Shelach - Personal joy amidst mass hysteria
Numbers 13:1 - 15:41 | Joshua 2:1 - 24
Summary: The story of the spies is a story of mass hysteria. The solution is individuation - individuals developing the capacity to have personal joy that does to require affirmation from the group in order to be real.
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Back in October I made myself laugh. I posted something on Facebook that only I thought was funny, but I thought it was really funny so I’d say it was worth it. Specifically, I created and linked to a playlist on Spotify called Meta-Positions which featured all of the tracks from Leonard Cohen’s venerable 1985 album Various Positions as well as Ariana Grande’s 2020 album Positions, suggesting that Grande’s album was a commentary on Cohen’s, much the same as Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville was a commentary on the Stones’ Exile on Main Street.
Haha.
Perhaps I wasted my big chance, because now, a mere seven months later, there is something else that is making me quite happy, and I’m slightly afraid to share it, because people may already have decided that everything I say is more or less for my own self, a deeply inside joke between me and me, and therefore not worth paying attention to. But this one is (actually) important, so I throw caution to wind and ask you: what can we do to avoid the mistake that the Israelites made in the story of the spies?
To review: Close to the border of the land of Israel, Moshe (for some reason) sends spies - one per tribe - to scout out the land. They return forty days later with outsized grapes and a terrifying tale of a land that eats its inhabitants. They tell of giants, of fortified cities, of nation upon nation standing in staunch defense of their homeland. The Israelites hear this and panic. They quickly assume/realize/make up that that they are going in the wrong direction, that they ought to immediately appoint new leaders and head back to Egypt. They convince themselves that God is taking them to the land of Israel because God hates them and wants them to suffer. They become so convinced of their “truth” that they were about to stone Yehoshua for implying they were wrong, and they would have finished the job if the Glory of God had not appeared in a. cloud.
When God does appear, it is as if everyone wakes up from a horrible, living nightmare. They had lost all context and reason, believing a malicious report from people who had already decided they would see their incursion to Israel as a disaster before it even happened. They riled each other up until no amount of perspective was effective or even welcome, deciding to literally kill anyone who tried to remind them of the bigger picture.
At this point in the story it has become clear that the generation that left Egypt is traumatized. No matter how much caring, love, support and guidance they receive, they cannot overcome their deep-seeded trauma and fear, and they therefore cannot go into the land - because being in the land requires fortitude, perspective, and flexibility.
As soon as the story ends, the Torah starts talking about some of the subtler elements of the offerings that people would bring in the Temple. Why the sudden, jarring shift in topics? The commentaries explain that God was reassuring the next generation that they would, in fact, be privileged to enter the land, so God was telling them more about the laws that they would be expected to adhere to in the land.
But what makes it so incredible is the particular aspect of the offerings that was being addressed, specifically the addition of wine to personal offerings brought in the Temple. Context: generally offerings would include an animal, grain, oil, wine, and salt. But different offerings have different quantities of these ingredients, and the ingredients are described at different points in the Torah. While we knew that communal offerings would also include wine, we didn’t out that individuals’ offerings would include wine until right now, after the story of the spies. Why now?
Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook writes about the different ingredients of the offerings and what they would “add” to the experience and impact of the offering. He writes that the addition of wine to the offering would serve to infuse basic aliveness - represented by the grain - with joy, represented by the wine.
It is important that the wine is focused toward the grain, which is that basic aliveness. It is as if joy is being injected into the basic operating system. Joy should not be reserved for intellectual victories and amazing experiences - it has to be inserted at the ground level. It is good to be alive. Period.
But what’s interesting here - even more interesting than Ariana Grande providing commentary on Leonard Cohen - is that it is the individuals’ offering that will now include wine. That is what God wants the Israelites, coming off of a tragically revealing and embarrassing collapse with the spies, to know and do.
It seems God is saying something like this: ‘Israelites! That was awful. You guys got each other all riled up. It was, literally, mass hysteria. The fact that you are susceptible to mass hysteria, and you are unable to individuate from each other, to think for yourselves etc. makes you unable to enter into the land. Your kids could pull it off, but it’s not going to be automatic. They will have to cultivate personal joy. They will have to find joy in their own lives - not just in the movements of the group. They will need to make their own lives satisfying, to nourish their own soul and character and wellbeing. This will allow them to function was a group in the most positive way.”
Brilliant! The solution to mass hysteria and group-think is personal joy. This comes against a certain gravity that is exerting itself these days to spend more and more time identifying with and expressing the values of the groups we are in. There’s a place for that. But when it goes off track, the signal is not to find another group, but to find ourselves. We can do the work local and inside, and get a new thing going. In the inimitable words of Ariana Grande, “Redesign your brain, we gon' make some new habits. Just like magic.”