D'var Torah

In the face of the unknown, how are we to navigate our own fears?

This is one of the central questions of our Torah portion this week, Shelach L’cha. As Shelach L’cha opens, that Israelites are standing on the edge of the Promised Land, and God commands Moses to send twelve scouts - one from each tribe - to explore the land. So Moses sends the scouts with a request that they bring back information, and also fresh fruit. 

With regards to the fruit, Moses' exact words are fascinating: “strengthen yourselves, and take from the fruit of the land.” (Numbers 13:20) 

Moses recognizes that reaping fruit will take strength. This is something our Torah portion actualizes in literal terms by describing the fruit as so huge that two people need to carry it, but which we could also understand metaphorically. His use of a reflexive verb, “strengthen yourselves,” emphasizes that strength isn’t something a person has or doesn’t have, it is something a person can situationally develop and exert. 

So here is one piece of wisdom Shelach L’cha (might) give us about navigating our own fear in the face of the unknown: believe in yourself, and in your own ability to change and grow (including in the face of unimagined challenges), and do your best to believe in other people too. 

But this might be easier said than done. Moses’ emphasis on verbs, on what we do or don’t do, and who we can become, is contrasted, throughout Shelach L'cha, with other speakers’ emphasis on nouns, on who we and other people fundamentally are. 

And so: the twelve scouts do enter the land, and they do bring back the enormous fruit, but ten of them also bring back tremendous fear. They report that yes, the land flows with milk and honey (itself a prediction of an imagined future much more than a literal description), but giants live there too. Caleb, one of the two less-fearful scouts, interrupts and encourages the People to go forward anyway, saying, “we can do it!” (Numbers 13:30) But the ten scared scouts respond, “no, we can’t,” and they add "because [the people in the land] are stronger than us.” (Numbers 13:31)

We can’t. They are stronger. — a present-tense but potentially permanent state of being. It can be easy to imagine that the way things are is the way they will always be. 
And yet as we know, people change and grow. We can change and grow. The world changes, for better and for worse (and in ways we’re not sure how to evaluate, too).

How do we navigate our fears in the face of uncertainty? How do we keep believing in growth? 

If the Biblical Israelites’ wilderness wanderings can be interpreted, in the tradition of liberation theology, as a metaphor for pre-messianic times - if we are always, societally, striving to reach a promised land - then this week’s Torah portion (in which the Israelites ultimately turn back, on the advice of the ten frightened scouts, and wander the wilderness for another 38 years) offers a powerful insight:

We often don’t get to choose which challenges we face (as individuals and as a generation) but we can choose to listen to the voices — in our community, and within ourselves — that encourage us to believe in the possibility of positive change, in ourselves and others. Sometimes taking the next step towards more wholeness is chiefly about asking: what would I do next if I believed in my own and others’ ability to grow?