When Moshe asked God to designate Moshe’s successor, whom did Moshe have in mind?
וַיְדַבֵּר מֹשֶׁה אֶל־ה לֵאמֹר׃
יִפְקֹד ה אֱ-לֹהֵי הָרוּחֹת לְכׇל־בָּשָׂר אִישׁ עַל־הָעֵדָה׃
And Moshe said to God as follows:
Let the LORD, Source of the breath of all flesh, appoint someone over the community
who shall go out before them and come in before them, and who shall take them out and bring them in, so that the LORD’s community may not be like sheep that have no shepherd.”
Did Moshe have a candidate in mind?
The theme of the first Shabbat that I spent in Israel this summer was, “trying to find an open pharmacy in Jerusalem.” Perhaps I can speak about that one day in some other context. The theme of my last Shabbat in Jerusalem was listening to divrei Torah about Parashat Pinchas with growing excitement that I would be able to share some of what I learned with all of you during these weeks when Jewish communities in Israel are one week ahead of diaspora Jewish communities in the Torah portion cycle. [When President Biden was in Israel he made reference to the “Torah portion that will be read in synagogues in the United States this week” alluding to this discrepancy. Someone in the White House speech writing office knows someone Jewish].
The Kotzker Rebbe taught that Moshe assumed that Pinchas would succeed him. This theory makes a fair amount of sense. Our parasha begins with Pinchas being blessed by God and granted a special prominence among the children of Aharon for having the zeal and passion and presence of mind to act with terrifying violence when Moshe was paralyzed by disgust or fear. If so, Moshe was surprised when God told him to designate Yehoshua as his successor. Yehoshua is the anti-Pinchas. Everytime people encounter Yehoshua in the Torah they tell him to “be strong and brave” which suggests that Yehoshua was the sort of person who elicited the concern in others that he needed that sort of encouragement. Nobody ever had to tell Pinchas, Hazak v’Amatz!
Yehoshua was Moshe’s greatest disciple, who “did not depart from Moshe’s tent” and the study of Torah with his mentor. The zealotry of Pinchas has to be contained. The Torah of Moshe has to be transmitted.
But, Rabbi Shlomo Dov Rosen, shared in shul in Jerusalem last Shabbat (which was Parashat Pinchas in Israel) that this teaching of the Kotzer, which Rabbi Rosen’s father frequently quoted, misses the episode that precedes Moshe’s request to designate his successor.
The successful appeal of the daughters of Tzelofhad is the story in the Torah that immediately precedes the designation of Yehoshua as Moshe’s successor. This story is an example of a completely different kind of rupture and it sets up the designation of Yehoshua in an entirely different way.
The daughters of Tzelofhad approach Moshe with a complaint and a request. Eretz Yirael had been allocated among the 12 tribes according to the number of patriarchal clans within each tribe, leaving no place for a family with four daughters and no sons. According to the Sifre, the halakhic midrash on Bamibdar, they explain that while human rulers favor men and give women disadvantaged status, the Holy Blessed One is merciful to all, and would therefore surely make an accommodation for families of daughters to take possession of a portion of Eretz Yisrael alongside their cousins. God confirms the validity of their request, the halakhah is clarified or modified and daughters inherit land in the absence of a brother.
The very next passage in the Torah is the designation of Yehoshua as Moshe’s successor.
If Pinchas represents a heroic response to a moment of acute crisis that cannot be predicted, the daughters of Tzelofhad rise to complain about a utterly routine and predictable failure of the halakhic system to provide for a distinct and identifiable class of people. Even if it was the case that the daughters of Tzelofhad were the only sisters among all Israel with no brothers to inherit their father’s land, the existence of such a family is not a statistical anomaly even if it may be a rarity. Sooner or later there would be a family with only daughters and we were lucky enough to have ancestors like the daughters of Tzelofhad to advocate for women like them.
This sets up the designation of Yehoshua as Moshe’s successor in a different light. Moshe approaches God with unprecedented directness: וַיְדַבֵּר מֹשֶׁה אֶל־ ה לֵאמֹר׃ the reverasal of the ubiquitous “Vayidaber Hashem el Moshe Leymor” and demands that a successor be designated and when Yehoshua is revealed as that successor it is as אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר־רוּחַ בּוֹ someone filled with the spirit. According to Netziv this means someone governed by his conscious decisions and choices and not swayed by corrupt emotions. According to Rashi, Yehoshua was noteworthy for his ability to respond, one on one with compassion and empathy to the individual before him and his or her individual needs.
We are left with a sort of square with two possible precipitating events and two ways to understand the selection of Yehoshua. If the precipitating event of Yehoshua being chosen was God’s blessing of Pinhas, then the lesson is that the sort of bold zealtry that can be successful in a moment of crisis, is not the character trait needed for stable long-term leadership. Pinhas remains a troubling role model. Yehoshua, the diligent disciple and Torah scholar, is the one who can be a permanent leader.
And if we look to the episode of the daughter of Tzelofhad as the precipitating moment prior to the designation of Yehoshua, our attention is drawn not to rare and unexpected moments of crisis, but to the predictable and routine failures inherent in even the best system. Yehoshua is chosen for his integrity and for his empathy. Those are the characteristics that can allow someone in a position of leadership and power to recognize a systemic failure and pivot towards mitigating its harms.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 