The Joshua Generation by Havrelock Rachel;

Author:Havrelock, Rachel; [Havrelock, Rachel;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691198934
Publisher: Princeton UP
Published: 2020-05-11T00:00:00+00:00

Canaanite neighbors instructed the Israelites on how to survive in the wilds of Canaan, and eventually the Israelites expanded from the wilderness to the borders of Canaanite cities. Many of the early kibbutzim—Degania, the first kibbutz, for example—preserved memories of arriving at a strange location and learning local means of survival from the resident Felaheen (Palestinian peasants). In the story of Degania, Jewish immigrants come to a place called Um Juni, where their Arab neighbors teach them how to build brick ovens, plant crops, and produce dairy products.73 As these neighbors are valued, romanticized, and pitied, the pioneers work toward a separate culture of exclusively “Hebrew labor” and the unspoken goal of their absence. The overarching approach, which Aharoni attributes to the Israelite tribes, was to behave “as true and diligent students” while avoiding being “swallowed up” by a surrounding culture—learn from the natives, but don’t be like them in order to eventually surpass them.

The patient, persistent project of settlement, for Aharoni, meant that Canaanite cities with long-standing cultural traditions of their own went unincorporated. “The transformation of the land of Canaan into the Land of Israel is not the result of a one-time conquest of a settled land, but first and foremost the result of acquiring and settling uninhabited lands.”74 In the archaeological record, Aharoni found evidence of advanced Canaanite urban centers as well as vacant lands where the tribes of Israel asserted themselves. He could thus imagine an empty land conquered by Hebrew labor without denying the Canaanite presence or accepting the conquest as portrayed in Joshua. Conquest, for him, was a slow process of penetration, acclimation, and expansion. Aharoni constructed his argument in a logical and careful way without the sweeping gestures of Yadin, yet still framed it in terms of colonization as redemption. A founding member of a kibbutz, Aharoni viewed the herculean process of converting “backward” lands into “new earth” as “one of the great revolutions in the history of the Land of Israel” that ultimately “changes the face of the land of Canaan from one end to the other.”75 In place of a conquest by soldiers, Aharoni perceives disparate moments of quiet, persistent collectivism that create “the Land of Israel.”

Necessity prompted the gradual yet extensive historical shift. “We see around the 13th century and the beginning of the 12th century a tremendous push on the part of the different tribes of Israel toward settlement. This push—as if from a lack of choice—occurs under particularly difficult conditions and circumstances.”76 As if describing the motivation for Jewish immigration to Israel, Aharoni explained that the tribes settled the often-inhospitable land because they had nowhere else to turn.77 Persecuted by other groups, forced to constantly move, the tribes located wild, untrammeled tracts of land and put down roots. Because this process did not end their torment, the tribes banded together, protected their holdings, and worked to enlarge them.

No matter how strong the bond among the tribes, the landscape never became socially or ethnically homogenous. For example, despite the

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