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About halfway through our weekly parsha (Pinchas), Moshe asks G-d to appoint a leader over the Jews who will succeed him. He says (Num. 27:16), “G-d, Lord of the spirit of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation.” Rashi explains that Moshe hoped that G-d would appoint his sons as the leaders of the Jews, but G-d explained that since Moshe’s sons had not learned Torah, they could not become the new leaders of the Jews to succeed him. Instead, Yehoshua (Joshuah), who was totally dedicated to Moshe and to the Torah, was to become the new leader. G-d then commands Moshe to “place his hands” on Yehoshua and thereby to pass on the baton of leadership, which Moshe did.
However, in his Mishneh Torah, the Rambam says that the way to pass on leadership to a new king is not by placing of the hands (called semicha in Hebrew), but by anointment with oil. And he brings Yehoshua as an example of a new king; “One does not establish a new king except by way of a beit din (“rabbinical court”)of seventy elders and a prophet, such as Yehoshua, who was appointed by Moshe Rabeinu and his beit din” (Hilchot Melachim 1:5). And he continues, Ӆwhen he is appointed, he is anointed with the anointing oil” (1:7). (Meshiach, the Jewish messiah will also be a king, called meshiach because of the anointing oil, called in Hebrew shemen hamishcha). So, the question is, why did Moshe – who was also considered a king (Rambam Hilchot Sanhedrin, end of Ch. 18) - coronate Yehoshua by placing his hands upon him, instead of pouring the anointing oil on him?
One possible answer is that the Rambam’s statement regarding anointment was meant to apply only to the kings from the line of King David. That is, only kings descended from King David had to be anointed, while other kings, not from the line of David could be appointed by other means. Yehoshua, of course was not from the line of King David (who lived six generations later). However, from the Rambam it is clear that the anointing oil was necessary for all kings, and not only those from the Davidic line. For, when describing the anointing process, the Rambam quotes from the prophet Shmuel, “And Shmuel took the jar of oil and poured on his head and kissed him” (Shmuel 1, 10:1). The verse refers to the coronation of King Saul, David’s predecessor, so it is clear that the Rambam’s ruling in favor of anointing with oil applies to all Jewish kings, not only to those of the Davidic line.
The answer to this question goes all the way back to the giving of the Torah and how it was transmitted from one generation to the next. Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers 1:1) tells us that “Moshe received Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Yehoshua, and Yehoshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets transmitted it to the anshei Knesset hagedola (‘men of the Great Assembly’).” And in his introduction to the Mishneh Torah, the Rambam goes into greater detail, listing the transmission of Torah all the way from Moshe to Rav Ashi, who was among the redactors of the Talmud some forty generations after it was given on Sinai. Every time that the Rambam mentions a new generation, he says that they received the Torah from the leaders of the preceding generation, “and their beit din (rabbinical court)” or “their cohorts.” In other words, the transmission was always a public matter, from one group to another, rather than from an individual of one generation to an individual of the next generation. The exception is Yehoshua, about whom the Rambam states, “and many elders received the Torah from Yehoshua,” without adding “and his beit din.” That is, the transmission of the oral Torah from Yehoshua to the elders did not involve a public group. Yehoshua, who was the only one to whom Moshe taught the entire oral Torah, was the only one to pass it on to the elders, without the aid of a beit din, or of fellow sages.
This distinction is understandable; the Rambam says (also in the introduction), “Moshe taught the entire oral Torah in his beit din to the seventy elders, and Elazar and Pinchas and Yehoshua all three of them received from Moshe, and to Yehoshua who was his student, Moshe Rabeinu transmitted the entire oral Torah and commanded him regarding it.”
That is, Yehoshua not only received and learned the Torah from Moshe (like Elazar and Pinchas and the elders), but also received a special responsibility to transmit the entire Torah. That is why the Rambam records that Yehoshua alone, without a beit din or colleagues, was the one to transmit the Torah to the next generation.
It emerges that Moshe and Yehoshua were unique in this respect; they were the only individuals who transmitted the entire Torah. After them, the Torah was transmitted in each generation by the sages of that generation as a group, not as individuals. Moshe and Yehoshua were the kings of their respective generation not only because they were wiser than the other sages, but because the entire transmission of Torah was dependent upon them. But, in subsequent generations, even though the “head of the Sanhedrin” was wiser than the other sages of the beit din, and therefore “in charge,” nevertheless the transmission of Torah from each generation to the next was dependent upon the group and not upon the individual leaders. After Yehoshua, the Torah was transmitted “from group to group,” and not from individual to individual.
That accounts for the dichotomy in later generations between the sages and the king, or as we might describe it now, between the executive branch and the legislative/judicial branch. Even though the leader of the Sanhedrin (equivalent to the highest rabbinical court, or beit din) was the greatest Torah leader of his generation, he was never accorded the status of a king. About the king of the Jews, the Torah says, “No-one was above him except for the Lord, his G-d” (Sifra, Vayikra 4:22). The king was the only authority, who was not beholden to anybody, since there is only one king in every generation. The leader of the Sanhedrin was one of seventy-one sages, and even though he was the wisest of them, he was never accorded the status of “king.” Thus, in later generations, there was a distinction between the “executive” branch, represented by the king, and the “legislative/judicial” branch, represented by the sages of the Sanhedrin with its head in charge. However, that was a distinction that did not exist in the generation of Moshe and of Yehoshua. In their generations, they were not only the wisest sages and therefore in charge of the beit din. They were also kings, responsible for putting the wisdom of the Torah into action. They combined the tasks of the executive and other branches of government; they not only discerned alone what was the divine path in Torah according to the will of G-d, but they also were responsible for executing it. In practice, this also meant that they and they alone were responsible for passing the Torah on to the following generation.
Armed with this explanation, we can understand why when coronating Yehoshua, Moshe only placed his hands upon him, without anointing him with the anointing oil normally reserved for new kings. The purpose of a king is described by the Rambam (Hilchot Melachim, end of ch. 4) as follows, “His purpose and intent should be to elevate the role of truth and to fill the world with justice and shatter the strength of the wicked and to fight the wars of G-d. For, we don’t coronate a king to begin with except in order to pursue justice and wars.” That is, Jewish kingship is not solely for the purpose pf supplying the people with their physical needs. Rather, his role begins with and remains tied to “elevating of the role of truth” by raising the level of Torah observance, fulfilling the Torah and its laws. Even the wars that the Jewish king is called upon to fight are “wars of G-d.” If so, then, the role of the king is directly related to the role of the beit din hagadol – the Sandhedrin – which serves as the collective spiritual authority of the generation. The Sanhedrin is the “pillar of instruction, from which law and justice emanates to all the Jews” (Rambam, beginning of Hilchot Mamrim). The task of the king is to put into action the decrees and rulings of the Sanhedrin. That is why, in its inception, the role of head of the Sanhedrin and the role of the King were combined in one. They were not originally two different roles, but one – the discernment of the law together with its enactment.
Since, in its inception, the role of the King is to “receive” the law from the Sanhedrin (which determines the law of the Torah), it is understood that Yehoshua (and Moshe as well) combined both roles of kingship and sage (as the wisest sages of their generations). In both cases, the role of King was a direct result and extension of their roles as the greatest sages of their respective generations. Not only did they give the entire Torah to the Jews, but they also put it into practice in their generations. That is why Moshe coronated Yehoshua by way of semicha – placing his hands upon him – and not by way of meshicha (pouring oil on him). Had he anointed Yehoshua with oil, it would have indicated that Yehoshua’s task was only to be a king (like Shaul), and a king alone (in the executive sense, of simply putting into action the edicts of the Sanhedrin). But, since the main task of Yehoshua was not only to rule, but to embody the Torah and its wisdom, this was best transmitted by semicha (ordination). Semicha is associated with Torah, which was transmitted from one generation to the next by way of placing the hands on the next leader. In order to protect and transmit the most important aspect of his reign – embodiment and enactment of the Torah – Moshe coronated (ordained) Yehoshua by way of semicha and not by way of meshicha.
From Likutei Sichot of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, ztz’l, vol. 23, pp. 190-197 Rabbi David Sterne, Jerusalem Connection in the old city of Jerusalem