Searching out the land, de Tocqueville beheld the spirit of
equality, celebrating the promise of representative democracy. It was a promise
in its making of severely limited parameters, its call to be heard both then
and now in lofty declarations and in echoes from the breach. With a striking
immediacy of language, perhaps as warning and aspiration, de Tocqueville spoke
of the tenuous nature of America’s greatness: “America is great because she is
good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
Not someone who often comes to mind, I thought of the French
Count as I engaged with the weekly Torah portion called Sh’lach L’cha (Num. 8:1-15:41) as it came this year in the week of
Juneteenth. Scouts are sent to search out the land, entrusted to bring back
report of what awaits the people. They see the fullness and the beauty, and
they see the challenges. There is a painful reality in all of this; the greatest
challenge acknowledged in the scout’s report is that there are other peoples
living in the land. As Israel had once lived in that land, cycles of exile and
return begging for humane resolution, so for other peoples living in the land
then and now; an endless cycle of claiming land through power that insures that
no one will ever be secure in the land. Engaging with Torah on all of its
levels and layers, I am often comforted by the Chassidic reading that sees in
this narrative, as in other instances of violence and struggle, a mirror in
which to see our selves, a lens through which to look within and search out our
own inner landscape.
The scouts return and bring back an “evil report,” telling
the people there is no way to go ahead, that a leader should be appointed to
take them back to Egypt, back, alas, to slavery. Emphasizing a way of
perception that quickly lends itself to inner exploration, the scouts reveal a
self-image that reflects a slave’s mentality even among free people: We were in our own eyes like grasshoppers,
and so, too, were we in their eyes/v’chen hayinu b’eyneyhem (Num. 13:33).
As the people weep and clamor to return to Egypt, two of the scouts, Calev and
Yehoshua, plead with them not to lose faith, not to throw their national mission
to the desert winds. In mourning for the despair that surrounds them, these two
tear their garments as a public expression of grief. Through the eyes of midrash, we see Calev leap onto a bench,
taking the role of organizer, speaking words of challenge and solace to the
people, expressing a common bond of concern with them, lifting up the good that
he knows is among them, that still resides in their hearts. Among the people
there are some who respond as an angry mob, threatening to stone these two to
death, these few who would challenge the many. Speaking to the fears of the
people, there is a change that comes subtly at first. Fearless, Calev continues
to speak, to soothe and to challenge until the mood begins to shift. Of this
brave servant of God and the people, it is God who says, perhaps in time to
come to be said by the people too, ru’ach
acheret imo/there is a different spirit with him (Num. 14:24).
Searching out the land both of self and nation, a challenge
from Parashat Korach to search within
our selves and allow a different spirit to emerge. It is the spirit of Calev,
as we might embody it today, a spirit that is bravely able to see the beauty in
the ideals and landscape of this nation, and also to see the way in which that
beauty has been so cruelly defaced. Atoning for the original sins of both
slavery and genocide, we can yet create wholeness from out of brokenness. In
worlds so far apart in both time and context, perhaps never before cited
together, as Alexis de Tocqueville saw the fierce tensions at play in early
nineteenth century America, the Slonimer Rebbe sees powerfully conflicting
forces in the very character of the Land of Israel. Of fierce historic tensions
desperately seeking resolution, the Slonimer writes in his probing teaching on the
scouts and their report: the holiness of
the Land of Israel is of the highest level/k’dushat eretz yisrael hi g’vo’hah
b’yoter; and in contrast to this, the forces of the sitra achra/the demonic
side are greatest, centered, so too, in the Land of Israel/ha’yu m’ruchazim az
b’eretz yisrael….
These are the tensions of which Juneteenth should remind.
These are the tensions to be kept in mind when standing in vigil and taking to
the streets. It is easy to make of a Holy Day a simple holiday. It is harder to
raise up the reason for a day’s being set apart and to accept its challenge
going forward. It is easy to go out on occasion to the streets, much harder to
make active in the day to day the reasons for our making the long walk. As
throughout the land a call for justice rises, along the streets and in the
village squares, even with the remove of time the American spirit manifest for
both good and ill as de Tocqueville might have experienced it. So too, as for
the scouts, the challenge remains for us to search out the land and see its
beauty, and the cruel inconsistencies that bar the way to a promise fulfilled.
As good and evil swirl together in life and death struggle, it is our challenge
to insure no more death through the brutalities of a system’s failure.
Searching out the land, may we raise up the best of what we see in village,
town, and city, each of us become of a different spirit, and so the nation.
Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein
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