In the Parasha today, Moses has a problem. No one is listening to him. Not Pharoah who doesn’t want his Israelites to leave, and not the Israelites themselves either. It’s not hard to understand why Pharaoh doesn’t want to lose his skilled slaves. But why don’t the Israelites listen to Moses? Hasn’t God just promised to take them out of Egypt with an outstretched arm? Don’t they want to leave their difficult lives under the cruel Pharoah? The reason given is that the slaves themselves are too downtrodden to see that they have options.
יְדַבֵּ֥ר מֹשֶׁ֛ה כֵּ֖ן אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וְלֹ֤א שָֽׁמְעוּ֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה מִקֹּ֣צֶר ר֔וּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָ֖ה קָשָֽׁה ‘But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.’
מִקֹּ֣צֶר ר֔וּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָ֖ה קָשָֽׁה Sforno (16th century Italy) says about kotzer ruach ‘for it did not appear believable to their present state of mind, so that their heart could not assimilate such a promise.’
As slaves for generations, fear of the unknown keep the Israelites paralysed. They keep their world small and (to their minds safe) because they are too traumatised to step out into anything else. They can’t see that the door is open if they just push it together.
I have great sympathy for the Israelites. I’m also scared. I know theoretically I can have what Viktor Frankl calls ‘the last freedom’. He says: ‘Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind even in terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.’ But honestly, I’m more in the Janis Joplin mindset where freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
Last year, on October 07, many of my assumptions were revealed and then shattered. I believed for example that all Jews of all ages and all denominations supported Israel. I believed that what Jews in the diaspora experience is the same as what Jews in Israel experience. I believed that I could change people’s minds through factual debate on Instagram. I believed God was only good.
For most of us, our paradigms are so ingrained that they are invisible to us.
This is mine – I’m a descendant of generations of pogrom and expulsion survivors. A sniff of danger and I’m back hiding in the basket. My suitcase is always packed. I just want to stay safe, keep my friends and keep my job. I’m not interested in resisting the established social order in order to be authentic. I just want to stay alive.
John, my Non-Jewish partner, had no such fear bred to his bones. He insisted we put rescue-the-hostages posters up outside our house. When I tucked in my Magen David on the train, he wouldn’t have dreamed of hiding his bring-them-home wristband.
But we all see things differently – I recently spoke to an American Jewish woman who was terrified lest anyone think she was not publicly 100% committed to the Palestinian cause before anything else. Her belief is tikkun olam, and that any resort to self-defence is a crime.
Another paradigm - On Wednesday I spoke to a 60-year-old Israeli man who picked up his revolver on October 07 and drove down to help the people of the Nachal Oz kibbutz. His belief is - if your friends are in trouble, do what it takes to help them.
I’ve found comfort in reading thinkers who allowed their minds to expand in response to catastrophe. People who experienced the Holocaust like Eliezer Berkowitz although he would have hated me as a non-pious or in his words, non- authentic Jew.
In With God in Hell, he writes that the majority of Jews suffered in the Holocaust because of what he calls ‘the naïve innocence regarding the limits of human degradation.’
I’m wondering about the thousands of Jews in Hungary who didn’t resist going to Auschwitz in May 1944 because despite the evidence, they couldn’t believe the certain fate awaiting them.
That’s also a form of Kotzer ruach.
Berkowitz says he says we need to change how we see ourselves, and also expand how we see our sources. He says for centuries our sources have been reinterpreted in the diaspora to teach that violence and resistance is not for Jews.
Sadly, the Israelites with their kotzer ruach never reached the promised land. Moses schlepped them around the dessert for 40 years and they moaned like bratty teenagers all the way.
If we want to merit our Promised Lands, we first need to see our own kotzer ruach, and occasionally see past it. We need to see the full picture, to know evil exists and feel entitled to resist it. We need to see how amazingly diverse and resourceful we are as a team. We need to have the courage to be comfortable with the unknown, and to wonder what is preventing us from asking what else is possible.
Let’s take a deep breath, hold hands with our friends, and step forward together.
