Tag: Joshua

story · torah

A letter to Joshua, from Moses

levtaylor

Dear Joshua,

It’s me, Moses.

Please forgive my shaky handwriting. It has been many years since I wrote anything down.

Can you believe it has already been forty years since we came to that great desert mountain and came into contact with the One God? Twice, I carried those miraculous tablets, etched with the Laws of Life, down from that mountain peak.

I could not carry them now. I would not have the strength. And I do not just mean that because of the way my hands tremble when I lift my food or the staggered steps I take when I wake in the morning. I do not have the zeal I once did. I cannot go on much longer.

Joshua, I am dying, and I will soon be dead.

I wish desperately that I could walk with you across that Jordan. All I have ever wanted was to arrive with you at that great destination to which we have journeyed.

But the Eternal One has told me that I will not go on much longer. I will die here, in the desert, and be buried in the wilderness sands.

At first, I was affronted. I cried out to my Maker. ‘Why, God? Why can I not pass over to finally see the freedom for which I have longed?’

God, who has given me so many words, remained silent.

I think I have an answer, though.

The truth is I was free the moment I first left Egypt. Before I returned with my staff and my message. Before any of those miracles and signs and visions. Before I even knew the God of Israel watched over us.

I was free as soon as I took my life into my own hands and refused to be part of the Egyptian system any longer. Once I decided not to be a slaver; not to subjugate others, nor to be subjugated, I was already then mentally emancipated.

These years we have spent in the desert were a way to work out what to do with that freedom. We have been reciting these laws and developing these rituals to find ways of living that keep us from ever going back to the oppressive ways of Egypt.

Joshua, this is what I need to tell you. Do not go back there. Not even in your mind. Do not try to own and control people. Do not allow others to own or control you. Let your soul be free, so that you can dedicate it to the God who led you here.

I am writing this down so that you can refer back to it, and remember what the point of it all was. Why we left Egypt. Why we spent all this time trudging thirsty through shrubland. Why we said we would go to that country from which our ancestors came many mythical centuries ago.

The point was not the land. The point was what we might do there. That we might be free. That we might finally see every human being as a living representation of their Creator. That we might cease using each other as means to an end but as ends in themselves. That we might truly know the Oneness of God and the deep mysteries underlying our universe.

That’s why I’m writing this now, as a reminder.

I know, I have said this all many times before. Call this my mishneh torah, my deutero-nominon; the repetition of everything I said before. It needs to be repeated, over and again, because freedom is hard to achieve and subjugation is such an easy default.

Please, read it out loud. Read it many times. Read it all the time. Even when the words feel trite and you feel like you have repeated the same phrases all your life, keep coming back to it. Remind yourself why you are here. Remind yourself what is at stake in this brief life we have been given.

I will say it again. Do not become like them. Do not worship the work of your hands. Do not think that work is the goal. Do not seek to own and control. Do not kill or oppress or endanger. Choose life. Seek God. Find holiness in everything that lives.

Joshua, I worry, even as I write these words, that you will not heed them. I know you want to. Ever since you were a boy, you used to sit at my feet and lap up every word. You were desperate to be closer to Divinity, to reach for higher things.

When I said we could conquer Canaan, only you and your friend Caleb believed me. You saw giants and were certain you could slay them. You had more faith than any of us. You had more faith than I did.

Joshua, there have been times when you carried me. Literally. In the war against the Amalekites, you put your shoulders under my arms and kept me upright. You are so, so faithful.

But where will all that zealotry go, once you are charged with leading people in the land? When you no longer have giants and Amalekites left to fight, what will you do with all your conviction?

I am asking too much of you. I am asking you to remember a life you have not lived.

You never knew Egypt. You were born here, in the wasteland, after we had already fled. You don’t remember what it was like to be owned. You cannot know what it meant to be a subject of a system that meant to destroy you.

In some ways, this means you have always been free, because you were not born a slave. In other ways, it means you have never been free, because you have never had to fight for it. You do not know what it feels like to start moving, then notice you are shackled, and to keep moving still, and to never stop moving, and to keep going with nothing but faith to carry you.

And you cannot know it. Just as I cannot follow you over the Jordan River, you cannot follow me out of Egypt. Some lessons can only be learned by life’s journey, and some journeys can only be made once.

Perhaps, when you go into that new country, you will make the place I dreamed about. Maybe it will flow with milk and honey. It might become a light unto the nations, where everyone lives with equality and dignity, where everyone can walk in the ways of God.

Or perhaps you will make a new Egypt. You, who never knew Egypt, will find new ways to conquer and subjugate and destroy. Maybe you will crown kings and build empires and wage wars.

Then what will the point have been?

I am asking too much of you. I am asking you to build a world I could not, and to do it all without my help. I am asking to you to know things you have not learnt, and to be perfect in ways I was not. I am sorry to put so much pressure on you. It is not fair.

You may not be able to do what I am asking. But at least you can remember. Tell your children where we came from. Teach them where we were trying to go.

And, then, perhaps, when they see new Egypts emerging, or they see that new Zions are possible, they will find paths through the wilderness that you and I could not see. Keep the story alive, so that the dream may continue.

Joshua, I am going to die here.

These words are all you will inherit from me.

I love you, Joshua.

Your friend,

Moses

israel · sermon

The nation is (not) at war

levtaylor


Fifteen years ago, the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave a powerful speech, in which she warned about “the danger of the single story.” This, she says, is how you create a single story: “show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.”

Because of the single story told about Africa, Westerners knew it only as backwards, poor, and disease-ridden. They did not know how diverse, interesting and resilient Africans were. They did not know that Africans were not, in fact, one people with one story, but billions of people with billions of stories.

She warns her listeners: “The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasises how we are different rather than how we are similar.”

In the book of Joshua, we are presented with a single story about the Israelites and their enemies. In our haftarah, Joshua gathers the tribes of Israel at Shchem and presents his account of the conquest of Canaan. He declares:



You crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho. The citizens of Jericho fought against you, as did also the Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hittites, Girgashites, Hivites and Jebusites, but I gave them into your hands. I sent the hornet ahead of you, which drove them out before you—also the two Amorite kings. You did not do it with your own sword and bow. So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.

In Joshua’s single story, the Israelites are a nation united at war. They all came over at once and went to conquer the land of Canaan. Their enemies were diverse in name but unified in mission. In the list of warring tribes that came up against the Israelites, there is no distinction. Every one of them fought the Israelites. Every one of them lost. By God’s miraculous deeds, the Israelites took over the entire country, and now they have a whole land, ready-made, for them to inhabit.

But wait. There is a flaw with this single story. Just as Joshua decrees that the entirety of these foreign nations has been wiped out, he also warns the Israelites not to mix with them.

All of these other tribes have been completely driven out of the land of Israel; all of them have been vanquished; now the only people left are the Israelites.

But even though the Israelites are the only people remaining, you must not marry the others; or get involved in their cultural practices; or go to their shrines with them and worship their gods.

The Jewish bible scholar, Rachel Havrelock, has written a book looking at why this contradiction is so stark. She suggests that, while the Book of Joshua would love to tell a single story of unanimous military victory, it cannot get away from what the people see with their own eyes.

In reality, all the nations that the Israelites “drove out” are still there. The Israelites are still meeting them, marrying them, striking deals with them, and fraternising with them.

Joshua is putting together the war story as a national myth to bring the people together. In his story, the Israelites must be one people and so must all their enemies. Victory must be total and war must be the only way.

In fact, Havrelock finds that there are lots of contradictions in the book of Joshua. It says that the nation was united in war, while also describing all the internal tribal disagreements and all the rebellions against Joshua.

It says that they took over the whole land, but when it lists places, you can clearly see that plenty of the space is contested, and that the borders are shifting all the time. It says they took over Jerusalem, and also says that it remains a divided city to this day.

So what is the reality? Archaeological digs suggest it is very unlikely that the conquest of Canaan ever happened in the way the Book of Joshua describes. The land was not vanquished in one lifetime by a united army. Instead, more likely, the Israelites gradually merged with, struck deals with, and collaborated with, lots of disparate tribes.

They were never really an ethnically homogenous group. They were never really a disciplined military. They were a group of people who gathered together other groups of people over many centuries to unite around a story. Ancient Israel was the product of cooperation and collaboration.

Our Torah takes all the different stories of lots of different tribes and combines them into a single narrative. That is why the Torah reads more like a library of hundreds of folktales than a single spiel.

But a government at war needs a single story. It needs to tell the story that there is only one nation, which has no internal division. It needs to tell the story that there is only one enemy, and that the whole of the enemy is a murderous, barbarous bloc. It needs to insist that the enemy must be destroyed in its entirety. It needs to tell the story that war is the only way.

Reality, however, rarely lives up to the single story that war propaganda would like us to believe.

Over the last few months, we have been bombarded with a single story of war. We are all at war. Not only Israel, but the whole Jewish people. We are all at war until every hostage is freed from Gaza. We are all at war until Hamas is destroyed. We are all at war and there is no other way.

But hidden underneath that story are other stories. Suppressed stories. Stories that suggest Israel may not be united in war.

There is the single story that Gaza must be bombed to release the remaining hostages.

There is another story. Avihai Brodutch was with his family on Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7th. He survived. His wife, Hagar, was taken hostage, along with their three children, aged 10, 8 and 4. His whole family and his neighbours were taken hostage.

Only a week later, at 3am, Avihai took a plastic chair and his family dog, and went to launch a one-man protest outside the Israeli military offices. He insisted that blood was on Bibi’s hands for refusing to negotiate. He said that Netanyahu was treating his family as collateral damage in his war. He initiated a rallying cry: “prisoner exchange.”

This has become a demand of Israeli civil society. They will swap Palestinian prisoners for the Israeli hostages. This was achieved, when 240 Palestinian prisoners were swapped in return for 80 Israelis and 30 non-Israelis captive in Gaza.

There are still over 100 hostages in Gaza. There are still around 4,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. Around 1,000 are detained indefinitely without charge. Around 160 are children.

It is simply the right thing that Hamas should release the hostages. It is also simply the right thing that Netanyahu should release the Palestinian prisoners. If they did agree, everyone would be able to return safely to their families. Doesn’t that sound more worth fighting for than war?

There is a single story, promoted by Netanyahu, that Israel must fight until it has destroyed Hamas.

There is another story. Maoz Inon’s parents were both murdered by Hamas on October 7th. As soon as he had finished sitting shiva, he took up his call for peace. All he wanted was an end to the war.

Speaking to American news this week, he said: “A military invasion into Gaza will just make things worse, will just keep this cycle of blood, the cycle of death, the cycle of violence that’s been going for a century.”

His call for peace is echoed by other families of those who lost loved ones on October 7th. They have lobbied, produced videos, and sent letters to Netanyahu, begging to be heard.

Some are desperate for the government to recognise that further death is not what they want. Now, as Netanyahu has killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, their call has still not been heard.

And after all those dead, is Hamas any closer to being destroyed? Of course not. All this bombing does is ensure that a new generation of Palestinians trapped in Gaza will grow up to hate Israel.

This war is how you get more terrorists. It’s how you ensure that war never ends. Wouldn’t it be better to fight for a ceasefire than to fight for a war?

There is a single story that the nation is united in war.

There is another story. This week, 18-year-old Tal Mitnik was sent to military prison in Israel for refusing to fight in the war. Although this news has barely made it into English-language media, many Israelis have expressed their support.

Writing to Haaretz, one refusenik wrote: “I was inside. We were so brainwashed there. I refused and I’m not the only one. I have a family and this is not a war with a clear purpose. […] My children will have a father and I hope yours will too.” Another parent wrote: “My son is also refusing. I will not sacrifice him for Bibi.”

There is another story: that this is Netanyahu’s war, not ours.

There is another story: that war is not the answer.

There is another story: that every captive must go free.

There is another story: that all bombs and rockets must end.

There is another story: that we will not give licence to any more bloodshed.

There is a story that the nation is at war. In times of war, the government must tell that as the only story, to blot out alternative stories, to ensure that war is the only way.

But there are other stories. And, if we tell those other stories, there will be other ways.

Shabbat shalom.

judaism · sermon · torah

That land had neither milk nor honey

levtaylor


“There are no cats in America and the streets are made of cheese!”

In one of my favourite childhood movies, a gang of mice pranced about the film screen singing these words. There are no cats in America and the streets are made of cheese.

In An American Tail, the protagonist is a seven-year-old Jewish mouse named Fievel Mousekewitz. In his home country, the mice are terrorised by cats. They struggle to eat and sustain their traditions. His whole family dreams of making the journey across the Atlantic to a new country where they won’t face these problems any more.

In America, they imagine, the cats, which represent persecution or kossacks or fascists or pogroms, won’t exist any more. After years of not eating, America will provide them with every food they have imagined. Over the ocean, even the streets will be paved with cheese.

As the plot unfolds, the mice arrive in New York. Fievel discovers that America’s streets are no more cheesy than the old country’s, and that cats are just as prevalent. In their new land, they will also be hungry, and persecuted, and tired, just as they were in the old. Their dreams could not be realised by moving from one country to another.

In this week’s parashah, Moses sends out scouts to survey the land of Israel. He asks twelve envoys to go into the country they expect to possess and report back on its contents.

I imagine this must have been a moment of great trepidation. We today know what other countries look like. We are able to travel abroad; we meet migrants from foreign places; we have access to people anywhere in the world through media in the palms of our hands.

Not long ago, such journeys were rare. People did not know how expansive the globe was or how similar and different people around the world would be to them. Perhaps travelling merchants brought fantastical tales from places they had never been. Some maps were marked with warnings of sea monsters and dragons. For the Israelites making the journey to Canaan, it would have been their first time leaving their valley in Egypt. Anything could await them on the other side.

When they came back, ten gave their report. The land has fertile soil, with large grapes growing on vines. But the people who live there are numerous and giant. We looked like grasshoppers to them. The cities are walled, fortified, and guarded. We have no chance of taking that land, and, even if we could, it will swallow up everyone who inhabits it.

Caleb and Joshua disagreed. They offered a minority report. We can do it. We can take this land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey. As long as you obey God and Moses, you can capture that place and live the life you have fantasised about.

According to our story, the other ten scouts were struck down with plagues and punished for their transgression. How dare they give such a negative report?

Only Joshua and Caleb go on to enter the Promised Land. Rabbinic commentaries make much of how courageous and optimistic those men were. They had faith. They believed in God’s strength and their own.

But here’s the thing. Joshua and Caleb were lying. That land was not flowing with milk and honey. They really were outnumbered. They really were about to take on fortified cities. It really was unlikely that an exhausted band of runaway slaves were going to be able to conquer an entirely new country.

All Joshua and Caleb were offering were politicians’ promises. They were giving false hope to keep people in line and stop them rebelling against Moses.

They say, at this moment, God decided that this generation would not enter the Promised Land. They were too rebellious and stubborn. Only Joshua and Caleb, who actually believed in God, would be permitted admission. This was their punishment: they will not know what the Land of Israel looks like, and they will wander further.

But, if they had entered the land, the whole Israelite people would have seen that the first ten scouts were right. They would have realised that Joshua and Caleb had fleeced them. They would have seen that Moses promised them a land that did not exist.

Preachers often lament how sad it was that Moses never saw the Promised Land. But how much sadder would it have been if Moses had reached it? Imagine if Moses had travelled all those miles, given up everything, fought with everyone, and struggled endlessly, only to see that the much-vaunted land of his ancestors was just another desert.

The lands of Israel are no more fertile than the plains on the east side of the Jordan. They are filled with inhospitable desert. While the Israelites have had to fight with Amalekites and Moabites to reach their destination, in the new country they will battle Canaanites, Philistines and other tribes. For all the promises of peace, the war is not over.

Moses had brought the Israelites away from Egypt promising freedom. In the new country, there will still be slaves. There will still be priests and kings to subjugate them. There will still be debts to pay and unaffordable rents and famines and strife. They will still see death, sickness, and injustice.

How tragic would it have been for Moses to reach that land flowing with milk and honey, where he would find that it had neither. The Promised Land was not as promised.

There were still cats in America. The streets were not paved with cheese.

At the conclusion of An American Tail, the mice eventually band together to defeat the cats. Using their cunning, technology, and finding surprising friends, they build a contraption to scare away their evil persecutors. They learn that there will be cats, but that they have to work in solidarity if they want to defeat them. They discover that streets are not paved with cheese, but that, if they find some, they can share it, and in those moments they will feel sated and free.

None of the spies could really give a report on the land, because it wasn’t a place they were going. It was somewhere they imagined they might build by common endeavour.

They could have said: “That land does not flow with milk and honey. But it could. We could make it feel like it was.”

Maybe we don’t learn those things from speeches and scouts’ reports. We only learn how to work together by doing it. We only discover what we are capable of if we try.

Only by working together can we make a world that flows with milk and honey.

Together, we can free the world of cats and pave the streets with cheese.

Shabbat shalom.