Rabbi Yehoshua Tested by a Roman at a Crossroads

During the period of Roman religious persecution in the Land of Israel -- the era following the destruction of the Temple in 70 of the common era and continuing through the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132-135 -- Jewish students faced a choice that could mean their lives. Wearing Jewish garb in public identified them as Torah scholars and made them targets for forced conversion or execution. Some changed their outer garments to Roman dress. This was not considered apostasy; it was survival. But it created a different kind of test.

Two students of Rabbi Yehoshua were walking in disguise when a Roman officer encountered them. The officer, who apparently had some knowledge of Torah -- the texts preserved in the Midrash Rabbah on Genesis tradition identify him as someone of Jewish lineage who had absorbed learning before his Roman career -- posed them a challenge. Rabbi Yehoshua himself is remembered across several stories in the Ginzberg Legends. If you are sons of the Torah, he said, give your lives for its sake. If you are not its sons, why should you be killed for its sake? You cannot claim the protective disguise while also claiming the sacred identity.

The students answered with precision: we are its sons, and we are willing to be killed for its sake -- but it is not the way of people to commit suicide. The officer accepted this distinction and proposed a different test. Three questions. Answer them correctly, and he would let them go. Fail to answer, and he would subject them to persecution.

The first question: one verse in Isaiah says God stands to dispute and judge the peoples, while another verse in Joel says God will sit to judge. Which is it? The students answered: when God judges Israel, he stands, abbreviates the trial, and makes compromises in the sentence. When he judges the nations, he sits, is scrupulous, and extends the proceedings. The officer rejected this. Your teacher Rabbi Yehoshua taught differently, he said. Both verses speak of the nations: when God judges them, he first sits and is scrupulous, and then he stands to implement the punishment against them. Standing at the end of judgment is not mercy -- it is the beginning of enforcement.

The second question: what does the Proverbs verse mean when it says "one who works his land will be sated with bread"? The students offered a practical reading: a man who leases one field and works it properly is better than one who leases many fields and leaves them untended. The officer rejected this too. Rabbi Yehoshua read admato not as "his land" but as a compression of ad moto -- until the day of his death. One who worships God will be sustained until his last day. The one who pursues vanities will be sated with poverty -- and the vanities in question are idol worship.

The third question: what does the verse mean, "it was as she had difficulty in her childbirth, the midwife said to her: Fear not; for this too is a son for you"? The students gave the plainest reading: the midwife was reassuring the laboring mother. The officer rejected this interpretation as well. Rabbi Yehoshua taught it differently, citing Abba Chalfoi ben Kureya: every tribal patriarch was born with a twin sister. Benjamin, however, was born with an additional twin sister, a second one. When Rachel went into labor, the first sister emerged and she was not alarmed -- she knew from experience that a twin sister was expected. When the second sister emerged unexpectedly, she feared she would not survive to bear her second son. That is why the midwife said: fear not, for this too is a son for you. The "too" carries the entire surprise.

The encounter is preserved in the Midrash Rabbah alongside a second scene involving the same Rabbi Yehoshua -- the visit of Rabbi Yochanan ben Beroka and Rabbi Elazar Chisma, who went to greet him in the village of Pekiin and brought back the teaching of Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya. Rabbi Yehoshua had asked what novel interpretation had been taught that week. When they told him -- that children are brought to the assembly so that those who bring them will be rewarded -- he was struck. "You had this fine pearl in your hands, and you sought to conceal it from me?" The image of a pearl concealed captures something about both encounters: the finest teaching is not always the obvious one. The student who recites what is expected may be hiding the pearl that the teacher can see at once.

The Roman officer, whatever his purposes, was testing whether the students could surface the pearl. They could not -- or would not. They gave safe answers. Rabbi Yehoshua, trained on the words of goads and implanted nails and the single Shepherd from whose mouth all of Torah ultimately comes, had taught his students interpretations that cut deeper than the obvious reading. The Roman officer, remarkably, knew those deeper readings. He had been paying attention in a different kind of school. The tradition of Torah's deepest readings belonging to those who truly seek them is one of the great recurring themes across the Midrash Rabbah collections.