The special bond between the tribe of Dan and the tribe of Judah is ancient, but in our day it takes on renewed force. The slogan “two states for two peoples,” even before it is a political slogan, points to the disconnect between the two “states” within the Land of Israel: the state of Dan on the coastal plain, and the state of Judah along the mountain ridge. The physical, cultural and spiritual differences between these two regions have been evident since the very beginning of history in the Land of Israel, and they remain strikingly present to this day.
The insistence of the nations of the world on the slogan “two states for two peoples,” and the placing of the full weight of “world peace” precisely on the separation between the mountain state and the coastal state, shows us that there is an extraordinary point of depth here. Throughout history, the nations of the world sometimes identify before we do the next challenge in the destiny of the people of Israel, holding up a mirror through which we can understand the mission of our generation.
Our Sages already established that redemption depends on the connection between Dan and Judah:
“‘Judah is a lion’s cub’ — this is the Messiah son of David, who comes from two tribes: his father from Judah and his mother from Dan, and both were called ‘lion,’ as it is said: ‘Judah is a lion’s cub,’ and Dan is called a lion’s cub, as it is said: ‘Dan is a lion’s cub.’” (Yalkut Shimoni on Parashat Vayechi, remez 160.)
In this article, we will try to trace the unique character of the tribe of Dan through the stories of Samson and the midrashim of our Sages — exploring the essence of the connection between Dan and Judah, and its meaning precisely for our times.
The Lion and the Snake
Dan and Judah are two poles of Israeli reality, past and present. And yet the sources of Israel also reveal the special bond woven between these two forces. Judah led all the camps in the wilderness; Dan was the rear guard of all the camps. They are the two ends, and between them lies the entire camp of Israel. As noted, both were likened to lions in the blessings of the tribes (alongside Dan’s symbol, the snake), and their two most prominent representatives, King David and Samson the hero, each managed to defeat a lion in the course of their lives.
When the people of Israel built the center of their life — the Tabernacle and the Temple — the tribes of Dan and Judah led the construction: in the Tabernacle it was the collaboration between “Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah” together with “Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan” (Exodus 32). And in the building of the Temple, King Solomon, a man of Judah, was aided by “the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, whose father was a man of Tyre, skilled to work in gold and in silver, in bronze and in iron” (II Chronicles 2:13). Samson, the last of the judges, from whom onward the sun rises over the kingdom of Israel, was born to a mother from the tribe of Judah (Hatzlelponi was her name, according to our Sages) and a father from the tribe of Dan (Manoah). As mentioned, this special connection continues into the future as well, for our Sages knew to say that the Messiah will come only out of the joining of Dan and Judah: “the Messiah son of David, who comes from two tribes, his father from Judah and his mother from Dan.”
When Dan and Judah succeeded in connecting, the higher story of Israel’s destiny was built, embodied in the Tabernacle and the Temple. But most of the time there was tension between them: in the Samson stories, the men of Judah hand Samson over to the Philistines, and the tension between the two tribes is already reflected in the relationship of Samson’s parents — Manoah of the tribe of Dan and his wife, who was from Judah. The verses hint at suspicion between the two, and our Sages even amplified it: “This teaches that there was a dispute between Manoah and his wife — he would say to her, ‘You are barren, and that is why you do not give birth,’ and she would say to him, ‘You are the barren one’” (Bamidbar Rabbah, Parashat Naso 10). Another midrash describes tension between Boaz, the judge from Judah, and Manoah, Samson’s father: “Rav said: Boaz made one hundred and twenty feasts for his sons… and to none of them did he invite Manoah” (Bava Batra 91a). Even the Harry Potter books, the greatest bestseller in history, carry echoes of this tension: the snake, Dan’s symbol, is the emblem of Slytherin house, and the lion, Judah’s symbol, is the emblem of Gryffindor house — the two houses that compete with each other endlessly for the leadership of the wizarding world.
This is a tension rooted in fundamental cultural differences, reflected also in the regions where each tribe lived: Dan on the coastal plain and Judah along the mountain ridge.
Two States for Two Peoples
The greatest demographic upheaval in Israeli history is the settlement of Gush Dan, the greater Dan region. Seventy percent of the country’s Jews today live on the coastal plain, between Haifa and Ashkelon — an area that was almost never settled by Israelites, neither in the biblical period nor in the days of the Second Temple. The people of Israel lived in the mountains — the hills of Judah, Samaria and the Galilee. The coastal plain was the home of the Canaanites, the Philistines and the Hellenists. The notion that the mountains are the rightful dwelling place of the people of Israel was so deeply rooted that the king of Aram identified the God of Israel as one whose “God is a God of the hills” (I Kings 20:23). In the Second Temple period, Apollonius, the commander of Syria, mocked Jonathan the Hasmonean and invited him to face him “in the plain, where there is neither stone nor rock nor place to flee” (I Maccabees 10), fully confident that the Jews, people of the mountains, would not succeed on the coastal plain. In the Mishnaic period, our Sages regarded the coastal plain as a morally inferior place and declared that “in the cities of the sea was done what was not done even in the generation of the Flood” (Bereishit Rabbah 28).
Scholars note the marked cultural differences between the mountain regions and the plain. Space is too short for a comprehensive survey of the enormous number of cultural differences between mountain and plain; we will only note that this is not merely a matter of “religious” cultural differences — which certainly existed from the time the Israelites settled in the mountains (an absence of cult sites and temples in the highlands, compared with an abundance of temples, statues and pig bones in the coastal regions) — but also of material culture independent of religious outlook. For example, in the Iron Age the large cities of the mountains covered 20–40 dunams, while in the plains one finds cities of 300–600 dunams (Ashdod — 300, Ashkelon — 600); the pottery of the mountain regions is simple, undecorated, and drawn from a limited repertoire of vessels, while the pottery of the coast is decorated and highly varied — and the list of differences goes on. (For more on this, see Yitzhak Meitlis’s book “Excavating the Bible,” which deals with it at length.)
The coastal regions of the Land of Israel — with their abundance of fertile soil, their access to seaports, and their position along the most important road of the ancient world, the Way of the Sea — produced in the plains a culture of plenty, open to outside influences and constantly up to date with every “innovation” in technology. In utter contrast to all this, the mountain regions were isolated and lofty, and took no part in the multicultural celebration going on down below. The mountain people were characterized by conservatism and by slow adaptation to novelty. The rocky, harsh mountain terrain demanded enormous daily effort to establish settlement — clearing the woodland, hewing water cisterns, and carving farmland out of the stony ground through the strenuous labor of building terraces.
In one sentence: throughout history the mountain symbolized the separateness and distinctness of the people of Israel — “a people that dwells alone, not reckoned among the nations” — while the coastal plain symbolized abundance and openness to the world.
The State of Tel Aviv
Today too, one can say, with great caution, that our land holds “two states for two peoples.” Not only the Palestinians in the mountains and the Israelis in the plain; among the Jews themselves there are clearly many differences between the culture of Gush Dan and the culture of the mountain dwellers. The differences are so numerous that some argue the two states should actually be separated, as the Palmach fighter and author Yoram Kaniuk proposed:
“Why not secede from Israel and establish a new state, the State of Dan, spread across Gush Dan? We will establish here a state in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence; a narrow, elongated state from the Galilee to the south. We will call it Tel Aviv, as Herzl proposed: tel — a ruined mound that has no revival, and aviv, spring — freedom and hope. They are the majority, but we will have the airports, the industry, the high-tech, the Weizmann Institute… We will have universities full of the wise and the foolish who will do as they please: they will research, create, literature, science… On the other side will live the people of the far right, and large parts of the Haredim and the religious, most of whom betrayed the state we founded, who themselves were not there when it was established… They will have Zion — and we will have the sea. They will have a Temple, and we will have museums and research studios… We do not need a civil war, because we are vacating the Land of Israel in order to live as citizens in the State of Tel Aviv, and thus peace will come upon us and upon all Israel, and let us say Amen.”
From the other side of the barricade, Michael Ben-Horin proposed establishing the State of Judea in the mountain regions — independent and cut off from the state of the coastal plain. In the novel “The Third,” by the author Yishai Sarid, about the building of the Third Temple, the tension between the mountain state and the plain state is so intense that in his imagination the Third Temple could rise only after all the cities of the coastal plain had been destroyed by atomic bombs. What all of these share, on both sides of the barricade, is that they do not believe the sharp opposition between the State of Tel Aviv, with all it symbolizes, could ever be healed together with the mountain state and all that it symbolizes.
The Remedy of the Tribe of Dan
Gush Dan, as its name suggests, lies mostly within the territory of the tribe of Dan. Just as our Sages knew how to “disparage” the coastal plain, it is evident that the tribe of Dan also absorbed torrents of homiletical criticism, and was even called “the lowliest of the tribes” (Shemot Rabbah 40:4).
In contrast to this view — which at times also spreads among circles who speak contemptuously of the “State of Tel Aviv” — there is an utterly different approach among the Sages, one that knows a day will come when the star of the tribe of Dan will rise, and it alone will be capable of “saving Israel.” Our Sages called the tribe of Dan “as one — as the singular one of the tribes” (Bereishit Rabbah 98:13), and “Rabbi Yochanan said: ‘Dan shall judge his people as one’ — like their Father in heaven” (Sotah 10). The era of “the footsteps of the Messiah” is precisely the era of the tribe of Dan. He is “the rear guard of all the camps”; his strength rises at the end, and in the character of this tribe lie the powers needed to face the challenges of our generation. When we search the Bible for a remedy for our challenges vis-à-vis Western culture, we do not find it easily. The peoples Israel confronted in the biblical period were mainly Semitic (Assyria, Babylon, Persia), or descendants of Ham (Egypt and Canaan), or children of Abraham (Ishmael and Esau). The Philistines are almost the only people we faced in the biblical period who came from a “Western” origin (the sons of Japheth). The Philistines came to the land from the islands of the sea, mainly Crete, as part of the expansion of the Minoan culture — the cradle of Western civilization. Israel’s encounter with Western culture begins from the days of Alexander the Great onward, but in the biblical period there is almost no engagement with this culture. Samson and the tribe of Dan are among the few who confront it head-on, and therefore there is great importance in delving into the stories of Samson and the tribe of Dan precisely in our own day, when this is the ruling culture. The settlement of most of the country’s Jews in the territory of the tribe of Dan likewise indicates that we live in an era in which the solutions to the challenges of the hour lie in the special qualities of this tribe.
So what are the character traits and powers of the tribe of Dan? We will describe them briefly, as they emerge from the Samson stories and from other places in the Bible:
Individualism: Samson is the only judge who acts alone and brings no one along with him. The tribe’s symbol is the snake. Unlike the other tribal animals (wolf, lion, donkey and doe), which live in packs, the snake lives alone and acts alone from the moment it hatches. The Danite way of fighting is likewise solitary: “Dan shall be a serpent by the way, a viper by the path, that bites the horse’s heels so that its rider falls backward” (Genesis 49). This individualism is also expressed in Samson’s prayer, which is deeply personal and utterly direct, addressed to the needs of the moment — like the prayer over the spring that burst forth at “Lehi,” and “strengthen me, I pray, just this once.”
Physical power: Samson, as is well known, is the Jewish ‘Hercules’ — a might reflected also in Jacob’s blessing to the tribe of Dan. When Max Nordau spoke at the First Congress of “muscular Judaism,” strong and robust, the figure of Samson the hero stood before his eyes.
Aesthetics: The tribe of Dan has an aesthetic sense, a longing for abundance and cleanliness. This is why the tribe was drawn northward, to the place of wealth — “He who wishes to grow rich, let him turn north” — and moved from the coastal plain to the land of flowing streams at the sources of the Jordan. This is why it was so important that it be the central partner in the building of the Tabernacle and the Temple.
Connection to the nations: The tribe of Dan has a strong natural connection to the culture of the nations. This is why it received its territory on the coastal plain, by the sea: “And Dan, why did he linger by the ships?” (Judges 5:17). The tribe of Dan succeeds greatly in the culture of the nations, but of course this tendency leads it to intermingle with them. Thus Samson, drawn again and again to the Philistines — “for he sought a pretext against the Philistines” — gives the impression that he feels far more “at home” in the company of the Philistines than in that of his own people. So it was also during the enslavement in Egypt, when “Shelomit daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan” bore a son to “an Egyptian man” (Leviticus 24:11), and so it was with the builder of the Temple, who was “the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, whose father was a man of Tyre.” Egypt, Philistia, Sidon — wherever Dan is found, he tends to mingle with the nations, and the nations tend to mingle with him: “This teaches that each and every one brought his wife to him (to Samson) in the prison, so that she might conceive by him” (Sotah 10a).
Promiscuity: Many in the Bible struggled with sexual desire, but it seems that only for Samson “it became as though permitted.” He does not hide like David or Judah, but comes and goes openly among the foreign women, sharing his doings with his father, his mother and his father-in-law — and it seems entirely natural to him.
Following the eyes: “Samson went after his eyes; therefore the Philistines gouged out his eyes” (Mishnah Sotah 9:2).
The Great Buildings Collapse
At the end of his life, Samson brought down the building upon which Western culture stood. In our day, the great edifices on which Western modernity stood have been toppled by Samson-like individualism, and what remains of them are fragments of stories and narratives.
Our generation, the generation of the footsteps of the Messiah, is a generation full of Samsons. Some lament, at times justly, postmodernism and the great destruction it wreaks. Some look at postmodernism and call for turning back — to eras when it was easier to cope. The trouble is that history rarely moves backward. The call to go back is what one says when one has nothing left to say and wishes to return to some imagined golden age. Postmodernism is here because it carries a message for the world, exactly as the modernity that preceded it carried a message for the world. Dan, like Samson, knows how to engage that message. The great lion was slain, and in its place came forth a thousand small bees producing wonderful honey. Out of the eater came something to eat, and out of the strong came something sweet.
It is easy to see how the traits of the tribe of Dan are vividly reflected in our generation: the power and dazzling technology that has arisen on the coastal plain; the individualism that characterizes our era; the strong connection to world culture, with Tel Aviv among the most cosmopolitan cities on earth; the shift from a culture of hearing to a culture in which sight is the strongest medium and the screen is everything; and the sexual permissiveness on open display, in the pocket of every youth and elder.
And it is precisely the powers of the tribe of Dan that know how to draw out the good in all of these: the individualism that refuses to settle for grand slogans and demands of every individual to “connect” in depth to the values he carries. The capacities of power and aesthetics, expressed in Israel’s standing as a global technological power, are the frame of the Tabernacle into which the content must be poured. Dan’s inclination to connect with the nations is the call to the people of Israel to leave the shtetl and fulfill its destiny of “and through you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” Sexual permissiveness is a distorted by-product of a desirable and good process — the liberation of woman from the serpent’s ancient curse of “and he shall rule over you.” Our shift to a visual medium is the first budding of the transition from an auditory Israeliness of “Hear, O Israel” to “and all the people saw the sounds.”
These are the immensely important powers of the tribe of Dan, and only through them can we fulfill our destiny here. In Tel Aviv lies the key to our purpose here.
A Front as Wide as a Road
Needless to say, every such power carries a clear danger: individualism can tear apart every good thing; the desire to connect with the culture of the nations can lead to assimilation into them to the point of losing identity; technology and the great Samson-like power can lead to hubris — to “my power and the might of my hand.”
Hence the immense importance of the connection with the tribe of Judah, which carries almost opposite values:
Against individualism, the Judahite values emphasize the collective bond under “the kingdom”; against the desire to be part of the culture of the nations, they emphasize the uniqueness of the people of Israel; and facing a technology that develops at a pace morality cannot match, the tribe of Judah calls for joining progress with the morality we received at Sinai. The connection between Dan and Judah, which our Sages saw as the key to complete redemption, joins technology to morality; joins “and through you shall all the families of the earth be blessed” to “and I will make you a great nation”; joins freedom from coercion and personal choice to commitment to the whole.
I will end with what is, to my eyes, the most beautiful of all the Samson stories. Samson takes the gates of Gaza, the capital of Philistia, upon his shoulders and carries them up to the top of the mountain facing Hebron — the capital of Judah. When I looked at Gustave Doré’s painting of this story, I suddenly saw the resemblance to Moses bringing down the Tablets. Samson tries, on his broad shoulders, to join the power of the tribe of Dan, embodied in the gates of Gaza, and carry it up to Hebron. Here is a kind of inverted Tablets of the Covenant. These are tablets that represent the power, wealth and might of human beings — the gates of the richest city in the land — and Samson seeks to carry them up to Hebron, the city of the Patriarchs, which more than anything symbolizes the uniqueness of the people of Israel.
Benny Marshak, the Palmach’s political commissar and morale officer, once gave the War of Independence the succinct name “a front as wide as a road.” He meant that most of the weight of the war rested on the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Today too, our challenge — our front — runs along the width of Highway 1, the road that connects Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. Dan to Judah.
And it shall no longer be said “the State of Jerusalem” and “the State of Tel Aviv,” but one state, in which Jewish eternity and morality join, along the widest road there is, with Tel Aviv’s innovation and human values. And the wondrous merit of Tel Aviv, as one of the most cosmopolitan cities there is, will serve as a two-way gate to the entire world.
