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Nehar Deah
Va’etchanan
Destroying the Canaanites: The Laws and their Practical Application
Moses, in his speech to the second generation of those who left Egypt
and now, on the eve of their entry into the land, are encamped on the
banks of the Jordan facing Jericho, sets out to teach the main points
of the covenant that was given to Israel during the revelation at Sinai,
“so that you may live, and it be well with you, and your days will
be lengthy in the land which you will inherit” (Devarim 5:29). Remaining
faithful to Hashem, God of Israel and only to Him is a foundation stone
of this covenant; this commandment was linked to the observance of a system
of behavior and practices that were fundamentally different from the accepted
norms of nations. Due to this, the Children of Israel are warned not to
have contact with their future neighbors in the land of Canaan lest they
become ‘infected’ by their idol worship practices. This cutting
off of relations included a prohibition against intermarrying with the
dwellers of the land and it was even demanded that all the places where
the Canaanites worshipped idols should be destroyed (ibid, 7:3-5). This
is only the beginning. Israel is also commanded “You shall surely
tachrim them, do not enter into a covenant with them and do not be merciful
to them” (7:2), or as this is phrased in the book of Devarim: “From
the cities of these nations … you shall not allow any soul to live,
for you shall surely tachrimam (based in the same root [ch-r-m] as the
word ‘cherem’ see below for discussion of this word)”
(20:16-17).
This harsh decree, which obligates the destruction of all the inhabitants
of Canaan, also makes the “cherem” in the Torah portion of
“Va’etchanan” uniquely different from all others mentioned
in the Torah. In other places the term “cherem” means dedication
for a sacred purpose. Therefore, for example: “Every cherem [=dedicated
item] which a person dedicates [by free will] to God, from a person and
an animal. And from the field in his possession, no cherem shall be sold
or redeemed; it is very holy to God” (Vayikra 27:28). We are told
of a partially similar cherem in the context of the war which took place
between Israel and the King of Arad that lived in the Negev (Bamidbar
21:1-3). The soldiers of Israel vowed to God that they would not “yachrimu”
the city, that is, they would renounce their part of the spoils of the
city, and the “movable items would be sanctified to God” (Rashi’s
commentary). However, the cherem on the Canaanites in the Book of Devarim
is fundamentally different from these dedications and sanctification;
this cherem is a commandment of divine origin and not man’s free
will offering and the basis of this cherem is the destruction of the Canaanite
people. The practical implementation of this cherem is explained and justified
in the laws of war (Devarim 20): “In order that they not teach you
to do all the abominations they do to their gods and you come to sin to
Hashem your God” (verse 18). From this we learn that the cherem
is a method of preventing the influences of idol worship from corrupting
Israel. This is not a holy war against idol worship wherever it may be,
since the law allows one to make peaceful overtures “to all the
cities which are very far from you” (verse 19), and the implementation
of the cherem is limited to the land of Canaan, the land that was promised
to the forefathers and the land in which Israel will in the future settle.
However, this limitation does not diminish the severity of the law and
its moral significance, since instead of strengthening the faith of the
nation from within, the choice is made to wipe out the temptation factor!
There are those who see the biblical cherem as a reflection of the warlike
practices that were the accepted norm in ancient times. Instead of taking
spoils and prisoners, a victorious army could place a cherem on the enemies
of its god, as a sign of gratitude and thanksgiving for his aid during
the battle. Thus Mesha, King of Moab (from a translation of the Moabite
inscription on a gravestone written in Moabite, which is dated to the
middle of the eighth century BCE): “And [the god] Chemosh said to
me, go capture [the city of] Nebo from Israel. And I went by night and
fought against it from the break of dawn till noon and I slew all, seven
thousand [people] … for I had dedicated it to [the god] Ashtar-Chemosh”.
Also from inscriptions from the kings of Assyria, we also find more than
one report of mass killings that took place during battles, due to the
encouragement and support of the great gods of Assyria. Israel’s
actions in terms of the Canaanites are to be understood in this fashion.
Despite this, the question can be asked as to whether at the time of
the conquest of the land, they actually put the laws discussed above into
practice. In fact, the picture we have of the conquest in the first half
of the Book of Yehoshua (Joshua, chapters 1-12) is in keeping with the
laws of the cherem in the Book of Devarim, and Yehoshua is depicted as
carrying out the commandments by destroying the population of the land
of Canaan (for example, Jericho, the Ai, the /cities of the coastal plain
and Chatzor). The story of the covenant which is made with the residents
of the city of Giv’on (Yehoshua 9) is based on the assumption that
Israel is in fact planning to wipe out all those who dwell in Canaan.
However, in another sphere, we read of the Children of Israel’s
inability to deal with the Canaanites, “because they have iron chariots
and they are mighty” (17:18). Therefore, a number of pockets of
Canaanites remained in the land. This picture is verified by what is told
of in the Book of Shofetim (Judges, especially 1:27-36). We learn that
at a later time “when Israel became strong, that they put the Canaanites
to task work, but did not drive them out” (ibid, verse 28), meaning
- Israel subjugated the Canaanites, but did not destroy them. King Shlomo
(Solomon) acted similarly, making the Canaanites remaining in the land
perform forced labor and in this way managing to carry out his great building
plans for Jerusalem and the rest of his kingdom (compare Kings I 9:20-21).
It seems that more than being a historic reality, the picture of the heroic
conquest in the Book of Yehoshua was an aspiration and an ideal of the
authors of the book in later generations.
While the Sages accepted the description of the cherem in Joshua as reality,
they realized the moral complexity of this commandment of the cherem and
lessen its force so that it would not be seen as binding. In the Jerusalem
Talmud (Tractate Shevi’it 6:1) it is written: “Rabbi Shmuel
bar Nachman said: three decrees were sent out into the land of Israel
before they went into the land. Whoever wishes to leave - should leave.
To make peace - should make peace. To make war - should do so. The Girgashi
left and believed in the Holy One, Blessed be He, and went to Afriki …
the Giv’oni made peace … thirty one kings made war and fell”.
In the words of Rabbi Shmuel we can envisage a picture of Yehoshua as
he is viewed by the Sages, making peace even with Canaanites, not just
with distant cities, all this is in contrast to the explicit command of
the cherem. It seems that this transformation of the character if Yehoshua
was made possible by an innovative interpretation of the text in Yehoshua
11:19: “There was no city which made peace with the Children of
Israel, except for the Chivi who dwelt in Giv’on. They took it all
with war”. From this verse we can learn that all the Canaanites
were given the opportunity to make peace with the nation of Israel, but
only the residents of Givon took advantage of this opportunity and were
not annihilated. In this way the responsibility for the lives of the Canaanites
was transferred from Yehoshua to the Canaanites themselves; if they had
made peace, they would not have been annihilated.
The Rambam, in the twelfth century, also dealt with the issue of the
cherem and he took a much simpler line (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings 6:1):
“We do not go to war against any man in the world until we have
offered them peace. Both permitted wars [=wars fought outside Israel,
such as David’s war against Aram] and obligatory wars [=the command
to conquer the land]; as it is written ‘when you approach a city
to make war against it and you shall offer it peace’ (Devarim 20:10).
If they make peace and accept the seven laws that the descendants of Noah
were commanded to keep, you do not kill a soul and they are for forced
labor…” According to the Rambam, if the nations of Canaan
accept upon themselves the Seven Noachide Laws - which include the basic
obligations of every man in every place, as beings created in the divine
image, for example prohibitions against forbidden sexual relations and
murder - they will in any way cease their abominations. Even more than
this: in accepting these seven laws, they can no longer teach the Children
of Israel their evil ways. The danger passes and they are allowed to live.
Professor Mordechai Kogen
Jewish History Department
Literature of the Sages - Joshua According to the Sages
Yehoshua (Joshua), the militarist and leader who conquered the land of
Canaan by storm, is depicted in the literature of the Sages, if one can
actually generalize with such a wide body of literature, in a different
and far softer light. The Sages do not ignore his actions in the conquest
of the land, but prefer to emphasize his place in the chain of transmission
of the Oral Torah (as is written at the beginning of Tractate Avot in
the Mishna: “Moshe received the Torah from Sinai and passed it on
to Yehoshua, and Yehoshua to the Elders …”) and to depict
him primarily as a Torah scholar, Rabbi and religious lawmaker (the list
of the laws he enacted, according to the Babylonian Talmud, can be found
in Baba Kama 80b-81a). A number of explanations can be offered for this
approach taken by the Sages, but it seems that the most significant one
is the desire to reduce the importance of physical force and to emphasize
the place of religious power, the Halacha (body of Jewish law), keeping
of the commandments and Torah study. The sages, who were witness to the
failure of the Great Revolt against the Romans, to the destruction of
the Temple and the bitter consequences of the Bar Kochba revolt for the
Jewish people, tended to de-emphasize the military-warlike powers of the
biblical personalities (such as Samson or David) and to emphasize instead
their being exceptional religious examples.
The change which Yehoshua underwent in this context can be emphasized
with many Midrashic passages and we will present one of these. This is
the moving story of the last days of Moshe, which is found in Midrash
Tanchuma in on this Torah portion (Va’etchanan, paragraph 6). When
the time came for Moshe to die, he wished to appeal against this fate,
but God said to him “till now your lot has been to serve before
me and now this task is finished and the time has come for your pupil
Yehoshua to serve. [Moshe] said before Him: My Master, if it is because
of Yehoshua that I die, I will go and be his pupil. [God] said to him:
If you want to do this, go and do it. Moshe stood and awoke early to [go
to] the entrance of Yehoshua’s tent, and Yehoshua sat and taught
and Moshe stood bent over and put his hand over his mouth [in order that
Yehoshua not identify him] … since [Yehoshua] raised his and he
saw him, he immediately tore his garments and shouted and wept and said:
My teacher, my teacher, my father, my father, my master; Israel said to
Moshe: Moshe, our teacher, teach us Torah; he said to them: I do not have
permission; they said to him: we will not let you be, a heavenly voice
came out and said to them: learn from Yehoshua and accept on yourselves
to sit and learn from Yehoshua. Yehoshua sat at the head and Moshe on
his right and the sons of Aaron on his left and Joshua would sit and teach
before Moshe. Rabbi Shmuel bar Nathan said in the name of Rabbi Yonatan:
in the hour that Yehoshua said ‘blessed be He who chose the righteous’,
the traditions of wisdom were taken from Moshe and given to Yehoshua and
Moshe could not understand what Yehoshua taught … in that hour Moshe
said: Master of the Universe, until now I asked for life and now my soul
is given to you”.
This passage, which focuses primarily on the psychological change that
brought Moshe to request his own death, indirectly describes the transfer
of the leadership from Moshe to Yehoshua in terms that are borrowed from
the Torah study academies: students, teaching the public, Torah study,
the term “my teacher”, the appearance of the heavenly voice,
the existence of a tradition of wisdom and suchlike.
Calendar - Tu Be’Av
The fifteenth day of the month of Av, a day known as ‘Tu Be’Av’,
which usually falls during the week after the Torah portion of Va’etchanan
is read, has traditionally been a festive day based on themes connected
to nature. According to ancient tradition, the Jewish agricultural calendar
is divided into two halves: the first half is from Tu (15th) BiShvat -
the “New Year for Trees” - until Tu Be’Av, during which
the sun increases in strength. In the second half, from Tu Be’Av
till Tu BiShvat, the sun decreases in strength. The grape harvest started
on this day of transition and this was celebrated in a special manner
in ancient times.
The Mishna (Tractate Ta’anit 4:8) tells that, “there were
no days as good in Israel as the fifteenth of Av and Yom HaKippurim [Day
of Atonement], when the daughters of Israel would go out in borrowed white
garments, in order not to embarrass those who did not have any …
and they would dance in the vineyards. And what would they say? Young
man, lift up your eyes and see what you choose for yourself. Do not look
for beauty, look at the family, ‘charm is deceitful and beauty is
vain’ (Proverbs 31:30)”. Every unmarried man would be there
in order to look for a wife. The Babylonian Talmud (Ta’anit 31a)
expands on this and explains that “the beautiful ones among them
would say, ‘look for beauty’ … and those of distinguished
lineage among them said ‘look at the family’ … and the
ordinary and the poor and the ugly among them said ‘marry us for
the sake of heaven, only crown us with your gold [after the wedding and
then we will become beautiful]’”.
According to various traditions found in the literature of the Sages
and its commentaries, a number of auspicious events took place on this
day which adds to the festive nature of the day:
(a) The forty years of wandering in the wilderness ended. During this
period all those who came out of Egypt died as punishment for the sin
of the spies (Bamidbar 14:26-35);
(b) The tribe of Binyamin was again permitted to marry with the other
tribes, after being boycotted due to the “Concubine in Gibeah”
incident (Shofetim 21:15-24);
(c) The various tribes of Israel were permitted to intermarry and
there were no longer concerned by the fact that land might pass from
one tribe to another (in the case that a daughter inherits her father’s
land and transfers her land to another tribe through marriage to one
of them);
(d) The barriers that divided between the kingdoms of Yehudah (Judea)
and Israel were removed. There had been frequent disputes between the
two kingdoms and according to tradition, the first king of Israel, Yeravam
ben Navat, placed guards who prevented the people of his kingdom from
making the pilgrimage to Yerushalayim, the capital city of the kingdom
of Yehuda. In the latter days of the kingdom of Israel, the King Hoshea
son of Elah disbanded these guards;
(e) After the failure of the Bar Kochba revolts in 135 CE, the Romans
refused to allow the burial of the many people who had died in the city
of Beitar. This refusal continued for many days (in fact it was six
days, since according to tradition, Beitar fell on Tisha BeAv [9th Av])
until they were finally allowed to give the dead a Jewish burial.
Tu BeAv has therefore been regarded as a day of joy and rejoicing since
ancient times and even today there are various joyous traditions associated
with this day, as a day of social interactions based on themes of love
and marriage, for example weddings, song festivals, dances and more.
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