The following was delivered as my first D'var Torah at Westchester Reform Temple.
Often, when I tell someone that I’m from Tallahassee, their
first response is: “There are Jews in Tallahassee?” And people are right to be
surprised: there are not a lot of Jews in Tallahassee. Growing up, I was one of
only four Jewish students in my grade. Once, a classmate asked—that, since a
person who celebrates Christmas is called a Christian—this classmate asked if I
was “a Chanukkan.”
But despite our small number—or maybe even precisely because
of it—the Tallahassee Jewish community is surprisingly strong. It’s a tight-knit
community. I have a vivid memory of being five or six years old and celebrating
Simchat Torah at our synagogue. I was marching around the sanctuary, waving an
Israeli flag with glee. I remember thinking then: the rest of the world has red
and green as Christmas colors, but I have blue and white—Jewish colors, my colors.
The Jews of Tallahassee may have been weak in number, but within
our community, we had a strong sense of belonging. You might describe us as
“small, but mighty.”
In this week’s Torah portion, the Israelites struggle to
recognize that they, too, are “small, but mighty.” Moses sends 12 scouts to do
reconnaissance on the Land of Canaan: to discover if the land fertile or
barren, if its inhabitants are strong or weak, if its cities fortified or
unfortified. Ten of the scouts return with a troubling report of a land
inhabited by giants, and to prove it, [1] they bring back a giant cluster of grapes—so large that it must be carried on a
pole between two people. “We looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes,” they
say, “and so we must have looked like grasshoppers in the eyes of the giants.”
Only two of the scouts disagree: “Yes, the land is inhabited
by giants,” they say, “but we can overcome them.” Yes, we may be small, they
admit—small, but mighty.
I have come to believe that being “small but mighty” is a central
theme of Jewish life. I’ve seen this theme in three areas on which I’d like to focus
this evening: in the congregations I’ve served, in our sacred stories, and in
my own life experience.
My first student pulpit was in Laramie, WY. The Jewishcommunity there told me the story of how, several years ago, when one of their
members died, she had requested full traditional Jewish burial rites—including taharat haguf, the washing of the body. With no Jewish funeral home or burial society
nearby, it was up to the members of the community to wash and prepare for
burial the body of this woman whom they had known and loved. It was emotionally
taxing—but the vibrancy of their Jewish lives demanded everyone’s full
participation, no matter the task. The community was small—small, but mighty.
Even in larger, better-resourced congregations—like TempleShaaray Tefila of Manhattan—I’ve found that strength doesn’t necessarily come
from numbers. In fact, on the High Holidays, when virtually all of the congregation’s
1,400 families show up, the congregation is at its most diffuse—unwieldy, like
a giant cluster of grapes. But in its smaller cohorts—the Torah study group,
the nursery school families, the active seniors group—the congregation finds
its strength. The room may not be as full as on the High Holidays, but the sense
of belonging is at its highest.
Whether in Laramie or in Manhattan, today’s synagogues aren’t
the first Jewish communities to feel small but mighty. The theme stretches far
back into our tradition. And this brings us to the second area on which I’d
like to focus: our sacred stories.
You might say that “small, but mighty” is the unifying theme
of our sacred stories. Listen to their narratives: a slave named Joseph rises
from the depths of prison to the heights of Egypt to save the entire Ancient
Near East from famine; a fugitive named Moses who should have been drowned at
birth leads a popular slave uprising to emancipate his people from the world’s
most powerful empire; a provincial young woman named Esther risks her life
before the king to have an evil decree against her people reversed; a renegade family
named Maccabee refuses to let the tides of universalism whitewash their Jewish
pride. They are, all of them, grasshoppers, overturning the tables of giants.
Our tradition’s obsession with the small but mighty didn’t happen
by coincidence. Our ancient forbears knew all too well that next to the empires
of Egypt, Babylon, Greece, or Rome, the tiny Kingdom of Israel did indeed look
like grasshoppers.
No wonder, then, that despite the privilege typically
granted to the eldest child in the ancient world, our Jewish tradition is
full of stories about the success of the youngest: Isaac, Jacob, Rachel,
Joseph, Moses, David—all youngest siblings.
But here, we begin to see the pitfalls of being small but
mighty. Because it’s not that the younger siblings are inherently better. In
fact, our stories often paint the upstart younger sibling as obnoxious,
redirecting our sympathies towards their slighted older brothers and sisters.
Think of Jacob, for example, who schemes and steals his way to victory over his
older brother Esau. It’s as if Jacob knows all too well that he is small, and
so he must go out of his way to prove that he is mighty.
And this brings us to the third area on which I’d like to
focus: my own life experiences—or, as they call it in rabbinical school, my “autobiographical
theology.”
First, let’s unpack that term. An autobiographical theology
is where you tell the story of your life, and tell how that story informs the
things that you believe.
My autobiographical theology begins as the youngest in my
family. Growing up, I used to idolize my older siblings and cousins. Everything
they did, I wanted to do. If they graduated from fifth grade, I wanted to
graduate from fifth grade. Of course, by the time I reached fifth grade, they
were already graduating from high school. And then of course by the time that I
graduated from high school, they were already getting married. And so, like our
ancestor Jacob, I fell into one of the traps of being small, but wanting to
seen as mighty. I felt like I was always playing catch-up—always chasing after
some distant future, but never quite reaching it. I idealized their world and denigrated
mine. I imagined them to be giants, and me, only a tiny grasshopper.
There’s the autobiographical part; now for the theology.
I came to believe—as with my relationship with my older
siblings and cousins—that I was flawed and God was perfect. I came to believe
that God wanted of me perfectionism. I came to believe that any sign of
imperfection was a sign of weakness, that the perfect person I was supposed to
become was always just over the horizon.
But this theology led me only to a dead end.
I’m still working to release myself from the theology of
playing catch-up. I’ve come to learn that my siblings and cousins are not
perfect. They are not giants, and I am not a grasshopper.
And I’m working to live in relationship with a God Who isn’t
perfect either. I guess that’s something we humans have in common with God: that
we—like God—are imperfect, but worthy of love. That we—like God—are small, but
mighty.
And so, I return to that giant cluster grapes, that vine
from the Land of Canaan that the scouts in our Torah portion cut down, that
cluster of grapes so big that it had to be carried on a pole by two people. The
scouts showed it to the Israelites to prove Canaan was inhabited by giants,
that the Israelites were mere grasshoppers.
But of course, we can look at it another way. Because yes,
the grapes were big. And yes, the Israelites felt small. But despite our size, we
lifted those giant grapes. The grapes don’t prove that we are small, but
rather, that we are strong. And so we continue to carry those giant grapes—in
our communities and in our sacred stories, in our autobiographies and in our
theology—as we lift, and celebrate, and bless the sweet, sweet fruit of the
vine.
[1]
See Rashi on Num. 13:23 (citing Sotah 34a)
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