In this week’s Torah portion, Sh’lach lecha, we read about one of the great crises in the story of the Israelites’ journey in the wilderness. Having arrived at the border of the promised land, Moses instructs 12 scouts to go in and gather information in preparation for the entire community going in. When the scouts get back, ten of them report that the land is indeed good, but that “the people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large.” They go on to say, “The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours those who settle in it; all the people we saw are of great size—we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” The Israelites completely freak out when they hear this report, and refuse to go in. In response, they are condemned to wander in the wilderness for another 40 years, until the generation born into slavery has completely died out.
There is two thousand years of commentary on this episode, and much debate about what exactly was wrong with the scouts’ report. I find myself drawn to a powerful comment by Rashi, the 11th century commentator. He notes that when Moses gave instructions for scouting the land, he told the scouts to find out if the “people who dwell in it are strong or weak…Are the towns in which they live open or fortified?” Rashi comments:
“God gave them a sign: if they [the inhabitants of the land] live in open cities, they are strong, since they are confident of their strength. But if they live in fortified cities, they are weak.”
When the scouts return, they report that the people are strong, and that the cities are fortified. Clearly, the scouts completely misinterpreted this sign—they saw the fortified cities, and concluded that this was part of the inhabitants’ strength, not proof of their weakness. The scouts’ misinformed and unfounded fear, with which they infected the entire Israelite community, ultimately leads to disaster.
There is much that resonates about this episode in this moment, both the promise and the danger of the promised land, and its complex role in our master narrative and our Jewish history. But I am struck by Rashi’s insight about where strength truly lies—whether we are thinking about the state of Israel today, or America, or indeed any place in the world--even our own hearts. It is so tempting to put our trust in fortification, in walls, in that which closes us in or attempts to close the “other” out. This trope of “fortifying” our own borders against those perceived as dangerous is already a theme of the presidential campaign. Yet Rashi teaches us that openness, not fortification, is a true sign of strength. It is a strong country that can welcome those seeking refuge and integrate them into the greater whole. It is a strong country that relies not on its military, but on its ability to create mutually beneficial relations with the nations around it, for its security and wellbeing. On a personal level, our ability to reach out to others, to build communities where we can trust one another, is how we too become strong.
As a parting gift before I head off into vacation next week, I’d like share this beautiful poem by Alberto Rios, a vision of way of being beyond borders and fortifications. May we take this beautiful intention into Shabbat:
We Are of a Tribe
We plant seeds in the ground
And dreams in the sky,
Hoping that, someday, the roots of one
Will meet the upstretched limbs of the other.
It has not happened yet.
We share the sky, all of us, the whole world:
Together, we are a tribe of eyes that look upward,
Even as we stand on uncertain ground.
The earth beneath us moves, quiet and wild,
Its boundaries shifting, its muscles wavering.
The dream of sky is indifferent to all this,
Impervious to borders, fences, reservations.
The sky is our common home, the place we all live.
There we are in the world together.
The dream of sky requires no passport.
Blue will not be fenced. Blue will not be a crime.
Look up. Stay awhile. Let your breathing slow.
Know that you always have a home here.
