אמר רב בשעה שנפטר משה רבינו לגן עדן אמר לו ליהושע שאל ממני כל ספיקות שיש לך אמר לו רבי כלום הנחתיך שעה אחת והלכתי למקום אחר לא כך כתבת בי (שמות לג) ומשרתו יהושע בן נון נער לא ימיש מתוך האהל מיד תשש כחו של יהושע ונשתכחו ממנו שלש מאות הלכות ונולדו לו שבע מאות ספיקות ועמדו כל ישראל להרגו אמר לו הקב"ה לומר לך אי אפשר לך וטורדן במלחמה שנאמר (יהושוע א) ויהי אחרי מות משה עבד ה' ויאמר ה' וגו
When Moses died and entered Gan Eden, he said to Yehoshua, "ask me all of your safeks (Halakhic uncertainties)." Yehoshua responded: "Rebbe, there are none. Have I ever left your side, even for a moment? You have written about me, 'and his assistant, the young Yehoshua, did not stir from the Ohel Moed.' " Immediately, Yehoshua's strength waned - he forgot 300 points of Halakha and 700 Safeks were born to him. So all of Israel gathered to kill Yehoshua. God said to Yehoshua: you cannot allow Me to remind you of the Halakhot. Instead, distract Israel with war, as it says, "and it was, after Moshe died . . . God said, 'Go and cross the Jordan' ."
Chazal deal with a troubling, but central question: if Moshe really received the Oral Torah (or even general rules about it), why is the current state of Torah sh'Baal Pe one humongous safek? (If this bothered Chazal, it certainly bothered Tzaddukim, early Christians, etc.) What exactly happened between Moses and Mar, and what good is an unbroken Mesorah if it remains obviously distorted, corrupted, and confused?
Points of interest in Chazal's approach to this question:
1. The Gemara attributes gaping holes in the Halakha to the earliest of generations.
2. In fact, they were put there through Divine providence ("Yehoshua's strength waned").
3. These safek-gaps are not "integral parts of the system", but Divinely ordained corruptions.
4. Bnei Yisrael never accepted this Torah! We thought we were getting something relatively complete, which Yehoshua ruined!
5. This Aggadata plays off of the Gan Eden story. There we experienced an all too perfect, innocent, pre-historical existence. A minor flaw, however, led to corruption, expulsion, and the frustrating imperfections of typical life. The ideal Torah of the idyllic Midbar was likewise perfect, innocent, and symbolic of a Jewish pre-history. Yehoshua's misstep signals safek, emigration, and the realpolitik of Canaan conquest. Just when Moshe enters the "Garden", Bnei Yisrael step out of it.
Chazal deal with a troubling, but central question: if Moshe really received the Oral Torah (or even general rules about it), why is the current state of Torah sh'Baal Pe one humongous safek? (If this bothered Chazal, it certainly bothered Tzaddukim, early Christians, etc.) What exactly happened between Moses and Mar, and what good is an unbroken Mesorah if it remains obviously distorted, corrupted, and confused?
Points of interest in Chazal's approach to this question:
1. The Gemara attributes gaping holes in the Halakha to the earliest of generations.
2. In fact, they were put there through Divine providence ("Yehoshua's strength waned").
3. These safek-gaps are not "integral parts of the system", but Divinely ordained corruptions.
4. Bnei Yisrael never accepted this Torah! We thought we were getting something relatively complete, which Yehoshua ruined!
5. This Aggadata plays off of the Gan Eden story. There we experienced an all too perfect, innocent, pre-historical existence. A minor flaw, however, led to corruption, expulsion, and the frustrating imperfections of typical life. The ideal Torah of the idyllic Midbar was likewise perfect, innocent, and symbolic of a Jewish pre-history. Yehoshua's misstep signals safek, emigration, and the realpolitik of Canaan conquest. Just when Moshe enters the "Garden", Bnei Yisrael step out of it.
2 comments:
"In fact, they were put there through Divine providence ("Yehoshua's strength waned")."
Yehoshua's waning strength may not have come from God at all, but from some sort of highly personal character flaw which didn't allow him to properly internalize and maintain the laws he forgot.
See Bamidbar Rabba 1:
אלא כל מי שאינו עושה עצמו כמדבר הפקר אינו יכול לקנות את החכמה והתורה לכך נאמר במדבר סיני
True, but I feel like this family of terminology (strength waned, knowledge weakened, etc.) is used in contexts of supernatural memory loss, as if something freak-ish and Divinely mandated happened.
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