SHELACH LECHA: Dual Loyalties?

“How was life in the old country?” the sabra asked Yuri, a new immigrant to Israel from the old Soviet Union.

“I couldn’t complain,” came the answer.

“But I thought Soviet Jews were persecuted and prevented from actively being Jewish. Weren’t those reports true?” the questioner persisted.

“I couldn’t complain,” again came the reply.

Exasperated, the Israeli demanded: “If things were so good back there, what made you come to Israel?”

“You don’t understand,” Yuri replied. “Back there I couldn’t complain. That’s why I came here to Israel where I can complain!”

Home is where one can complain. (Who else but our own would listen!) Only when the fledglings grow and leave the nest do they come to appreciate its virtues. If, when we are away from home, we still decry it, something is dreadfully wrong with home.  And that was certainly true regarding Yuri’s home in the former USSR!

We aren’t at all surprised when Yuri leaves his old homeland without a tear, without an ounce of regret. Nor are we perturbed if, once settled in Israel, he becomes a “good Israeli” and looks for things to complain about! But were he to have voiced negative feelings about his new homeland before he had arrived, it could have been symptomatic of a psychological malaise, a deep-seated rootlessness or ambivalence which would need working through. Perhaps Yuri still retained a kind of attachment or loyalty to the old homeland despite the totalitarian restrictions on personal freedom that he couldn’t complain about.

It is with these thoughts in mind that we can attempt a deeper analysis of the events of our sidra. 210 years in Egypt were not wiped away easily from the national consciousness. There was initial elation and gratitude to G-D on escaping the deadening clutches of slavery expressed in the Song at the Sea (Exodus 15:1-18) but this soon gave way to doubt and uncertainty (“Is G-D in our midst or not?” – 17:7). Now as the people of Israel stand on the brink of the Promised Land, they appear to harbour afterthoughts about their very national identity. Why else could they have been so fearful about conquering the land when they had been seeing the hand of G-D at work on a daily basis? The ultimate low point is reached when the people exclaim to one another: “Let’s appoint a new leader and return to Egypt” (Numbers 14:4).

Tellingly the B’nei Yisrael do not carry out their threat. However,  they appear thoroughly conflicted. Were they Israelis or Egyptians? A welter of emotions, a pot-pourri of memories churn inside them and they wish neither to execute their threat to return whence they came, nor to proceed whither they were meant to go. In short, they are afflicted with that most misunderstood of conditions – dual loyalty syndrome.

 Dual loyalty is something of which we Jews throughout our Diaspora experience have been unjustly accused. Dual loyalty in national-identity terms is when a person feels a deep affinity with another country, usually an ancestral homeland, which is at odds with the loyalty he is supposed to feel for his country of residency. The Australian Jew who lives by the law of the Torah does not experience dual loyalties (except perhaps when the Socceroos play Israel in an international) because the very same Torah which imbues him with a love for Erets Yisrael also enjoins him to “actively seek the wellbeing of the state to which I have exiled you… and pray for it” (Jeremiah 29:7). The prophet speaks in general terms but refers specifically to Babylon, despite the fact that the Babylonians had destroyed the first Temple! A host-nation will have to behave absolutely diabolically to the Jews (and of course there have been such nations in Jewish history) to forfeit these expressions of loyalty.

But once a person resolves to leave that host-country behind and commences the journey to the Land of Israel, there must be no turning back and no tears. An oleh will only succeed in Israel – complaints or no complaints – if he knows deep in his heart that there is nowhere else he can live. At this stage, dual loyalty of any sort is disastrous.

For Bnei Yisrael, given their conflicted condition, a forty-year retreat in the desert was the finest medicine. It had taken Moses one day to get the Jews out of Egypt; it was to take him forty years to get Egypt out of the Jews!