July 28, 2024|כ"ב תמוז ה' אלפים תשפ"ד Yehoshua vs. Pinchas: Navigating Uncertainty with Faith and Resilience By Rabbi Jonathan Muskat

Last Shabbat, Yael and I visited our children Elisheva and Daniel in Manhattan. Daniel is the Assistant Rabbi at Lincoln Square Synagogue and he delivered a beautiful drasha and wonderful shiurim throughout Shabbat while I had the opportunity to finally get to sit in the back of the shul for once and see what it’s like. On Friday afternoon, Yael and I left Oceanside and arrived on Elisheva and Daniel’s block with plenty of time before Shabbat and there was a spot for our car almost in front of their building. Amazing! Yad Hashem! It was a small spot, but when you find a parking spot in the city, you go for it. I thought I had enough room to park there. Now I am not very good at parallel parking, but with a lot of maneuvering, I was able to park an inch in front of the car behind me and an inch behind the car in front of me. I was so proud of myself, at my superior parking abilities. Now, mind you, I didn’t know how I would ever get out of that spot, but I thought that I would worry about that after Shabbat. Until, of course, Yael tells me that the back of my car is parked on the sidewalk. I needed to get out immediately. But I was stuck. I could barely go forward and I could barely go backwards and I was close to hitting a pole on the sidewalk.  tried but there was absolutely no way that I could navigate getting out of that spot. So last Friday afternoon, about a half hour before Shabbat, I felt completely stuck. I had absolutely no idea how I was going to move from that spot. And people would walk by and none of them knew how to direct me in a way to get out of that spot, but they made sure to let me know that I was parked on the sidewalk. I felt stuck. Baruch Hashem, the Assistant Rabbi of Lincoln Square Synagogue knows how to parallel park well and he saved the day.

 

I think many of us are feeling stuck. Some of us may feel stuck when we think about our United States presidential candidates. Some of us may feel stuck when we think about the hostage crisis in Israel. We want Prime Minister Netanyahu to make a deal to return the hostages but we don’t want Israel to compromise its security and the gains against Hamas that it achieved in this war. Some of us feel stuck with the rising antisemitism in this country. We feel stuck and we don’t know which way to turn. This is how many of us are feeling now, and the truth is, this is how many of us felt at this time thousands of years ago.

 

The mishna in Masechet Ta-anit lists five events that happened on Shiva Asar B’Tammuz and most of them seem very serious: the sin of the Golden Calf, the walls of Jerusalem were breached, an idol was erected in the Mikdash and Apostomus burned a Torah scroll. However, the fifth event, the cancellation of the Korban Tamid, the daily sacrifices, doesn’t seem as serious as the others. Yet it makes the cut. It’s on the list. Rav Lichtenstein explained that Judaism is built on consistency. The daily sacrifices represent consistency in daily life. Shiva Asar B’Tammuz ended that consistency. Shiva Asar B’Tammuz plunged us into a world of no Korban Tamid, a world of inconsistency and a world of uncertainty. What would happen when Moshe broke the luchot? Would that spell the end of the covenant between God and the people? What would happen after the walls of Jerusalem were breached? Would that spell the end of the Jewish people as we know it?

 

And the truth is that for a very brief moment in this week’s parsha, Moshe experienced that uncertainty, that doubt, that Three Weeks moment. God tells Moshe to ascend to Har Ha-avarim where he will die and Moshe is concerned about the future of his people and he immediately tells God to appoint a leader. And in this request, the Torah tells us how to respond to our Three Weeks moments, our moments of uncertainty, those moments in our lives when we feel stuck. Because God has two options. Well, He has many options, but really only two. Yehoshua or Pinchas? And the question is who will win the election? Now it’s true that maybe Kalev will run as a third-party candidate, but he doesn’t have much momentum. We heard about him 40 years ago as being a good spy, but we haven’t heard from him since. It all boils down to Yehoshua and Pinchas.

 

And God picks Yehoshua. He doesn’t pick Pinchas even though Pinchas is really great. After all, he took bold action and stopped the plague at the end of last week’s parsha. He is given a brit shalom, a covenant of peace in this week’s parsha. God is obviously pleased with his actions. He is destined to become a Kohen Gadol. But he does not become the next leader of the Jewish people. Moshe, himself, understands perhaps why Pinchas cannot become the leader. Moshe asks God to select someone, but he refers to God as אלוקי הרוחות, literally as the God of the spirits. Now that’s a strange formulation – that God is the God of all spirits. Rashi picks up on this terminology and says:

 

אמר לפניו, רבונו של עולם, גלוי לפניך דעתו של כל אחד ואחד, ואינן דומין זה לזה, מנה עליהם מנהיג שיהא סובל כל אחד ואחד לפי דעת

 

Moshe tells God, “You know that each person has a different רוח, a different spirit, a different personality. Please appoint a leader who can tolerate each person’s personality.” And the truth is that it’s even more challenging for a Jewish leader than a non-Jewish leader. It’s like the story of the Israeli Prime Minister who says that the difference between me and other world leaders is that while other leaders might have to deal with criticism from their opposition, I have nine million prime ministers. Every Israeli thinks that he is the Prime Minister! Probably after his own experience with this nation, Moshe understands that the next leader must appreciate the different רוחות, the different personalities, of each member of the nation, and we need a leader who is tolerant. Pinchas is bold and decisive and passionate, but he may not possess the tolerance and patience necessary for the job.

 

Yehoshua is slower, more cautious and is not as impulsive as Pinchas. Pinchas will rush to a solution because he is interested in results, while Yehoshua may take more time coming to a decision because he may appreciate more the complexities of any given situation. Pinchas is the bold revolutionary interested in results, and Yehoshua is the thoughtful leader who values process. And that is why Moshe doesn’t ask God to replace him with Pinchas. God agrees with Moshe because immediately after this episode when God selects Yehoshua as a leader and Moshe anoints him, God commands Moshe about the korban tamid, the daily sacrificial sacrifice. Now He already commanded Moshe about this sacrifice in Parshat Tetzaveh, but He commands Moshe about this now, because, yes, the korban tamid is about sacrifices, but it’s also about leadership. 

 

God agrees with Moshe because sometimes the path in our lives is uncertain. We don’t know what will yield the best outcome. So we need the leader who is like the korban tamid, who has a consistent approach to deal with the issues of the nation and who has the trust of the nation. Pinchas is a wild-card. The nation won’t know what he will do on any given day because he is impulsive and reactive. Now it worked out at the end of last week’s parsha, but living with Pinchas as a leader is living with uncertainty. It’s like living during the Three Weeks without a korban Tamid. Living with Yehoshua as a leader is living with a korban tamid. We may not know what the end result will be, but we know that Yehoshua has an approach, a method that he will bring to every decision and that gives us great comfort.

 

Just to be clear, I am not identifying either presidential candidate with either Yehoshua or Pinchas because an evaluation of our presidential candidates requires a much more thorough analysis than what I am presenting here. What am I saying is that we can feel stuck and uncertain with the challenges that we face as Americans, as Jews and as supporters of medinat Yisrael. Being stuck means that we can’t find our emunah, our faith and we are simply full of anxiety all the time. If we take a Pinchas approach, a bold, results-oriented approach, then we will be constantly frustrated because the results that we yearn for may not often be so realistic now. But if we take a Yehoshua approach, a korban tamid approach, an אלוקי הרוחות approach to life, then we appreciate complexity, we understand but are not paralyzed by uncertainty in results because we have certainty in an approach to life, sort of like parallel parking. The way to maneuver out of a tight parallel parking spot is to have an approach, and to maneuver slowly but surely, an inch here and an inch there, with patience and understanding that at some point, I will succeed, or at the very least, my son in law will succeed in getting me unstuck.

 

It’s amazing when you think about Jewish history.  On the one hand, it’s a story of persecution, blood libels, ritual accusation, murder and exile.  It’s a story of so much uncertainty. On the other hand, it’s a story of a flowering religious literary culture of the Talmud, Rashi, Tosafot, the Rishonim, the Shulchan Aruch and the Rema, acharonim, and tremendous chiddushim in Shas and Poskim.  And these stories happened simultaneously.  We as a people have never allowed uncertainty in results define us and undermine our certainty in our approach, in our way of life.

 

Feeling stuck and facing uncertainty are deeply human experiences that our ancestors have navigated for centuries. The choice between Yehoshua and Pinchas is clear: in times of doubt, it is the consistent, thoughtful approach that sustains us. Yehoshua's leadership, like the korban tamid, embodies a steady and reliable path forward. As we face our own challenges—whether in politics, global affairs, rising antisemitism or our own personal challenges—let us strive to embrace a Yehoshua-like approach. By maintaining consistency in our values and actions, and by appreciating the complexities and nuances of our situations, we can navigate uncertainty with faith, resilience and certainty in our approach and hopefully that will bring us the peace of mind that we so desperately seek.