Choosing Our Communities

June 25, 2008

by Daniel E. Levenson

What makes a community is something we think about a lot here at the New Vilna Review. It is a question that goes back to Revelation and beyond, when Moses, as the leader of an often unhappy group of former slaves, embarked on a 40-year sojourn in the desert. We see these challenges virtually everywhere in the narrative of the Israelites wandering – they are constantly complaining, pointing out how much easier things had been in Egypt and at times directly challenging the authority of Moses and of God. When it comes to prayer, we know that we traditionally need a group of 10 – a minyan – to constitute a “community.” I had always wondered where this number had come from and was happily surprised to notice a footnote in the Chumash I was perusing this past Shabbat. It mentioned that one of the roots of the designation of 10 individuals as constituting a minyan comes from Parsha Shelach, in which god calls the 10 spies who return from scouting the land (and lie about it) a “ wicked community.”

There are other roots for the designation of the 10 individuals as a minyan, but I find this one particularly interesting because it is a positive custom which is clearly drawn from a negative situation. Because the spies do not tell the truth, the majority of the Israelites must continue to wander until the entire generation that still possesses a slave mentality has died off. Things go even worse for those who reject not only the report of the spies but that of God’s judgment on the matter, and rush ahead anyway to try and take possession of the land.

On one level, I think that it makes sense that the Torah refers to these 10 spies as a “wicked community.” They were after all, acting in conspiracy not only to rebel against a divine decree, but they were doing so in concert in order to deceive Moses, Aaron and the rest of Israel. Because of their dishonesty the Israelites are punished – instead of entering the land and living not as slaves but as free people with their own agency and freedom (in so far as any people in the ancient world experienced this concept) they are instead sent back into the desert to wander another forty years, not quite slaves, but not quite free either.

Granted the 10 spies themselves suffer a worse fate, namely, death, but in their action of plotting to sew doubt among the larger community they effectively separated themselves and formed a new community. When Yehoshua and Caleb decide not to join in this conspiracy, they too make a decision and decide that regardless of the consequences they will tell the truth.

So I guess there are, not surprisingly, multiple meanings and ideas to be drawn from this parsha, not only about community but about making decisions in regard to which community you join. The ten spies who are condemned to death form one kind of community, and Yehoshua and Caleb form another. The former is based on fear and deceit and a lack of faith in the ability of the Jewish people to overcome the obstacles before them, while the latter is clearly based on a belief that not only was the divine decree correct (whatever we may think of such ideas in our post-modern world) but on a belief in the strength of Israel. For me, this parsha serves as a strong reminder not only of the importance of persevering in the face of adversity, but in being conscious of the kind of decisions we make about the communities of which we choose to become a part. We can join with those who act dishonestly out of fear or spite, or we can choose to have faith in ourselves and our communities. It is a choice that the Israelites made many times while wandering in the desert and it is a choice that we all continue to make today, both as individuals and as a people.