View the study sheet here. Recording here.
In December 2023, the objective measurements of the U.S. economy looked pretty good. The previous month employers had added 199,000 jobs. Unemployment had dropped to 3.79%. Inflation had dramatically plummeted over the course of the year from 9.1% to 3.2%, without causing a recession. And Americans felt worse about it.
That month Gallup conducted a poll about Americans’ view of the economy. It found that 68% of Americans observed the economy to be worsening. Four in five U.S. adults rated the country’s economic condition as “poor” (45%) or “fair” (33%).
What is a national leader to do when faced with a discrepancy between objective data about a condition and subjective feelings about it?
President Biden toured the country in December 2023, promoting his economic agenda. During a speech on the economy in the Washington D.C. area, he said: “The economy is growing. Jobs are up, wages are up, inflation is coming down. We’ve got more work to do, but our economic plan is delivering real results for American families.”
President Biden may have correctly described the data points of the economy, but his inadequacy at addressing people’s fears and anxieties – whatever their sources might be – would haunt him over the next several months until he withdrew from the presidential campaign.
Acknowledgment and management of a group’s discontent with and even rebellion against current conditions in order to help the group arrive at a new understanding of self and community is not a skill set usually associated with a politician running for re-election. The capacity to do so, however, lies at the very heart of the Exodus project, Torah’s narrative of the Israelite journey from slave self to sovereign self.
Complaint, resistance and rebellion are ongoing themes in the book of Numbers. In Parshat Shelach (“send”) the Israelites are at the border of their destination, the land of promise. A detail of twelve scouts crosses over into Canaan to assess what lies ahead. Their report confirms that the land “flows with milk and honey,” just as God had described it. They present enormous clusters of fruits as evidence.
But their report quickly collapses into one of despair as their narrative shifts focus. “The people who live there are giants! And we looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were in their eyes.” Empirical evidence is displaced by matters of appearances: how they saw themselves and a presumption of how others saw them.
Joshua seeks to rally the community. His initial response is to reaffirm that it is “a land flowing with milk and honey.” But no one had questioned that. He then attempts to address the scouts’ anxiety that the land is a place that “eats its inhabitants.” Joshua’s retort is “do not fear them, for they will be our food!”
Joshua’s first attempt to re-inspire the community does not address their anxieties. It speaks right past it. With his second attempt, he seeks to overcome their fear by telling them not to feel that way, that, in fact, they will defeat those who oppose them. This effort to replace a sense of impotence with one of omnipotence does not work either.
The people are prepared to throw stones at Joshua and his compatriot Caleb, figures whom the Talmud sees as screens for the real target of the people’s grievance: God.
Moses and Aaron both fall on their faces, silently enacting both the despair of the people and the failure of leadership.
No one has stepped forward to acknowledge how terrifying it can feel to leave behind the known confinement that was Egypt for the yet-to-be-experienced responsibility that defines the place of promise. No one has asked, “Are you afraid to exchange what you can see for what you cannot?” No one has explored with the people what it means to leave behind a world constructed by power for one nurtured by love.
The mad, desperate fantasies of the people – “it would be better to die in the wilderness” than to go forward, “it would be better to go back to Egypt,” “we remember the fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic we ate for free in Egypt” – reveal not a real direction they want to go but a shattering of certainty about themselves.
Jonathan Lear is a philosopher and psychoanalyst who has written about the importance of such shatterings in human development. Acknowledgment and exploration of our anxieties, doubts and contradictions help us rebuild a more integrated self. “Disunity is the beginning of unity,” he wrote in A Case for Irony.
Although the surface of Torah is a narrative of external events, its enduring focus is on the subjective lives of those inscribed in its pages…and of those who are reading them.
The book of Numbers is an affirmation that to reach the divine promise of peace, fruition and settlement requires an ongoing shattering of self. That the lesson of the midbar experience is learning how to live with our internal disunities and disruptions, for they are the stuff of life.
Mark Rothko chose to eliminate from his paintings recognizable figures, subjects and narratives. He explored and painted emotion and the search for the sublime. He wrote, “I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on — and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate those basic human emotions… The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.”
Pictured here is his work No. 61. It is a monumental piece, nearly eight feet in height and seven feet in width. Rothko painted his pieces so that the viewer might become immersed in them. Detachment invites analysis. Immersion is participation. “A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is the experience,” he wrote.
The painting imposes no specific narrative or message. It creates an opportunity for a visual and emotional experience unique to each viewer. For Rothko art has the power to create an intimate connection between artist, the work and the viewer. That is the pathway to the sublime.
The complete name for this week’s portion is Shelach Lecha: “send for yourself.” It evokes the portion titled Lech Lecha (“go for yourself”), in which God calls Abraham to embark on a journey of self-discovery, new identity and a unique destiny. In Shelach Lecha, the journey that exposes fears and doubts and rebellion refines, reconstructs and regenerates a soul that has just been born out of its narrow straits.
In that journey, the Israelites seem to have no doubts about God’s power. The issue is about God’s ongoing presence, about God’s intimacy…about God’s love.
And to experience that presence, that intimacy…that love…requires an encounter with and refinement of oneself.
Join us here at 7:00 p.m. (PT) on Thursday June 11 as we explore to discover love.
No. 61 by Mark Rothko
