Too Close For Comfort- Sh’lach Lecha 5785

I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s been a tough week. And what do we have at the end of a tough week? A tough parsha. Parshat Sh’lach Lecha, which we read this Shabbat, has a lot of heartbreak, tension, and violence which, in their way, are instructive for us in this moment we’re currently in.

I don’t want my sermon today to be all doom and gloom, but I need to recount a few events. Firstly, I was horrified last Shabbat when I learned of the targeted political assassinations in Minnesota of state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, zichronam l’vracha, and the shooting of state senator John Hoffman and his wife as well. 

Two of my classmates from rabbinical school currently serve in Minneapolis close to where the shootings took place. One of them, a college chaplain who was one of my hevrutot (study partners) heard the news while sitting in the middle of graduation. The other is a congregational rabbi like myself, and she was lamenting in our shared group chat via text with our other classmates how hard this past week has been for her and her community.

My friend Samantha Joseph is the director of the New England region of the Anti-Defamation League. She was a classmate of Melissa Hortman while they were both studying at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. It’s a shocking, terrible feeling to be one degree removed from someone who was murdered in cold blood.

Additionally I was shocked to learn this past week, as I imagine we all were, when the news broke that an anti-Semitic crime had been committed at The Butcherie, the kosher supermarket in Brookline that I know many of us patronize. A brick was thrown through one of the front windows, with the words “Free Palestine” written on it in large letters. According to the Brookline Police Department, the incident is being investigated as a hate crime, and as police chief Jennifer Paster wrote on the department’s Facebook page: “This was not simply an act of property damage, and it is not plainly vandalism. This was a targeted, hateful message meant to intimidate a Jewish-owned business and our broader Jewish community.” And, may I add forcefully, will do absolutely nothing to free Palestine.

Both of these incidents hit much too close to home- literally and emotionally. It’s beyond the pale that they occurred in the first place, but to have them happen to people I know, in our neighborhood, at the place where I regularly do my Shabbat and holiday shopping, shakes me. I did take some time this week to sit with my feelings, which I’ll admit I’m not always comfortable doing. But we know that to be entirely complacent and fearful is to have those who oppose us gain power over us. And that I refuse to do.

So, I was quite heartened later when I saw photos of the demonstration that materialized in front of The Butcherie after the attack. The photos are on the internet if you’d like to see them: many, many people in front of the market standing together peacefully, many wearing kippot, many holding Israeli flags, both Jews and non-Jews. There is such a special power to witnessing Jews being proudly Jewish in public spaces, and I was cheered by the sight of our community coming together peacefully after being attacked.

This is in stark contrast to how the Israelites view themselves in the parsha this week. Our parsha begins with Moses sending out the meraglim– the scouts whose responsibility is to reconnoiter the land of Canaan and ascertain its condition. They return after 40 days with some of the land’s fruit, including a giant cluster of grapes that had to be carried on a frame by two men. The scouts report that the land is indeed full of bounty and good for farming, but the land is inhabited by other peoples who are of enormous stature. They’re seemingly so gigantic that the Torah teaches: 

וְשָׁ֣ם רָאִ֗ינוּ אֶת־הַנְּפִילִ֛ים בְּנֵ֥י עֲנָ֖ק מִן־הַנְּפִלִ֑ים וַנְּהִ֤י בְעֵינֵ֙ינוּ֙ כַּֽחֲגָבִ֔ים וְכֵ֥ן הָיִ֖ינוּ בְּעֵינֵיהֶֽם׃

“We saw the Nephilim there—the Anakites are part of the Nephilim—and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”

The language in this verse is particularly striking. In describing their own size relative to these people, the scouts describe themselves in such puny terms, saying that in their own eyes they appear as grasshoppers compared to the others. The scouts, in their own view, feel weak and insignificant, and it’s their fear of going into the land that causes the rest of the people to lament and rebel. This lack of faith, in turn, is repaid by G-d’s decree that they will wander 40 years in the desert before entering the land- 1 year for each day of the scouts’ mission, until all the people perish in the desert who were freed from Egypt. 

It seems that the proverbial battle is lost even before it begins. What’s missing from the scouts’ perspective, though, is the actual perception of the people of Canaan of the Israelites. They only assume, and don’t actually know how they appeared in the eyes of the other people. The Midrash in Bamidbar Rabbah comments on this self-perception of the scouts, teaching:

“They said: “We were as grasshoppers in our eyes” (Numbers 13:33). The Holy One blessed be He said: ‘I forgive them for this.’ “And likewise we were in their eyes” (Numbers 13:33). ‘Do you [really] know what I rendered you in their eyes? Who is to say that you were not as angels in their eyes? What have you done to yourselves?’

The only voices- the small minority- among the scouts who try to give the people courage are Caleb ben Yefuneh and Yehoshua ben Nun- Joshua, who Moses will eventually designate as his heir to lead the people into the promised land. When they see that the people have become irreparably despondent, they tear their clothes as a sign of mourning and then, in one of the scarier moments in the book of Numbers, the people threaten to pelt them with stones. A mob mentality has taken over, with terrible consequences, due to the fact that the Israelites can’t see themselves as capable of entering the land. They still lack faith not only in G-d, but in themselves as well.

But as we know, loud voices are not always the ones that are correct, or the most popular. While they make take up a lot of space initially, if they are met with greater numbers of different-thinking voices, they can be rendered mute, or at least relegated to the background. This, it seems, has been the case in our Jewish community this week, with a groundswell of support for the Jewish community in Brookline and elsewhere.

But it’s still not enough. All people- both Jewish and not- need to forcefully condemn all manner of violence and prejudice that poison our community. We cannot be complacent. 

When I saw photos of that gathering on Harvard Street in Coolidge Corner, right on the street in front of The Butcherie, I did not see Jews who see themselves as grasshoppers. I saw Jews and their allies who refuse to let hate be the norm in our community. And in the midst of all the challenges that we are currently facing, I am very much leaning into that for comfort. Our community, in times of crisis and, please G-d, in times of joy, really comes together to hold each of us up.

Our challenges, as we know, are not relegated to domestic ones. Israel is at war with Iran, with her citizens spending hours at a time in bomb shelters, all while still fighting a war in Gaza, longing for the return of our remaining hostages, while antisemitism is alive and well in the world. But we are not grasshoppers. We acknowledge our challenges, and do what we can to overcome them. That resolve, in and of itself, shows the faith and resilience that others hate us for.

It’s a firm belief of mine that the way to combat antisemitism is to keep being Jewish, publicly and proudly. As Moses later says to Joshua- Hazak v’ematz- “be strong and resolute”. It’s perhaps trite or pollyannaish to say “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”. But in this case, I actually think it’s true. Let us keep facing our threats resolutely, and continue to hope and pray for better, peaceful days ahead. Psalm 29, which we just sang a few minutes ago, ends with the words- “Adonai oz l’amo yiten, Adonai yivarech et amo va’shalom.” “The Lord will give strength to his people, The Lord will bless his people with peace.” May it be so, for us and the world, speedily and soon