yehoshua: rachav rachav
sholem aleichem,
Hello friends! Shanah tovah! I'm back from my vacation and all the chagim. I had a wonderful time visiting friends in NYC, meeting some Internet Friends for the first time, and riding Trains. I'm delighted to get back to business reading Yehoshua with you all.
I'm not going to try to keep up with any specific schedule of reading, other than sending a newsletter once a week by Friday (except when I don't). At the beginning of each newsletter, I'll include the chapters+verses covered along with a brief summary in case you don't want to read the full original text. As with last year's parsha newsletters, I'll usually be focusing in on just a few verses, so it isn't strictly necessary to read along.
This week: Yehoshua 1-2 (if you are looking for a parsha drash, last year's is still up).
Summary: After Moshe's death, haShem instructs Yehoshua to cross the Yarden. Yehoshua is to be strong and resolute and recite the Book of the Torah day and night (this language is a direct callback to later portions of Devarim). Yehoshua secretly sends two spies to Yericho. They go, and lodge with a sex worker named Rachav. The King of Yericho learns of the spies, and orders Rachav to give them up, but she hides them. She explains that she has heard what haShem has done for the Israelites. As a result, she is showing them chesed/lovingkindness, and asks them to show her chesed when, with haShem's power behind them, they inevitably conquer the land. The spies swear to show her chesed v'emes/truth, as "our bodies are pledged for yours, even to death!"
וישלח יהושע־בן־נון מן־השטים שנים־אנשים מרגלים חרש לאמר לכו ראו את־הארץ ואת־יריחו וילכו ויבאו בית־אשה זונה ושמה רחב וישכבו־שמה
Yehoshua-ben-Nun sent two spies from Shittim in secret, saying: "go, see the land and Yericho." They went, and came to the house of a sex worker. Her name was Rachav, and they lodged there
There is some debate over Rachav's occupation (see Radak for a reasonably concise explanation), but most sources agree that she was some kind of sex worker (note that her name is usually spelled Rahab, but I'm going to make a Point later). The Talmud (in both Megillah 15a and Taanit 5b) goes into somewhat disturbing detail about her:
רָחָב בִּשְׁמָהּ זִינְּתָה. אָמַר רַבִּי יִצְחָק: כׇּל הָאוֹמֵר ״רָחָב״ ״רָחָב״ — מִיָּד נִיקְרֵי. אָמַר לֵיהּ רַב נַחְמָן: אֲנָא אָמֵינָא ״רָחָב״ ״רָחָב״ וְלָא אִיכְפַּת לִי! אֲמַר לֵיהּ: כִּי קָאָמֵינָא בְּיוֹדְעָהּ וּבְמַכִּירָהּ
Rachav aroused impure thoughts by her name....Rabbi Yitzchak said: anyone who says "Rachav Rachav" immediately experiences a seminal emission. Rav Nachman said to him: I say "Rachav Rachav" and it does not affect me. Rabbi Yitzchak replied: when I said this, I meant someone who knew her and recognized her.
I find this story particularly fascinating because, like many stories that may seem entirely aggadic/mythic, it actually plays a not-insignificant role in halakhic/legal discourse -- in this case, about whether it is permissible (for a man) to listen to a woman singing on the radio. Rabbi Yitzchak's teaching in our gemara indicates that if a man knows and recognizes a woman, he can become aroused by her without currently seeing her (e.g. while listening to her voice on the radio). This yields some "permissive" rulings (one may listen, but only in cases where one does not know the woman or see an image of her), although some poskim still forbid listening to women on the radio altogether. Orthodox Jewish women in communities that keep these practices still sing and record music, of course, for other women (though even that is not without controversy).
Sexual arousal of men at a distance is not, to be honest, a particular halachic concern of mine. But I do think there are halachos -- ways of living, communal obligations -- we can learn from the story of Rachav that are deeply relevant to egalitarian Jewish communities.
Just before the discussion of seminal emissions, the Rabbis list Rachav as one of four beautiful women in the world:
אַרְבַּע נָשִׁים יְפֵיפִיּוֹת הָיוּ בָּעוֹלָם: שָׂרָה (וַאֲבִיגַיִל, רָחָב) וְאֶסְתֵּר
there were four women, beautiful ones, in the world: sarah and avigayil, rachav and ester
While I'm not particularly delighted that the Rabbis were so focused on these women's beauty (and how they caused arousal), I do think it is interesting the company that Rachav keeps in the tradition: Esther, Avigayil, Sarah. All three were prophetesses, all three central, in their time, to our people's story. Tikva Frymer-Kensky argues that Rachav herself is a kind of oracle of haShem (p. 297), as Rachav states:
I know that [haShem] has given you this land...For [haShem] your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below
Even according to our Rabbis, Rachav's lineage is one of prophecy, as a baraisa teaches:
Eight prophets, who were also priests, descended from Rahab the [sex worker], and they are: Neriah; his son Baruch; Seraiah; Mahseiah; Jeremiah; his father, Hilkiah; Jeremiah’s cousin Hanamel; and Hanamel’s father, Shallum. Rabbi Yehuda said: So too, Huldah the prophetess was a descendant of Rahab the [sex worker]
It is no accident that Rachav's name is spelled רחב: the same three letters spell חרב, another name for Mount Sinai, the mountain of revelation. These are also the same three letters that spell חבר, or "friend". Later on in Yehoshua we will learn
ואת־רחב הזונה ואת־בית אביה ואת־כל־אשר־לה החיה יהושע ותשב בקרב ישראל עד היום הזה
only Rachav the sex worker, her father's house, and all that [were] to her were spared [lit: revived, nourished, caused to live] by Yehoshua, and she dwelled in the middle of Yisrael until this very day
All of this is a very different picture to how sex workers and their legacies are treated in (most) Jewish communities today.
So if we're looking in our texts and traditions for help understanding our communal obligations and way of life [halachos], let me propose this: we have an obligation to fulfill Yehoshua's promise of true chesed to Rachav by showing true chesed to all sex workers (as it is written: "all that [were] to her"). More generally, we have an obligation to make Tanakh true and center sex workers in the midst of Yisrael ad hayom hazeh/up to this very day.
And to be clear, "true chesed to sex workers" means true chesed to sex workers. This isn't about helping sex workers leave sex work, unless that's what they actually want. As it is written: Rachav ha-Zonah, Rachav the sex worker, was spared and dwelled within Yisrael.
These obligations also do not depend on the reason for, or kind of, sex work. Rachav is not the only sex worker in our people's stories. But, unlike many others, we don't know why Rachav was a sex worker or what kind of sex work she did (or even if she ever became Jewish -- though one rabbinic legend has her converting and marrying Yehoshua). As RG writes in "The Whore's Covenant" (p. 92):
I think of those women who came before me. I am no Esther, nor Tamar. I am not forced by mortal stakes or divine mischief to do this work. I have no father to sell me, no husband to dishonor, no King to please.
Maybe Rachav does the work for her own survival, to support her family, to have fun. Maybe, like RG, she is
compelled by the concealed, small grain of holiness nestled within every exchange, the connection that spans the omnipresent maw of contagion.
Maybe Rachav likes doing sex work, maybe she doesn't. Maybe Rachav stops doing sex work, maybe she doesn't.
It doesn't matter. This isn't a moment for midrash, this is a moment to learn what we can from its absence. We don't know Rachav's backstory precisely to teach that our obligations enumerated above do not depend upon it.
Of course, we don't (or shouldn't) need justification from Tanakh to understand that we (non-sex-workers and sex-workers alike) have an obligation to show chesed to sex workers. But I think this story can help us understand the breadth of this obligation, and its particularity to us as Jews.
As always, interested in your thoughts (both on this topic and if you have any suggestions/requests about how the newsletter is covering Nevi'im.) The reply button on the email will only go to me :)
good shabbos,
ada