A ‘different spirit’
Twelve leaders were dispatched on an excursion to collect intel about the Land of Israel. Tragically, they turned against God and Jewish history. They returned with terrifying reports about cities fortified to the sky and a fearsome land roaming with giants who dwarfed human beings to the size of insects. Their devious slander and cowardly lack of faith derailed Jewish history.
What was shocking was the complete lack of any debate or internal discussion. Hadn’t God just liberated them from Egyptian slavery, split the raging oceans, and parted the heavens at Sinai? Shouldn’t God be trusted to assure the successful settlement of the promised land? Panicked and delirious with fear, the people betrayed ancient divine promises.
Only two of these men displayed any courage. Joshua, Moshe’s closest disciple and future successor, could be counted upon to remain loyal to his mentor. Alongside Joshua, Caleb also defied this insidious conspiracy, almost succeeding in restoring public faith. Where did the latter get his courage and his strength from? Part of the answer is that he drew his conviction from his “defiant” wife, herself trained to resist public opinion. According to one report in the Talmud, Caleb married Batya, the Egyptian princess who had rescued Moshe from a watery death. Her heroic rebellion against the system was in bold defiance to her own father’s decree. Batya rebelled against the Egyptian culture of blood and death, saved a Jewish infant, and triggered our liberation from Egypt. Years later, her husband Caleb demonstrated similar fortitude by refusing to sheepishly fall in line with the conspirators. Two rebels, married in resistance, defied public opinion and almost rescued Jewish history.
Caleb was rewarded by being one of the few of his generation to enter Israel. The Torah announces that he had “a different spirit” about him. His non-conformist spirit emboldened him to resist the mob and to deliver truths. Whether people were willing to accept truths is another matter. Regardless, he stood up to lies and distortion. He had a different spirit.
Group thinking
One of the great ironies of the Internet revolution is that it encourages herd mentality. Ideally, the Internet should be a democratizing force, decentralizing the information flow and empowering people to consume only the information they choose.
However, as with all human liberties, unconditional freedoms turn into oppressive cultural tyrannies. Instead of fostering greater personal autonomy, social media has exacerbated group thinking. Social media incarcerates us in echo chambers which limit what we see and what we are exposed to. Additionally, it creates viral content compelling us to join popular trends without a full evaluation of the facts.
Moreover, social media empowers influencers with disproportionate sway regarding issues they are completely uneducated about. Finally, social media allows false ideas to quickly spread, creating a bogus impression of truth. All these factors incite a herd mentality. We are currently witnessing the toxic effects of herd mentality weaponized in the attack against our people and against the truth. Herd mentality has become mob mentality. The victims of violence have been miscast as criminals. Calls for ceasefire have degenerated into chants for the murder of Jews.
It is frustrating that so many get it so wrong. It is frustrating that so many are so blinded by hate, that they have absolutely no interest in even the basic facts. It is frustrating and frightening to see the world go insane with anger and hatred. Frightening to watch mobs of Arabs hunt innocent people in Jewish neighborhoods around the world. Frightening to see Jewish stores and synagogues looted, and it is frightening to face the venomous hatred of an enraged world.
To stand alone
Yet, we are people of a different spirit, and we have faced this hatred before. It has been our legacy to stand tall and block out the noise and the hatred. We have always possessed this courage and this different spirit, and our current crisis should be no different.
The Talmud records that upon entering Israel, Caleb detoured to Hebron to visit the Cave of the Patriarchs and to pray for the strength to defy the spies. Standing at the graves of the founders of Judaism, he surely identified with their ability to stand alone and resist their own culture. Our founding fathers weren’t yet referred to as Jews or even as Israelites but as Ivrim, or those from the “other side.” They had the courage to stand on one side while the entire world stood on the other. To be a Jew is to be comfortable standing alone.
For centuries, we preached monotheism to a world drunk on pagan gods. We stood alone. For centuries we spoke of a civil society that preserved the dignity of humankind, while the world was subjugated by brutal tyrants and miserable societies. We stood alone. For the past thousand years, we have faced malicious hostility and brutal violence while we were consistently demonized as the “other.” We stood alone.
During the nightmare of the Holocaust, Hitler tried to erase us from this planet, while much of the world stood by silently. We stood alone. During the first few decades of the State of Israel, hostile Arab countries partnered with the powerful Soviet Union in an attempt to crush our small country. We stood alone.
As people of a different spirit, we cannot be intimidated by the violence and the rage we face. This is our responsibility to past generations who stood tall and stood alone. We owe it to them. They would gladly have traded places with us if they could. They didn’t have a state or an army to protect them. They didn’t live in the company of Jewish people returning to their homeland to jointly build a common future. They stood alone and were lonely. We stand alone and united.
As the people of a different spirit, we have a debt to past generations.
We owe it to them to summon our courage and moral conviction and not allow crazed mobs of confused college students to muddle our clarity. Just because hordes of antisemites or crowds of bewildered college puppets vilify us as the aggressors doesn’t alter the fact that since our return to Israel, we have been ceaselessly attacked. We were the victims of Oct. 7. We consistently seek peace while our enemies always seek death.
We owe it to past generations to continue this war to its necessary conclusion, which we alone must determine. We cannot allow international pressure to prevent us from ending this war a moment sooner than it should or from defending our country and providing a safer world for our children.
We owe it to Jewish history not to be afraid. The Torah prohibits fear for soldiers engaged in war. Of course, the Torah cannot legislate against the emotion of fear. Rather, it demands that we manage fear just as we manage our other emotions. There is a thin line between fear and panic, and the Torah warns us against crossing it.
We have a different spirit. We have outlasted all our enemies, and we will outlast hatred and antisemitism. We must not be afraid to stand alone. It is part of our identity.
The writer is a rabbi at the hesder Yeshivat Har Etzion/Gush, with ordination from Yeshiva University and a master’s in English literature from CUNY. He is the author of Dark Clouds Above, Faith Below (Kodesh Press), which provides religious responses to Oct. 7.