SHELACH LECHA - "WE WERE LIKE GRASSHOPPERS IN OUR EYES"

 

There is an old joke about the Chassidic Jew with long payos, tzitzis hanging out, long beard and long black coat, who has just arrived home on the train.

“How was the journey” his wife asks him

“Oy Yenta was I sitting opposite some antisemites.  They were cursing and complaining about Jews the whole way home”
”Nu Yankel so vat did you do?”
”What could I do?  I pretended I wasn’t Jewish”

 

We laugh, yet how many of us have been tempted to do the same, at one time or another?  How many of us have felt acutely embarrassed to hear others discussing Jews or Israel?

 

This week’s Parsha, Shelach Lecho, which we read this morning, tells the story of the spies who were sent by Moshe – under duress it must be said – to spy out the land of Israel.  It also contains the first reported case of spin.  On their return, the spies report on the size of the people in the land and of the fruits they saw there.  So far so good – no problem that the people are giants, after all G-d Himself promised the Bnei Yisroel they would enter the land and be victorious… and the large fruits one would assume

 

The rot sets in when the spies start to add in their own two cents worth.  Caleb tells the people that “we can surely ascend and conquer, we can surely do it” based on his faith in G-d’s promise, but the other spies say “we cannot ascend for the people are too strong for us”.  G-d had already promised them help – so why the spin?  According to many of the commentators, this was their sin, that they did not stop at facts but added their own – unsolicited – opinions, which affected the people’s faith and morale.

 

Another of their sins was to speak loshon hora – to speak badly and disparagingly of the Holy Land.  Of course, Loshon hora about eretz yisroel still exists nowadays – open any newspaper to see what people have to say about our Holy Land – the way it is described in the media is so different from the reality, as any of us who has visited Israel knows, and can be truly heartbreaking to behold.

 

After the description of the spin, we come to a fascinating verse.

The spies report that “We saw the… sons of the giant… and we were like grasshoppers in our eyes… and so we were in their eyes!”

Let me repeat that sentence again: “We were like grasshoppers in OUR eyes… and so we were in THEIR eyes…”

The Torah could have simply said “We were like grasshoppers in THEIR eyes...” but it chose to first tell us about the spies perception of themselves- OUR eyes.

In other words – “We saw ourselves as being nothing… and that is how they perceived us.”

This contains a very simple yet powerful psychological insight – before worrying about how we appear to others, we have to first look at how we appear to ourselves.  Our self-image and self-confidence – or lack of - will inevitably affect the way others perceive us.  If we exude confidence, others will be impressed and see us as a ‘somebody’, a force to be reckoned with.  If we see ourselves as tiny and insignificant, as mere grasshoppers, how can we blame another person for seeing us the same way?

 

This lesson seems particularly pertinent to the recent events taking place around us.  You can hardly open a newspaper today without reading about this or that union or organisation which is proposing to boycott Israel, ranging from Academics to Architects and Planners, all on the pretext of helping the Palestinians.  Note the deafening silence when it comes to protesting Palestinian actions which kill and maim Jewish men, women and children, as well as Palestinian men, women and children.

 

If we are honest with ourselves, how many of us feel uncomfortable or squirm when these issues come up in conversation with our non-Jewish friends and colleagues?   I myself will confess to sometimes preferring to ignore them and pretending not to hear rather than answering difficult questions.

 

And yet why on earth should we feel uncomfortable?  Why should we see ourselves as insignificant grasshoppers?

 

Israel is not 100% perfect, there are things I would change if I could.  But one thing we can be sure of is that she is a lot more perfect than many of the other nations around her, and given her situation it is incredible that she continues to function even remotely normally.

 

Yet from the discussions over Alan Johnson, the BBC Journalist kidnapped by Hamas, we see that the Israelis get the blame over and over again.  The poor Palestinians were driven to this by those barbaric Israelis.  Charles Moore’s excellent article in the Daily Telegraph posed the question “What if Israelis had abducted the BBC man?” and gave the cynical but reaisitc answer that aside from the fact that it would never happen – the Israeli government is not a fanatical totalitarian regime – to quote Mr Moore:  The Israeli government would immediately have been condemned for its readiness to harbour terrorists or its failure to track them down.
Loud would have been the denunciations of the extremist doctrines of Zionism which had given rise to this vile act. The world isolation of Israel, if it failed to get Mr Johnston freed, would have been complete.”

 

Yet none of this has happened to the Palestinians – instead everyone walks around on tiptoe to avoid offence.  In a classic textbook case of the Stockholm syndrome, Mr Johnson identifies totally with his captors and their grievances, overlooking the illegality and inhumanity of what they are actually doing.

 

The double standard is unbelievable – and it is very hard not to arrive at the conclusion that this is for one reason only –because it involves ‘the Jews’.

 

I try not to be paranoid but when you see the same trend of condemnation for Israel and her actions on the one hand, and total silence, indifference or even engagement on the other, no matter what the Arab nations do, repeated over and over again, you can only conclude that either it really does all come down to oil – or that people just don’t like the Jews – or both.

I could never fathom why Bibi Netanyahu, a native English-speaking, European, smartly-dressed and well-spoken Israeli Prime Minister, did not evoke more empathy and solidarity from the Western world than Yasir Arafat, a gun-toting, fatigue-wearing, inarticulate so-called Leader, yet time and again the media deferred to Arafat as peacemaker whilst slating Netanyahu.  I finally came to the only conclusion possible – they don’t like Jews.

 

Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.  Even if we are sometimes oversensitive to anti-Semitism – and quite frankly we have every right to be – we have been proven right time and again through history.

 

As for the boycott proposals – as Rabbi Raymond Appel, of Australia, put it very eloquently in this week’s Jewish Chronicle - if you want to boycott Israel do it properly.  Stop using your mobile phone — it was an Israeli invention. Forget all the patents, cures, ideas and precedents developed in Israel, even if you find yourself back in the intellectual Dark Ages. While you are at it, don’t read any books authored by Jews, since Jews are generally Zionists. Don’t listen to any music composed by Jews. Don’t bother with cultural works by Jewish artists. Give back the Ten Commandments. Return the Bible. If you are a Christian, abandon your Jewish saviour.

 

The irony is that the main universities of Israel are, in fact, everything that we in the West
would recognise as proper universities. They have intellectual freedom. They
do not require an ethnic or religious qualification for entry. They are not
controlled by the government. They have world-class standards of research,
often producing discoveries which benefit all humanity, in hi-tech, medicine and the sciences. In all this, they are virtually unique in the Middle East.”  ironically, many Israeli academics are avowedly “left wing” and share a lot of the views of those proposing the boycotts anyway.

And the unions would have us all boycott them… so much for true Academic freedom and values… and of course we’d be shooting ourselves in the foot, missing out on the benefits of so much Israeli expertise and research.

 

I am proud to say that my own mother resigned from the AUT as it then was several years ago over this very issue of the demonisation of Israel and politicisation of the union. 

 

What has any of this to do with us?

 

Recently self-appointed spokespeople and groups are springing up everywhere, keen to put forward the “Jewish point of view” to anyone who will listen, bending over backwards to show our sympathy and understanding for those who happily destroy us, whilst simultaneously disowning all that is good and traditional about Judaism.  Jews for Justice for Palestinians, elements of Peace Now, Independent Jewish Voices… not to mention all the celebrities who suddenly become “proud Jews” when it comes to criticising Israel – Alexei Sayle, Stephen Fry, Miriam Margolyes… the list goes on...  and on and on, those from within our own ranks who cannot see ourselves as anything bigger than grasshoppers, literally begging the big giants not to step on us.

 

We must not see ourselves as grasshoppers.  We have to hold our heads high.  We have nothing to be ashamed of.  We can be proud that despite the huge provocation which continues, despite all the anti-Semitism in the world both in the Middle East and beyond, Jewish people in the main remain moral, ethical and decent human beings.  Alan Johnson might speak of the despair of the Palestinians – what about the despair of several hundred years of the darkest of European history?  The persecution, the exclusion, the mass murder?  Yet Jews remained human and decent.  On the rare occasion that a Jewish person has carried out a terror attack, the condemnation from both secular and religious bodies has been both immediate and unequivocal.

 

Let us be proud of our faith, of our heritage and of our country.  Recently a non-Jewish acquaintance told me that of all the religions he has come across Judaism makes the most sense.  And why not?  Of all religions Judaism surely is the most benign, concerned simply with improving the world around us and ensuring that we leave the world a better place than we found it.  No self-flagellation, no honour killings, no abstinence from the world around us.  Judaism is about celebrating life in this world.  We gave the world its western values.  The so-called Judaeo-xtian values and morals came from us.  The ten commandments came from us.  We do not seek the imposition of Jewish law on the entire society, nor the forced conversion of millions of gentiles.  We do not even tell people you have to be Jewish to be saved.  We recognise the validity of the society around us, we pray for the welfare of Her Majesty’s government and we value freedom and human rights.  We are loyal and devoted citizens who serve in all aspects of British society whilst still maintaining our roots.

What’s not to be proud of?

 

So when people criticise us, when they boycott us, we cannot fall into the grasshopper syndrome, where we question our own ethics and our own principles.  It is all too easy to start to believe the accusations.  We cannot be like the stereotype ghetto Jew who bows to the anti-Semite in submission.  We must take great pride, stand tall and proud, declare and demonstrate our pride in our wonderful and upstanding heritage.

 

Why are we uncomfortable, when we go for a job interview, mentioning our faith?  Should we not be proud?  We belong to a thousands of years old faith which has maintained its traditions and principles through thick and thin, traditions of family, of community, of social responsibility and of conscience.  Ours is not a faith which persecutes or warmongers, ours is a faith of peace.

Let us be proud of who we are.  Not afraid.  Not grasshoppers, but proud children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, originators of monotheism and morality, producers of numerous Nobel prize-winners and other contributions to civilization and society - a people who have influenced the world in ways way beyond their actual number.

 

Time to regain our pride and hold our heads high.  Am Yisroel Chai – the nation of Israel lives – as a proud, upstanding nation which has nothing to be ashamed of.  If we can truly recognise this for ourselves, perhaps then others will start to see it too.

 

Shabbat Shalom.