Be-Haalotekha #2

Gershom, Son of Moses, and Power Succession

Yoni Pomeranz, 5767

The drama of the Biblical narrative becomes somewhat more exciting in this week's parashah. It tells a number of interesting stories. In one story, Miriam is stricken with leprosy. In another story, the people complain about food. God condemns them to eat meat until it comes out of their nose, and then smites them. However, the episode I want to discuss is that of Eldad and Medad prophesying in the camp.

The story is brief. It lasts only from Bemidbar 11:24 - 11:29.

The story does not seem especially complicated. It shows that Moses is humble and not excessively concerned about his own authority. But Rabbinic midrash reveals some of the gaps in the text and fills them with absent details. The gap that I want to focus on is the identity of the youth who reports to Moses that Eldad and Medad are prophesying. Rashi comments on Bemidbar 11:27 ("And the youth ran" - "וַיָּרָץ הַנַּעַר"): "Some say that this was Gershom the son of Moses" - "יש אומרים גרשום בן משה היה". (Rashi here is referring to a midrash in the Tanhuma, in the twelfth chapter on this parashah).

Rabbinic midrash tends to be uncomfortable with anonymous characters. It wants every character to have an identity. But how does the midrash decide that this character is Gershom? Is this simply a random decision?

I once learned in a class from Professor Ben Sommer of Northwestern University that the midrash here actually fills in what it perceives as a gap in the biblical text - the anonymity of the youth - by looking at other places in the biblical text. Midrash does not confine the way that it reads the biblical text to the local context of the verse that it interprets. Instead, every part of the Bible is potentially in dialogue with every other section. Thus, the midrash figures out who this youth is by looking at the story in our parashah in light of Judges 17:7, which reads:

This verse contains the problematic word from our passage - "נַעַר"/"youth". The midrash puts this verse in dialogue with our verse from the parashah. It then changes the vowels under the last two words of the verse - "גָר שָׁם"/"lived there" - and treats it as one word- so that it becomes "גֵּרְשֹׁם", the name of Moses's son (Ex. 2:22). The verse now reads: And there was a youth....and he is Gershom.

What is particularly interesting to me about this midrash is the way that it forces us to reevaluate the relationship between Joshua and the youth and between Joshua and Moses. The midrash exposes a secret rivalry between Joshua and Gershom, presumably over who will be Moses's successor. It makes a lot of sense to think that Gershom might be upset about Joshua taking over the leadership of the Israelites from Moses. After all, succession often runs in families and Gershom is Moses's first born son. But for the most part, we don't find out what happens to Gershom. We don't know how he feels about Joshua being given the leadership of the Israelites. But here, in our parashah, he rushes to Moses's tent to give him the news that his prophetic authority may be being usurped. Gershom seems concerned for Moses's authority. Why? Maybe he thinks that someday it will be passed onto him. Perhaps he is competing with Joshua to be the person who is most protective of Moses because Joshua already shows signs of wanting to succeed Moses.

Then Joshua, not wanting to be outdone by Gershom in showing deference to Moses, stands up and demands that Eldad and Medad be put into prison. Moses's question to Joshua - "Are you jealous for my sake?" - takes on new meaning in this context. When the biblical text is read without this midrash, it seems that Moses is merely telling Joshua that there is no need for Joshua to be concerned with Moses's honor, when Moses himself is not particularly concerned with his own honor. But in the midrashic context, Moses's question is understood differently. It is something of a rebuke - Moses asks Joshua: "Are you jealous for my sake? Or perhaps you are jealous of Gershom and covet the position of the leadership of Israel?" In this reading, Moses teaches Joshua that he must not seek leadership so aggressively.

Why would Gershom be anonymous in this story and only Joshua be named? Well, when victors write history, they often leave only their own name and wipe out the names of their opponents. The Roman Emperor Augustus, for example, when writing the account of his accomplishments known as the Res Gestae (roughly meaning "stuff that was done"), mentioned his opponents' actions, but left out their names, since he wanted to preserve the memory only of his own accomplishments. The midrash seems to suggest that the same thing may have happened with the Hebrew Bible, but that Gershom's name is hidden and can be found with the proper interpretive methods.

These questions that the midrash asks about Gershom's role and his disappearance from the story are real questions. The midrash is not particularly concerned with history, but historical questions often have interest for us. What does happen to the historical Gershom?

One hint shows up in the book of Judges. Chapter 18 of Judges, which details the conquest of the territory where the tribe of Dan lived in the land of Israel, concludes with a verse (18:30) that ends: ...Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land - ".וִיהוֹנָתָן בֶּן גֵּרְשֹׁם בֶּן מְנַשֶּׁה הוּא וּבָנָיו הָיוּ כֹהֲנִים לְשֵׁבֶט הַדָּנִי עַד יוֹם גְּלוֹת הָאָרֶץ"

Who is this Gershom the son of Manasseh? If we look in the traditional Hebrew text, the letter "נ" is written smaller than the rest of the letters. Manasseh's name is spelled "מ-נ-ש-ה". Without the "נ", the letters spell "משה", i.e., Moses. Probably the text originally read "Gershom, son of Moses," but someone later added the letter "נ" into Moses's name because this text said that Moses's descendents served as כֹּהֲנִים, priests, to the tribe of Dan while the tribe of Dan still used idols in their worship. The Danites would not have thought of themselves as idolaters; they would have thought that they were using the idols to worship the God of Israel. Nevertheless, one of Moses' descendants serving as a priest in a sanctuary with idols could have been embarrassing to Moses, so the text was changed to protect Moses's reputation.

If this account is to be believed, Moses's descendants - through Gershom - may have served as priests in the land of Israel - at least in the territory controlled by Dan - until its captivity. Gershom's fate was indeed hidden, as the midrash suspected.

Shabbat Shalom.