Joshua: Son and sacrifice

Joshua is an enigmatic figure. He is present in a number of stories in the Torah and yet slips under the radar, such that people are not able to, off the cuff, recall much about him except for his being one of the “good spies” and eventually taking over from Moses.

We know nothing about his childhood or background apart from the fact that he is the son of a man named Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim. But there is a fascinating midrash from Yalkut Shimon that suggests a very formative incident:

Rabbi  Eliezer said: For all those years in which Israel sat in Egypt, the Ephraimites sat securely, tranquilly and serenely, until Nun, a descendant of Ephraim, came and declared, “The L-rd has appeared to me and commanded me to take you out.” [He felt/He did it due to the] pride in his heart that they were of royal descent and great warriors; and they got up, took their sons and daughters and exited Egypt. Then the Egyptians arose and killed all their warriors.

In this narrative, where Joshua as a young man experienced this tremendous failure on the part of his father, and perhaps his death, we could understand it if he began to see his teacher and mentor Moshe as a surrogate father figure. Moshe clearly trusts him, appointing him to be the military leader in the battle against Amalek. But we have stronger indications of a bond that is more akin to father and son.

When Moses climbs Mount Sinai, he takes only Joshua with him (although Joshua seems to vanish immediately, with Moses ascending alone – Ex. 24:13,15). Moses tells the elders “Wait here until we will return” (Ex. 24:14) in language very reminiscent of the Akeda story in which Abraham says to his servants, (Gen. 22:5) “Stay here with the donkey… and we will return to you.” Yet Abraham is misleading them. He cannot be sure that “they” will return; according to God’s command, only he will come back.  

In suggesting “And we will return”, Moses is referencing that foundational Jewish story. This does two things: (a) He is placing himself and Joshua in a father-son type relationship (b) He is placing Yehoshua into some kind of sacrificial role. But what that is unclear.

The sacrifice theme continues much later when Joshua is finally officially appointed as Moses’s successor. Moses lays his hands upon him, an action associated with sacrifices.[1] However, Joshua is not to be “sacrificed” in the sense of being put to death. How is he a sacrifice then? The answer I can think of would be that He is a sacrifice in the sense of something pure and worthy, being offered up to God’s service. The intertextuality here hints to us that he has the purity both of Isaac and of the animal at the altar.

Moses’s own children are not worthy successors; Joshua functions as his surrogate son. For Joshua, Moses replaces his failed father Nun, unlike him being someone who genuinely hears God’s voice, correctly and accurately, and leads the people into life, not death. It may even be, as is so often the case, that this early trauma propelled Joshua into his role, spurring him to take on responsibility and leadership so as to fix the crack that opened in his soul.

* * These ideas emerged during a Bibliodrama on Joshua in Efrat, August 2022, based on insights by Rabbi David Debow and others. Yael Valier was the first to suggest the connection between the language of the Akeda and that of the scene at Mt Sinai, but she takes it in a slightly different direction. Her own interpretation of the connection of Sinai with Akeda is that it is intended to indicate the selection of Joshua at this moment for something "big", just as Isaac was being selected for something important – with the others (Ishmael, Eliezer) being told to “remain behind”. 

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[1] God says “lay your hand” and yet Moses lays both hands. It seems as if Moses deviates from the details of the divine command. The Talmud (Menachot 93b) discusses the discrepancy between one hand and both hands, and there Resh Lakish concludes that in the context of animal sacrifice, it is the same thing and the language is interchangeable. He explicitly excludes this case, when the hands are laid upon Joshua; but the idea suggested in this blog would allow him to include this case too in the same category, of "animal sacrifice" so to speak, in a metaphorical sense. Which saves Moses from the charge of not properly fulfilling the divine command.

Right to the Edge

In the narrative of the Akeda, the binding of Isaac, we see that God lets Abraham arrive at the very moment when he is about to cut his son's throat, before sending an angel to command him to stop:

10. And Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
11. And the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham; and he said, Here am I.
12. And he said, Lay not your hand upon the lad, nor do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing that you did not withheld your son, your only son from me.

Why wait until the very last moment? A couple of possible reasons present themselves.
1) In order to verify that he actually meant to go through with it, so it would be as if he had done it, and shown the dedication and obedience G-d wanted.
Or
2) In order to have Abraham and Isaac undergo the most powerful and transformative experience possible, without actually going through the act of father sacrificing son.

Which one of the above is true would depend on the divine purpose of the Akeda. Perhaps both are true.

But what strikes me most, right now, is the demand from Abraham to pull back at the very last second. It is not at all easy to stop an action when the momentum is already in place. Yet Judaism sometimes demands precisely that.

A vivid example is on the wedding night. After merely one conjugal act, in the passionate heart of their first night together as a couple, the groom and his bride must part because she has become impure (this is assuming she was a virgin):

"Following the expenditures [of the wedding], he immediately goes in and has relations with her. But when she says to him, 'I saw [blood] like a red lily,' he immediately withdraws from her. Who prevents him from drawing close to her? What iron wall or pillar stands between them? What snake bit him, what scorpion stung him so that he does not approach her? [It is] the words of the Torah, which are as soft as a lily, as the verse states: 'You shall not approach a woman in the impurity of her menstrual flow.'" (Shir Ha-shirim Rabba 7:3)

As in the Akeda, Judaism sometimes has a way of bringing you to the very edge of something and then requiring you not to cross the line.
People have a tendency to keep away from cliff edges and from edges of all sorts, just in case one might fall off them. This is the reason why in keeping halacha, many are stringent and keep the law more strictly than necessary, fearing that if they walk along the very edge of what is allowed, they will slip over it.  

And yet, Judaism will not allow wholesale stringency and keeping far away from those liminalities, those risky boundaries. It challenges its adherents to come close, very close, yet not cross. "You can do this," it admonishes. "Be mature, be self-disciplined, do it."

A prime example is matzah, unleavened bread. Matzah, once it passes 18 minutes of exposure to moisture becomes bread, the food absolutely forbidden on Pesach. Were matzah not commanded, no one would eat it, for it is too risky that it might pass the forbidden 18 minute boundary. Yet the Torah demands that it is matzah of all foods that we eat on Pesach.

The Torah wants us to walk on the (right side of the) wild side, to stand in the risky zone, and to do it successfully.


I also think of how the rabbis commanded us to light two candles before Shabbat came in. This is also a risky custom, for lighting of fire is completley prohibited on Shabbat, from the Torah. If the person lights a minute after Shabbat comes in, instead of doing an admirable act, they have committed a prohibition. So the rabbis did their best to put a fence around this halacha, by adding "tosefet Shabbat", 20 or 40 minutes.

In the olden days,  the candles would have to be lit anyway to create llight in the house, so the custom caused them to be lit before Shabbat, which was good. But today, we light these flames solely because of the rabbinically instigated action.

And in fact I know people do light late, including people who aren't Shabbat observant but like the custom. So it really IS a risky proposition. That is why the calendar left by the Jerusalem municipality's religious department in my mailbox says in huge bold letters beneath lighting times: REMEMBER TO LIGHT ON TIME, FOR IT IS PROHIBITED TO BURN FIRE ON SHABBAT!)

And yet the rabbis did not just take the safe route and say, "You know what, never mind, you don't have to light candles. Just pretend, or make the blessing on an electric light." They won't allow us to be wholesale "machmir" and avoid risk always, even if it does say אשרי אדם מפחד תמיד.

Go rabbis!

What Abraham Starts, Hannah Completes

On each of the two days of Rosh Hashanah there is one reading from the Torah and one from the Prophets.

The Torah portions are Gen 21:1-34 - the miraculous birth in Sarah's old age of Isaac and the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael; and Gen 22:1-24 - the Akeda, the binding of Isaac.

The Prophetic readings are I Samuel 1:1-2:10, the story of childless Hannah who finally makes a vow to dedicate the son born to her to the service of God in Shilo; and Jeremiah 31:1-19, about the ingathering of the exiles.

A theme running clearly through the first three is the complex interplay between parents, their love for their children, the sacrifices they make and God's response. The fourth reading, Jeremiah 31, also contains the verses:

So says the L‑rd: A voice is heard on high, lamentation, bitter weeping—Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, for they are not.

So says the L‑rd: Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for there is reward for your work, says the L‑rd, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy.

Unlike Hagar, Rachel is not "exiled" with her children. She remains behind, lamenting their absence.

I want to, however, speak of the other two and the connection between them. I have spent years wondering what went through Hannah's mind, what was the process that she went through as she wept bitterly for many years in her barrenness, before finally finding the way to pray in order to open her locked destiny as a mother.

Did you ever wonder if the later biblical figures had the stories of the earlier biblical heroes to draw upon? Surely Hannah knew the story of Abraham and the Akeda.

I imagine her drawing upon this story with its example of the ultimate sacrifice (that was not made in the end), whether conciously or uncosciously, in casting around to try to answer for herself what God's will for her could be, or what God might want her to do, in order to revert the harsh decree upon her. She hits upon the idea of doing a kind of Akeda - offering her son to God, in the best way she knows how. Not for death, but for life - for a life sanctified and elevated.

We see how once this idea arises in her, a calm descends upon her, and she finds the words and the way. Eli the priest accuses her of being drunk, but even that cannot shatter her calm, for she knows she has found the right path.

Ultimately God did not want Abraham to kill his son. God apparently only wanted to bring Abraham (and Isaac) to the very edge of religious devotion. The lesson for the world was: do not kill your children. This is not the way to serve God.

But it is in the Hannah story that this lesson reaches its culmination. God says, if you however wish to dedicate your child to Me (assuming it is the right child for it), then that is welcome. That is the evolved path. And it leads to the birth of the prophet Samuel.

From Abraham we learn the negative, what God does not want us to do. But from Hannah (inspired by the Akeda, perhaps) we learn the positive, what God wants us to do.
Most of us will not dedicate our children to temple service, and neither should we. But we can find a way to convey to our children that we are willing to let them go, however painful that is, if they need to evolve in ways that leave us behind.

We Must Not Be Noah

A blog post at Times of Israel

Abraham and the wisdom of the East

Of all Abraham's trials, Akedat Yitzhak, the binding of Isaac seems the most difficult. The command to leave behind everything he knew and set off for an unknown land was also very challenging.Both required a tremendous amount of trust, and both demanded that Abraham disconnect from what he knew and loved, from his family of origin and homeland, and then from his beloved son and his very own reason and logic and belief in a just G-d.

Interestingly enough, Genesis 25:1-6 tells us that Abraham married another wife named Keturah, and that although he left his estate to Isaac, while he lived he mysteriously "gave gifts to the sons of his concubines and sent them away from his son Isaac to the land of the east."

The meaning of this verse is not clear. Many have suggested interconnections between Abraham and the religions of the east, pointing to the names of the Hindu Uber-God Brahma (grandsire of all human beings) and his wife Saraswati as being very close to Abraham and Sarah  - though we must note that the former are gods and the latter humans. Some even claim Abraham to be descended from Indian Brahmins, implying the Eastern wisdom was his legacy; yet that is not the picture the Torah presents, rather that Abraham was unique in his surroundings, and that he sent gifts to the East, not vice versa.

In any event: a central tenet of Hinduism, and later Buddhism, is to release ourselves from attachment and the suffering it causes. The fact remains that Abraham began to learn this wisdom via the tests G-d put him through, and perhaps this constituted the "gifts" he passed on the East, there to be developed further (the earliest Hindu Vedic texts are dated 1700 BCE, slightly after Abraham's birth 1800 BCE approx.)

Buddhism has developed the spiritual goal of striving to non-attachment, in the deepest sense, in that non attachment means unity with all things and freedom from desires (it is more than simply letting go of family or beliefs, but that could be the initial external step necessary to become enlightened). Judaism did not demand this of its followers, but taught other kinds of wisdom.

Nonetheless many Jews are attracted to Buddhism, with its sophisticated teachings about the inner life, and one could perhaps posit that since the it would have been impossible to have a system with both Jewish emphases on doing in this world and striving for spiritual growth within the material (the hardest challenge), and Buddhist emphases on non-attachment and liberation from desires, that both of these "Abrahamic" (or partially Abrahamic) religious systems needed to grow separately so as to develop and nurture their truths. Now, Jews can finally reclaim their portion of Buddhism, the sparks that are truly Abrahamic, and that has developed for all these years, while not accepting the rest.

(Zohar 1:99b).
“Rabbi Abba said, ‘One day I happened upon a certain town formerly inhabited by children of the East, and they told me some of the wisdom they knew from ancient days. They had found their books of wisdom, and they brought me one… I found in it all the ritual of star-worship, requisites, and how to focus the will upon them, drawing them down… I said to them, ‘My children, this is close to words of Torah, but you should shun these books, so that your hearts will not stray after these rites, toward all those sides mentioned here; lest – Heaven forbid – you stray from the rite of the blessed Holy One! For all these books deceive human beings, since the children of the East were wise – having inherited a legacy of wisdom from Abraham, who bestowed it upon the sons of the concubines, as is written: To the sons of his concubines Abraham gave gifts, while he was still alive, and he sent them away from his son Isaac eastward, to the land of the East [Genesis 25:6]. Afterword they were drawn by that wisdom in various directions”

[1] I thank Prof. Alan Brill for his help in making elements of this dvar Torah more accurate. The idea grew out of a Bibliodrama on Akedat Yitzchak at Andy Kohlenberg's house, parshat Vayera 5755. Thanks to Nicole Koskas who came up with the profound insight about G-d teaching Abraham to disconnect, and to Zev ben Yechiel for pointing out that Brahma's wife is Saraswati.
N.b. if Ketura was the mother of the sons sent to the east, I would have thought that Brahma's wife would be called something along the lines of Ketura. Some say Ketura is Hagar, and apparently the Saraswati river has a tributary named Ghaggar, but here the speculation is beginning to stray rather far.