Some murders stem from hate, itself the mask of fear. Some murders are careless accidents. But still the guilt, blame, shaming. How do we handle the tragic reality of bad blood?
What happens when unprocessed guilt is at the core of the culture, the repressed reality of an entire nation? For David Ben Gurion, busy building Israel in the 1950’s, public guilt was not a popular option. He learned it from Joshua who likewise focused on the national agenda of securing shelter. He also found time to secure shelter for runaway suspected killers.
With more of the country conquered and settled Joshua turns to complete the last task commanded by Moses: he sets up six asylum cities, intended for those who killed another being in error, fleeing from blood-revenge and seeking safe haven. Operated by the Levites, these shelter-town, three on each side of the Jordan, were a civic must-have in a society where relatives can and must avenge their kin’s spilled blood. Today’s chapter lists more laws about the maintenance of this practice, including the length of time these accidental killers must remain within the city’s walls. Only when the presiding High Priest dies can they go home: Even if their blood isn’t shed, some death must occur in order to reset the situation. One additional detail is the threshold moment in which those seeking refuge are interrogated at the border:
וְנָ֞ס אֶל־אַחַ֣ת ׀ מֵהֶעָרִ֣ים הָאֵ֗לֶּה וְעָמַד֙ פֶּ֚תַח שַׁ֣עַר הָעִ֔יר וְדִבֶּ֛ר בְּאׇזְנֵ֛י זִקְנֵֽי־הָעִ֥יר הַהִ֖יא אֶת־דְּבָרָ֑יו וְאָֽסְפ֨וּ אֹת֤וֹ הָעִ֙ירָה֙ אֲלֵיהֶ֔ם וְנָתְנוּ־ל֥וֹ מָק֖וֹם וְיָשַׁ֥ב עִמָּֽם׃
“The ones accused of killing shall flee to one of those cities, present themself at the entrance to the city gate, and plead their case before the elders of that city; and they shall admit them into the city and give them a place in which to live among them.
An “eye for eye” style blood-revenge was still familiar and practiced by some of the dwellers of the land when early Zionists began to return there in the 1800’s. But like the Canaanites before them, the local Arabs who were gradually occupied by Israel eventually lost some of their old ways, some better, some worse, to the new culture. But the primal need for safe refuge didn’t go away - it was transformed.
When Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion embraced the Book of Joshua as the template for building modern Israel he did not include that old recipe for asylum cities. But in some sense, the entire Zionist project was a state of refuge - with Jews seeking sanctuary from an increasingly hostile Europe in the years before and after the Holocaust.
The comparison between the biblical reality and the modern crisis was not lost on Israel’s founders, which is why Joshua was the book chosen to feature in Israel’s tenth anniversary in 1958. Dr. Rachel Havrelock writes “ Ben-Gurion fancied himself an avatar of Joshua. As the minister of defense and prime minister who presided over a foundational war of liberation that banished the people of the land and established “the tribes of Israel” in their place, he saw himself as the loyal disciple of Theodore Herzl, who, by envisioning the Jewish State, served as the modern Moses.Herzl may not have initiated Ben-Gurion as his successor as Moses did Joshua, but nonetheless Ben-Gurion saw himself as his disciple par excellence. After hearing Herzl speak in his hometown of Plonsk in Russian Poland, Ben-Gurion recalled, “One glimpse of him and I was ready to follow him then and there to the land of my ancestors.”
The need for a safe home for Jews far exceeded Herzl’s fears, but verified his vision. For Ben Gurion and his contemporaries, following Herzl meant going back even further - to the Biblical narrative of refuge and conquest that was not only about linking the project to the national past - it also offered the means to define the rules and regulations of state-building. As he quickly learned - this came with the heavy and blood soiled responsibility of power becoming increasingly a moral problem.
Havrelock adds: “For Ben Gurion.. Time itself rippled through the figuration of territory as the redeemed biblical homeland to which Jewish exiles could now be ingathered. Such associations that would become so natural first needed to be produced and affirmed, such that the hardships, the violence, and the ceaseless struggle would seem destined and conclusive... Biblical associations further allowed the violent dispossession of Palestinians to go unspoken or quickly justified by way of analogy—had not Joshua’s wars of restoration required the extermination of the Canaanites? Had not the Israelis as moderns shown more compassion by engaging in expulsion rather than wholesale slaughter? “
Reading Joshua in 2022, through Ben-Gurion’s eyes in 1958, we can’t unsee the sad and complex repetition of patterns. There are no six cities of refuge to be found today in Israel or Palestine, though there are so many refugees, asylum seekers, exiled generations and those living under the radar, all in desperate need of safety, dignity, shelter and home.
Maybe it’s time to rethink this old invention, reimagine what shelter looks like, and put out the welcome mats, for all?
TODAY: Wrap up the journey with Joshua. . Join me today, November 21 2022, 1pm ET for a one hour Zoom conversation, exploring what we’ve discovered, what are we curious about. I'll be taking time to answer your questions - so please bring one!
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85448738911?pwd=dmRIRndNNDhjaXZsVjh5K3dSYUdLQT09
Meeting ID: 854 4873 8911
Below the Bible Belt: 929 chapters, 42 months, daily reflections: Join Rabbi Amichai’s 3+ years interactive online quest to question, queer + re-read between the lines of the entire Hebrew Bible, with daily reflections, weekly videos and monthly learning sessions. January 2022-July 2025
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Legends and myths have greater influence than history.
I am watching the film “Stutz, a documentary about Jonah Hill’s psychiatrist. Stutz explains Jung’s theory of the “shadow.” Hevrelock here is illuminating Israel’s shadow. Thanksgiving in the US brings up our collective shadow. Here in Pennsylvania, indigenous people who did not assimilate were walked off the land. Some who did assimilate into the Moravian religion in Ohio were later brutally massacred. Expulsion is not compassionate. Ways of life are lost.