whom there is spirit. This is often understood as having his own internal spiritual compass, as being able to set his own direction even in the face of opposition. We saw this with Joshua in the incident of the spies, when he and Caleb held to their own understanding, even in the face of the ten other spies disagreeing with them and winning the mob over to their position. One can be sensitive to the individuality of those one is leading without being the kind of leader whom the Talmud describes as a snake following its tail.

The broken vav in the word Shalom, is an expression of our traditions desire to avoid fanaticism and zealotry. It is an expression of our tradition’s desire for the true Shalom, the true peace, which comes with inspired and sensitive leadership.