As America struggles today to make sense of its divergent directions and leadership, we are reminded that some leaders leave a legacy, some come and go, forgotten. We often stand on the shoulders of giants that preceded us - but often, as people and nations, we also stand on the purposefully repressed giant ruins of what who came before us, not just forgotten failures, but also hidden histories and vast narratives replaced by those who built our realities.
Like many other founding fathers of nations, Moshe Dayan was a complex character. One of Israel’s most decorated and controversial leaders, his legacy still looms large today, as Israel is even more deeply conflicted and inflicted by a political pit, biblical in scope and with no end in sight - that he has a lot to do with.
I grew up admiring him, as my late father worked closely with him and even authored Dayan's first biography. Only later did I begin to learn of the complex ethical, moral and political positions that this general turned diplomat lived by and left us to deal with. He also left behind several of his own books, one of them, Living with the Bible, describes not only his personal fascination with the link between the land and the good book but also exposes the politics of Israel’s evolution and its tenuous ties as secular state to the faith of its ancestors. A tattered paperback was on my father’s bookshelf and some years ago made its way to mine, but yet unread. I picked it up as we began to journey with Joshua, curious to see what Dayan, like Ben Gurion, did with the bloody battle scenes of this book. Not surprisingly, For Dayan, Joshua was a literal roadmap, and more than that - a deep tie to his childhood and convictions. Today’s chapter is linked to where and how he - and the state - came of age.
Chapter 12 is one long list - the 31 conquered kings of Canaan, and their vast lands, occupied by the incoming people of Israel. This chapter begins the second section of the book, in which the military campaign is over and the complex reality of co-existence emerges. Were the natives all killed, as the first section suggests? Or were they still present, as the following chapters claim? Are these different historical traditions - or political preferences that edited earlier versions despite inconsistent facts? Isn’t this always the case when colonial conquest attempts to replace a prior people?
For Dayan, these were not theoretical questions - in both words and actions he chose a decisive side. Towards the end of chapter 12, 2 of the 31 fallen kings are mentioned - and one of them mattered to him most:
מֶ֣לֶךְ שִׁמְר֤וֹן מְרֹאון֙ אֶחָ֔ד מֶ֥לֶךְ אַכְשָׁ֖ף אֶחָֽד׃
“The king of Shimron-meron - one; the king of Achshaph - one.”
“The Canaanite king whose estate I possessed was the king of Shimron- Meron mentioned in the book of Joshua (12:20) It was upon the property in the valley of Jezreel which was his home 3300 years ago that arose the cooperative farm village of Nahalal where I was brought up. When I came to the valley as a child with my parents, the site of ancient Shimron- Meron boasted a few mud shacks and a large grove of fig trees. The Arabs called the place Simone (a corruption of biblical Shimron) and the spring at the foot of the Tell - the archaeological mound containing the remains of early settlement-was known as the spring of Semonia. The land bought for the Jewish settlement was divided among its members by lot. The field that fell to my father joined Tel Shimron, and was very superior land, choice grey soil, light and soft. The Arabs called such land “soil of ruins”, since it was a mixture of ashes and decayed vegetation swept down from the high mound by the wind and the rain.”
Soil of Ruins is a fascinating expression, bringing to mind the ‘ruin cult’ that we examined yesterday. For Dayan, the neighboring Arabs were both friends and foes, allies and enemies, visible - and not. The ruins of their civilization, not just that of ancient cultures, was the compost from which he and his colleagues built the homeland so many of us were born into, oblivious of its origins. The Bible was not just a way to by-pass the recent rich Arabic culture - it became a greater reason to hold on to the land - a safe haven for the Jewish people, and a historical birthright worth fighting for at any price:
“My parents who came from another country sought to make their Israel of their imagination, drawn from descriptions in the Bible, their physical homeland in somewhat the reverse way, I thought to give my real intangible homeland the added dimension of historical depth, to bring to life the strata of the past which nine Lebanese the desolate ruins and archaeological mounds– Israel of our patriarchs, and judges, kings, our prophets.”
Like Ben-Gurion, Dayan weaves the biblical sagas of battle with his mapping of Israel’s wars, linking the historical periods as a continuum, despite the glaring differences, that he acknowledges:
“Israel’s war of independence, unlike the Joshua campaigns, was fought when the Jews were already settled in the land. The battles were conducted from and within the country itself. The directions of Israel’s advances were also the reverse of those in Joshua‘s day: Jewish settlement was mainly concentrated before the war in the coastal plain, and from there the Jewish troops struck out to the north, the south and the east – to the Galilee, the Negev and the foothills. Furthermore the war of independence started with a combined Arab assault on Jewish community and only as the campaign developed did Israel go over from defense to attack.”
Dayan’s biblical musings became quite a modest best-seller (an ideal bar-mitzvah gift) and The New York Times Book Review devoted a page to it, penned by Israeli literary critic and journalist Amos Elon:
“Dayan's reading of the Bible is strangely selective. It is a pagan Bible of wild barbaric tribes, sweeping out of the desert to conquer the land of Canaan. His Bible begins with Abraham and ends with David. Joshua and Saul are his heroes, the prophet Samuel merely a moralizing bore. Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel are never mentioned in this book — nor any other of the great prophets. In Dayan's Bible there are only wily nomads and gloomy kings and bloody warriors. There are no ethics, no psalms, nor any of the moral precepts of the Mosaic code.
..“I don't believe in pagan images” Dayan said, “but I believe in the power of belief, in the comfort that faith can bring.” It is not God, nor the Jewish religion Dayan talks about, but the secular religion of nationalism.
Dayan's “faith” is in the Jewish people, its link with this land. Faith, he says, is the “serenity in the face of a child who falls asleep with a tattered teddy bear clasped in its arms.”
Fast pace modern media and politics often obscure the origins and ruins of lives and legacies that preceded this moment. Every once in a while an image from the past resurfaces - a page, an ancient ruin, unsolved riddle, repressed memory of a sleeping child - reminding us that under all the violence of war, hides, always, human longing for safe soil, for dignity, and for an endless loving hug. On this date in 1938, German mobs began to turn their Jewish civilization into charred ruins, as the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ shattered illusions of safety. Echoes of those ruins still haunt us now.
As for the giants on whose shoulders we sit? They’ll be back, next week.
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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Can only think of one giant today. And I live in Pennsylvania and voted for him. Maybe the most important vote cast in my lifetime.
And on this day, no less, when a prophet of beautiful ruination may have saved American democracy:
https://orionmagazine.org/article/beautiful-ruination/