The Broad Who Lived on the Edge in Jericho

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow *

The Hebrew Scriptures do two things in their storytelling that we conventionally, today, would not think religiously “proper”: They often use puns and word-plays to make a deep religious and spiritual point; and they sometimes treat sexuality not with prudish reserve but with relish, again to teach a spiritual point.

The traditional Torah-reading and prophetic portion for this Shabbat (June 8-9) do both.

When Moses sent twelve scouts across the Jordan to tour the land (in Hebrew, “latur”), ten of them came back scared by the “giants,” seemingly impregnable, they found there. From their panic came thirty-eight more years of wandering in the Wilderness (Num. 14).

The bilingual Hebrew-English pun of “latur” and “tour” helps us to see “latur” as indeed a touristy kind of visit, in which the “tourists” merely glance here and there, never deeply gazing, never getting intimately connected with the Land they glance at. (To this very day, the Israeli Ministry of Tourism uses as its symbol the picture of two ancient Israelites, the scouts Moses sent into the Land, carrying between them a gigantic cluster of grapes, just as the Torah describes them.)

“Latur” is also used in the final verses of the same weekly Torah portion (Num. 15: 37-41) about the tzitzit (fringes) we are to tie on the edges of our four-cornered clothing. There too the verb is used about the danger of just glancing around hither and thither at the world, not really deeply seeing—and thereby whoring (zonim) ourselves after trifles that we erect into false gods. Somehow, gazing at these fringes is to teach us to look deeply into the world, not casually like tourists.

Perhaps the rabbis who chose how to divide up the weekly Torah portions chose to connect this passage about tzitzit with the one about the scouts precisely because they wanted to connect and highlight “latur.”

The rabbis also assigned as the Haftarah (Prophetic passage) to be read with this Torah portion a report on the scouts whom Joshua sent into the Land thirty-eight years later, as the marching Israelites approach the city of Jericho – a high-walled Canaanite redoubt.

These scouts find themselves in the house of a Jerichoan woman named Rachav.

Her name means “broad.” Think of Psalm 118: 5:

Min hameytzar karati Yah;
Anani bamerchav Yah.

From the narrow place I called to God;
God answered me with broad open spaces [merchav, from the same root as “rachav”].

And note that “maytzar, narrow” echoes Mitzrayyim, that Tight and Narrow Place of slavery, that Egypt from which the Israelites are still escaping.  It is a broad and open woman who opens the Land to them.

And Rachav is specifically called a whore (zonah).  She lives really on the edge – for she entertains guests in the very edge of the wall of Jericho.

But there is something different about this zonah, different from the “zonim” that the Torah portion warns us against, telling us to focus on the fringes of the edges of our garments. 

Rachav, the Broad who out of all Jericho is by far the most broad-minded, the most wide-open to new possibility, welcomes the two Israelite scouts. She helps the scouts scope out the city. For this whore has fallen in love with YHWH, the Breath of all life, the God Who has led the Godwrestlers out of slavery.

She knows the Godwrestlers will win because God has already turned history upside down to free these miserable slaves from the Imperial Pharaoh. Now this band of runaway slaves is bringing their revolutionary vision into Canaan, facing a city famous for its walls. She expects the world to be turned upside down – or right-side up – again.

Rachav the Broad asks the scouts she has befriended: “Hishavu-na b’ YHWH—- Make an oath, please, by YHWH [the Name of God that echoes the Holy Interbreathing of all life],  that just as I have shown lovingkindness to you, you will show lovingkindness to my family when you take the city.”

But the words for “oath” and “seven” are the same. So “Hishavu-na —make an oath, please!” could also be, “Make a seven, please!”

Make a “seven” b’YHWH”—Make the seven creative days for God, the seven days that culminate in Shabbat, the day of open possibility, the day when we do not Make or Do but simply Be. This “seven” of restful self-reflection is what brings down the walls that make our lives narrow, the walls that block our way to a future full of open possibility.

No wonder that when the Godwrestlers did approach the walls of Jericho, they took the advice Rachav had given the scouting party. They made a “seven” for God.  They danced seven dances around the walls of Jericho.

No wonder the walls fell.

Rachav the Broad, the whore, knew this wisdom because she lived on the edge like the tzitzit, the fringes on our clothing.

And not only geographically, on the edge of the edge – the edge of the city wall.  She was a whore, a “broad.” Broad-minded. Open to visitors, open to the people that itself lives always on the edge.

The Bible is not simple-mindedly affirming sexual promiscuity for its own sake. But it is affirming that Rachav has learned from professional sexual whoring how to turn the openness of whoring into a far deeper kind of spiritual openness. She has learned to open herself when it comes to ultimate issues – to open her life her life to the God of open possibility. She teaches us how to see the deepest truth embodied in the fringey tzitzit, instead of – as the Torah portion warns us—touring and whoring after the false gods of walls, giants, towers, arrogance.

She stands with the Bible’s group of “outsider,”  “transgressive” women who have a healing impact on the future (Lot’s daughter, Tamar, Ruth. . .).  Most of biblical tradition is dominated by men and is strongly committed to “insiders” and boundaries.  These women were not only transgressive in their own time; their stories continue to be subversive across time, into our own time. 

Can we lift up these women in new ways? What would it mean to have a Judaism, a Christianity, an Islam in which they were really models?

The scouts brought tragedy upon the people by looking merely at the surface of the land, like tourists.  Can we look deeply at the land and at the earth, instead of seeing merely surfaces? Can we look deeply enough to heal the earth and air and water, instead of poisoning them to feed our giant appetites for wealth and power?

And can we look at our selves and ask – are we still committed to that God of fringiness, the God Who lives on edges, or have we built towers and walls around ourselves, do we preen ourselves on being giants in the land, impregnable – while God is getting ready to turn the world upside down on behalf of runaway slaves?

Puns and word-plays are themselves a kind of fringiness, breaking down the conventional walls and barriers we place between our words to make connections that are unexpected, funny.  So from the word-plays of this weekly portion can we also learn to pause and laugh at the rigidity we often impose on ourselves in the very name of religion? 

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Rabbi Waskow is director of The Shalom Center http://www.shalomctr.org ; author of Godwrestling – Round 2 (Jewish Lights) among many works of Jewish renewal. He has been a teacher and speaker on applying Torah to our lives in America, Europe, China, and Israel. Other commentaries on the Torah portions can be found at—

http://www.shalomctr.org/taxonomy_menu/1/127/7/56

Click on the names of the biblical books in the left-hand margin and then on the specific portion.