by Rabbi Joyce Newmark

June 19, 2008

A number of years ago, The United Synagogue Review carried an article by a man who had participated in Imun, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism program that trains laypeople from small and isolated congregations in synagogue skills and congregational leadership. After a week in this intense religious learning experience, during which he wore a kipa the entire time, the author felt inspired to wear his kipa on the trip home.

He wrote about how this act of Jewish visibility affected him. He was tremendously self-conscious, sure that people were looking at him and talking about him. He even wondered if the airline clerk was brusque because he was dealing with a Jew. By the time he got home, the author decided that this small thing was more than he could handle. The kipa was put away, to be worn only for shul.

Were the people in the airport really looking at him and talking about him? Perhaps — but it’s much more likely they were absorbed in their own concerns, making connections, hoping that they had packed everything, wondering if the business they were undertaking would be successful. Was the airline clerk an anti-Semite? Perhaps — but it’s much more likely that he had been out late the night before, had had a run-in with a rude passenger, or that his shoes were too tight.

What the author experienced was something that happens to most of us at one time or another — we project our own insecurities and ambivalence about things that are different onto others. The article reminded me of the scene in Annie Hall in which Woody Allen’s character is invited to dinner at the home of his non-Jewish girlfriend’s parents. He’s convinced that every time they look at him they are seeing a hasid complete with black coat, shtreimel, long beard, and peyot.

And this is not just a characteristic of Jewish life in modern America. In this week’s parsha, the spies give their report, describing the fierce and mighty Canaanites whom they characterize as giants. They conclude, “We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” Midrash Bemidbar Rabbah comments, “The Holy One said, ‘We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves’ — I shall forgive them this remark, but ‘and so we must have looked to them.’ How do you know how I made you appear in their sight? Who can say that you didn’t appear like angels to them!”

According to this midrash, God says, I can forgive you for your perception of yourselves — after all, it’s easy to understand how these recently freed slaves would be intimidated by the prospect of fighting for their land. But, God adds, you do not have the right to interpret events in the most negative light, to allow your fear to cause you to forget that God is part of the equation. The spies and those they influenced are not condemned for low self-esteem — it’s not really something they are able to control. Rather, they are punished due to their lack of faith, their failure to trust God.

But even this seems harsh. We can’t really control what we believe, we can’t prevent doubts from creeping into our minds. And so, I am taken with the commentary of Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kotsk. He wrote: “This was one of the sins of the spies. ‘We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves.’ Okay, it is possible to understand [why they thought that], but ‘and so we must have looked to them.’ What of it? What does it matter to you how you appear in the eyes of others?” According to the Kotsker, the sin is not negative self-perception or thoughts and feelings not within our control. The sin is letting our behavior be controlled by the opinions — real or imagined — of others, because our behavior is within our control.

The sin is letting fear of what others may think sway you from following the truth, make you compromise your integrity, or cause you to refrain from doing what you know is right. A person who allows him- or herself to be controlled by what others may think abdicates, at least to some extent, the responsibility to make moral decisions.

The Torah teaches, “You shall do what is right and good in the sight of God.” Sometimes that means people will consider you a reactionary, a wuss, a prude, a bigot, a goody-goody, a chicken, a killjoy, a fool, or any number of other names meant to humiliate and condemn. But, as the Kotzker taught, it is a sin to reject what is right and good out of fear of other people’s reactions or derision.

Rabbi Joyce Newmark, a resident of Teaneck, is a former religious leader of congregations in Leonia and Lancaster, Pa.

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