Talking Torah - Out of Many, What?
Parshat Shelach and the persistence of tribal affiliation
In 2018 the organization More in Common produced a study, The Hidden Tribes of America, that divided Americans into seven distinct “tribes”:
These tribes were sorted based on people’s beliefs in three core areas:
1. The intensity of their group or tribal identity. 2. The degree to which they felt the world is a dangerous place. 3. How authoritarian was their parenting style.
Looking at the results the authors found a close correlation between a person’s views in these three areas and their place on the political spectrum. Other studies have shown, not surprisingly, that the distribution of tribes varies significantly by region. Thus we’ve constructed echo chambers by filtering our news sources, fortified by where we’ve chosen to live. Although the study found that most Americans were in an “exhausted majority”, our political culture has become defined by the minority on the fringes.
One comes away feeling that “The United States” is an oxymoron.
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In this week’s portion, Shelach (“send’), God asks Moses to select a group of men to scout the Promised Land:
Send agents to scout the land of Canaan, which I am giving to B’nei Yisrael (the Israelite people); send one participant from each of their ancestral tribes, each one a chieftain among them.
This sentence contains contradictory allegiances. On the one hand, the people are referred to with the collective term “B’nei Yisrael”, a phrase that literally means “the sons of Israel”. But that very phrase for their unity points to the source of their differences. Jacob created a family where rifts were inevitable. He had children with four women - two wives and two servants. He played favorites among them all, even his grandchildren. Rivalry and resentment inevitably followed, down the generations. Did their upbringing and family dynamics still matter? We know this: A century after Jacob’s death as they wander through the desert, the Israelites camp by tribe and march by tribe. And to make sure everyone would be satisfied with the Scouts’ report, each Tribe had a representative in the scouting party.
It was a nation of tribes.
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Each Scout had another identity. The Torah reports God’s command to assemble the scouts using an interesting idiom:
אִ֣ישׁ אֶחָד֩ אִ֨ישׁ אֶחָ֜ד
This phrase is literally translated “one man, one man.” In this case it does not mean “acting as one man.” Rather, it recognizes that each scout brought their own identity to the mission. In becoming a unit each would have to transcend Tribe and Self. Like any team, the individuals might come together, like the beloved Celtics of 2008 (whose motto was “Ubuntu” an African word that means “I am what I am because of what we all are”) or splinter, like that Red Sox team from the 1970’s described by one writer as: “Twenty-five guys, twenty-five cabs.” The Scouts were on the mission to “see for themselves”, literally and figuratively. Their failure to cohere would result in their generation dying in the desert sands.
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The timing of this week’s portion in Jewish history has a poignant urgency and resonance. Chizkuni tells us that the Scouts left on their 40-day mission on the 29th of Sivan, three weeks after Shavuot, where the people stood as one to receive the Torah. The Scouts would return 40 days later to deliver their report. That day was Tisha Ba’av, making the report of the spies the first of the many tragic events that freakishly have occurred on that day.1
The rabbis attribute the greatest calamity associated with Tisah Ba’av, the destruction of the Second Temple, to “gratuitous hatred” of one Jew for another. We quibbled about our differences, and so opened the door to destruction by our real enemy, the Roman Empire. How much of that gratuitous hatred was the result of nursing the old wounds bound up in tribal identity? As we read Shelach again, we watch the Scouts cling to their individual viewpoints, failing to find common purpose, inviting tragedy. It is a sober reminder about the consequences of failing to transcend our differences.
In America, we continue to sort out the aftermath of the Civil War, 160 years after its end, some still flying the Confederate Flag and fighting to retain the name of military bases named for generals who defended slavery, some fighting to preserve perhaps its greatest legacy, the Fourteenth Amendment. As a nation of immigrants we all remember where we came from. But to be united we must forget enough, or at least forgive enough, to come together, to transcend self and tribe.
Shavuah tov, Rich
Davar Acher
Parshat Shelach reminds us that we are a nation of tribes and passionate individuals who can be hard to unify. Our national character is contained in the old saw, “Two Jews - three opinions.” Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first President, quipped: “I head a nation of a million presidents!”