Our Responsibility (Shelach Lecha, 2023)

The Israelites have a simple but effective theology. As they approach the border of Canaan, they believe that if God is pleased with them, God will bring them into a good land flowing with milk and honey. It’s a theology of reward and punishment, using the bounty of the earth as reward. Yes, to use modern examples, it’s nice to own a Ferrari – apparently – yes, it’s nice to own a Playstation – apparently – but it’s even nicer to know that there is food and security for your family. The ultimate reward is not a luxury, it is nourishment.

Interestingly, Torah mirrors this reward through the earth by means of punishment. The second paragraph of Shema tells us quite clearly that if we start worshiping other gods then God will shut up the sky, the land will not produce and the Israelites will be quickly destroyed from the good land that God gives them.

So, there is a system of reward and punishment that is connected to the land. And now, the Israelites find themselves at the border of the land, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land of bountiful gifts from God and, instead of embracing the gift, instead of running open-armed into the glory of God’s sustenance, the people run the other way. They become afraid. It doesn’t seem to make sense. So, why do the Israelites do it? Why do they turn down this extraordinary blessing from God? Even God can’t believe it – God turns to Moses and says, “How long will this people spurn Me, and how long will they have no faith in Me despite all the signs that I have performed in their midst?” (Num. 14:12). God can’t believe it. So, why do they do it?

I think it’s because there’s a moral element involved. This isn’t just a free gift, like on a birthday, where you know what the gift is under the wrapping paper. Instead, imagine that the gift is the keys to a new car. Most young people would be overjoyed to just receive the keys to a new car. Freedom! I can finally be who I want to be! I can go where I want to go! Not so with me, though. When I first sat in the driver’s seat of my mother’s car, her first words to me were, “You are now in charge of a one-ton killing machine.” The gift of freedom carries with it moral responsibility and the risk of danger. The gift of the new land to which the Israelites had just been led was not without moral consequence.

Every gift carries an awesome moral responsibility with it. Just as a car can give freedom, it can also bring death. For the Israelites, land, the earth, was the same. It could bring nourishment, but it could bring starvation and they knew that the difference between nourishment and starvation was their moral conduct. And, most importantly, they believed that they weren’t up to the job. They have already doubted God, they have already complained about the lack of food, they have already yearned to return to Egypt. They know that if they go into the land that they will fail, so instead of facing the challenge head on, they flee. They run from their responsibility, forgetting that their responsibility follows them wherever they go. They could be in a land flowing with milk and honey or they could be in the desert – we are always connected to somewhere on earth, and we are always subject to moral responsibility. We cannot hide from our moral responsibility.

I would suggest that one of the major problems of our society today, particularly in this country, is either that we are exactly aware of our moral responsibility but we choose to avoid it, or that we are totally unaware of any sense of moral responsibility. Much of contemporary political dialogue in this country seems to be fruitless because instead of spending our time working out where our moral responsibility lies, a very sizeable percentage of this country deny we have any moral responsibility toward others or toward the Earth. One comment I saw online this week blamed America’s decline on, of course, the LGBTQ community. It is Pride month, after all, so homophobic comments abound online. I do wonder, though, if part of this country’s apparent decline in political discourse, is because that dialogue has shifted from what our moral responsibility should look like to whether or not it exists at all.

Judaism is very clear about this. We have a moral responsibility towards others and towards the Earth. Our duty to the Earth is l’ovdah ul’shomrah – to serve and preserve it. That much is stated at the very beginning of the Bible. Our duty towards each other is repeated throughout but particularly in the middle of Torah – v’ahavta l’reacha kamocha – to show love to our neighbor as we would have it shown to ourselves. And we also have a duty to God – v’ahavta et Adonai elohecha b’chol l’vavecha, uv’chol nafsh’cha uv’chol m’odecha – to love the Eternal your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might. We cannot run from our responsibility. Being human means having responsibilities. One might even add the responsibility to care not just for the other and for the world around us but also to care for ourselves. The important Jewish element to that is not to only care for ourselves.

This week’s Torah portion of Sh’lach L’cha, then, seems to demonstrate that being human means navigating a moral path. It means responsibility. It shows us that we have a choice – that we can accept our responsibility and succeed, or we can try to run from it, and fail. The Israelites choose to run from their moral responsibility – they know that if they are to live in the land, they have to act morally. I wonder, then, if perhaps the inhabitants of the land are not physical giants, but moral giants. I wonder if the Israelites know that they are grasshoppers morally, that they are small-minded and that they avoid their moral responsibility. I wonder if that is why they are afraid. I wonder if this is why God gets angry.

So, we can learn much from the Israelites’ fear of entering the land. We can learn that more people will want to run from moral responsibility than those who want to embrace it, just as the rest of the spies significantly outnumbered Joshua and Caleb. We can learn that even when most people want to avoid their responsibility, we still have the responsibility to stand up and speak out. And we can learn that our success is connected to our moral responses. Success, ultimately, isn’t the land of milk and honey – success is moral fortitude. The milk and honey are just nice perks that come with it. May we this Shabbat find our individual and communal moral responsibility, and act on it in the week to come. May such be God’s will, and let us say, Amen.