Students at Milwaukee Jewish Day School wrote opinion pieces on Joshua’s leadership qualities and what they can teach us as we select our next president of the United States. Rabbi Moishe Steigmann’s sixth-grade Jewish studies class, at the school in Whitefish Bay, has been turning to the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, for leadership lessons. The Chronicle met with the students to give them tips on writing a commentary.
Here, we present the work of some of the students.
We can learn how our president should act from Joshua’s mistakes. Joshua does what people tell him, but he does not always think first.
When he sent scouts to Ai, they told him he should bring no more than 3,000 men, which was a small part of his army. Joshua brought 3,000 men. In the end, he lost and about 36 men were killed. Joshua should have thought more about it and brought more men. There wasn’t much at risk if he were to bring his whole army.
Another example was when the Gibeonites, a tribe local to Canaan at that time, came and claimed that they were from far away, and he let them come with him without first consulting anyone. And later, when he found out that the “travelers from far away” were actually the Gibeonites, he didn’t listen to God, who said to kill them, and made them slaves.
We want a president who listens to what people say. We also want a president who will think about what he is going to do and make ideas better, without defeating their point. Keep all these things in mind when you are voting.
A good leader has to be smart and think before doing something. Joshua is not always a good example of thinking before doing. For example, Joshua and the Israelites were camping out near the city of Ai and Joshua attacked Ai without asking God. He only sent 3,000 troops into Ai. If you didn’t have God fighting with you, why would you even fight, let alone fighting with only 3,000 troops? After he lost to Ai, Joshua blamed God. God said he should kill the Israelites and go to another nation. Then, Joshua said that they might not want you because you will have a bad reputation – they will say you didn’t get the Jews to their promised land so you might not get us where we want to go or what we need.
The reason we think he is not behaving intelligently is because he made a treaty with the Gibeonites and they betrayed him by lying to him when they said they were wanderers but they lived in the area. He is not the best leader because he is immature as well. Sometimes he is a bit too trusting because he wasn’t supposed to make a treaty with the Gibeonites. If Joshua was a candidate for being our leader, we would not vote for him because he is not always smart about his actions and does not always think before taking action.
We think that Joshua did the best he could. It was hard for him because he had to take the place of Moshe as leader. Moshe was trustworthy to the people and God, intelligent because he led the Israelites for 40 years through the desert. He was adaptable because he left Egypt to go to Canaan. He was collaborative because he transferred messages between God and the Israelites. He was an achiever for the splitting of the Red Sea.
Joshua was intelligent when he let the Israelites solve some of their problems instead of Joshua or God solving them. For example, he let the Israelites conquer their own land. He also believed in the Gibeonites story which was that they were wanderers from a faraway land and he should not kill them. He is adaptable because he listened to the Gibeonites, choosing not to kill them. He is collaborative because he transferred messages from God and the Israelites just like Moshe did. He is a do-er because he followed through on the scout’s and spy’s reports and is there for the splitting of the Jordan river, but he blamed the attack on Ai on God.
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