Be like John

Grasshopper Vision

*This will be delivered at Temple Israel Center on the morning of 6/29/2024

A few weeks ago I received one of the greatest compliments of my life on the bimah. It wasn’t that I taught Torah like famed scholar Nechama Leibowitz. Nor was it that I had the humility of Moses. But rather, I was compared to John Wooden.

The Wizard of Westwood, as he was known for helping UCLA win 10 NCAA basketball championships in 12 years, Wooden is widely hailed as one of the great coaches and leaders in the history of ANY sport. It was a deeply kind comparison and one that feels wildly aspirational. We all should be so lucky to have a legacy like John Wooden.

In addition to his coaching acumen, he’s known as one of the great leaders of the 20th century which resulted in him developing a leadership framework called the Pyramid of Success. The pyramid is made up of 15 principles ranging from the bottom level of industriousness, friendship, loyalty, cooperation, and enthusiasm all the way up to its peak which is made of one brick: competitive greatness.

In addition to Judaism, one of the major lenses through which I see life is sports. When those two can be integrated, it makes things that much more powerful. So I want to highlight two of those principles, competitive greatness and team spirit.

As most of you know, this is my last shabbat delivering a d’var torah as one of your Rabbis in this room, and so I thought long and hard upon which message I wanted to end. I want to share some final words thinking about what it means to be a Rabbi, what it means to be in a community, and what it means to be an individual in that community. Those are demanding identities that don’t always play so nicely together because when you wear different hats that have different needs, who wins and who loses is a bit more complicated than a basketball game.

When things get complicated, Torah is a good place to turn. There are two moments in the parshah this week that I believe to be instructive in this dynamic. The first is in the beginning of the portion when the spies are sent by Moses to check out the land. In Numbers 13:1-

שְׁלַח־לְךָ֣ אֲנָשִׁ֗ים וְיָתֻ֙רוּ֙ אֶת־אֶ֣רֶץ כְּנַ֔עַן אֲשֶׁר־אֲנִ֥י נֹתֵ֖ן לִבְנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל אִ֣ישׁ אֶחָד֩ אִ֨ישׁ אֶחָ֜ד לְמַטֵּ֤ה אֲבֹתָיו֙ תִּשְׁלָ֔חוּ כֹּ֖ל נָשִׂ֥יא בָהֶֽם׃

“Send agents to scout the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelite people; send one participant from each of their ancestral tribes, each one a chieftain among them.”

Taken at face value, this line is simply logistical. We need to gather information on this new territory. Send this group of people. 

But in the Hebrew, there are a few peculiar things. First, this beginning clause is better understood as “send for yourself agents.” What’s the function of the “for yourself” piece? The second noteworthy element is that what is translated as “one participant,” is actually written in doubled language, ish ehad-ish ehad. Translated literally, it would be something like “send one person, one person from their ancestral tribes, each one being a chieftain.” Doesn’t quite have the same clarity, right?

One interpretation that comes to draw some meaning out of this apparent redundancy is from a favorite of mine, Reb Moshe Chayim Ephraim of Sudilkov, also known as the Degel Machane Ephraim. His excursus begins with a broad notion on what it means to be in service of God.

There are two frameworks through which one needs to serve God. The first is through the world of action. In this world, a person needs to think they are the only person in the world. God will then manifest in that person’s life in an unobstructed fashion.

The other frame is to remind yourself that all you are is one in a grand scheme of other godly creatures, from the tiniest worm to the mightiest mountain. In realizing this, you can cleave to all other souls in existence as my father taught, ‘you cleave to them and they to you, for in every letter that makes up every word, divinity is found and similarly in the world of souls.

This is like that which is written in the verse, “send yourself spies.” The word for send is akin to the word for strip as in ‘strip yourself of your personhood, and then go spy the land.’ This is to say, only keep what is necessary to connect yourself to God, and for this you require the connection with other people, not just yourself. To gain the greatest access to God’s light, one needs the collection of other souls. This is what was required of doing reconnaissance of the land.

The wording of ish ehad-one person alludes to the other way of being, that of remembering that you’re the only “you” in your relationship to God. That’s why it repeats it two times, as if to say it’s you, just you.

The small little verse encapsulates how one should live their life according to the Degel Machane Ephraim. On one hand, we have to remember that each of us is unique in our creation. Only we exist as unique individuals. There is no one else like us. That’s the ish ehad-ness of each of us. For the spies that were being sent, it was a reminder that they each brought something powerful to this endeavor. And yet, that wasn’t enough.

After all, we’re not alone. And that’s where the “send for yourself” comes in. The advantage of sending for yourself is that reminder that others are in it with us. When the text says “send,” the Degel Machane Ephraim reminds us to understand that word as meaning to strip ourselves. We need to realize that we can’t live solely fulfilling our needs because in the end, we’re part of a collective. We have to strike that difficult balance.

That, to me, is a great encapsulation of what it means to be part of a community like a synagogue. We all come in with our own individual narratives, passions, and parts of ourselves we want to fulfill. That special aspect of each individual is what makes up the threads of a community. But if each thread stood on its own, it would never form into something larger. When we remember about all the other threads and recognize that sometimes we might need to step back in order for someone else to shine, that’s how those threads get woven into a magnificent tapestry.

In my decade plus of being in different communities, that tension is the key point for growth. A person could look at that inflection point and see resources in two ways. One could think there’s not enough, so I need to hold on to as much as I can for myself because I want to manifest my dreams and my vision. That is a mindset of scarcity. To look around you and think, I have to amass for myself. 

A mindset of abundance though realizes that yes, maybe I can’t fill up my spiritual tank to 100 percent but if I can make space for others to fill their tanks up, we all can still get enough spiritual nourishment to fuel this spiritual endeavor for the future.

What lens we view those things is the make or break moment. It reminds me of the spies report when they came back from their mission. In Numbers 13: 31-33, we read the following:

But the other men who had gone up with him said, “We cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we.”

Thus they spread calumnies among the Israelites about the land they had scouted, saying, “The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. All the people that we saw in it are of great size;

we saw the Nephilim there—the Anakites are part of the Nephilim—and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”

Their details are full of fear. To be clear, seeing these giants in this land towering over them must have been frightening. Everything was new to them. The land, as they admit earlier, was flowing with milk and honey. There was a lot of goodness! Yet, their report is damning. So, what gives?

It’s clear that their view of themselves was low. So we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves. Even we see ourselves as small! When that’s the case, how are you going to view the world? Like there’s not enough…of anything. 

As the Midrash in Bamidbar Rabbah 16:11 writes:

They said: “We were as grasshoppers in our eyes” (Numbers 13:33). The Holy One said: ‘I forgive them for this.’ “And likewise we were in their eyes” (Numbers 13:33). ‘Do you know what I rendered you in their eyes? Who is to say that you were not as angels in their eyes? What have you caused yourselves?’

God was willing to be compassionate for how they viewed themselves. That’s human. But what we do with that self-view is essential. We all have the propensity for catastrophizing. The world around us is filled with situations for which we can immediately picture the worst outcome. That’s an urge we have to fight. That is the great sin the Midrash sees in their words. How could you know what they thought of you!? Maybe they saw your stature and thought you to be angels!

How we look around and view our community is so important. Are you a grasshopper that doesn’t think about the future and solely focuses on what you, yourself need? Or can you aim higher? That is the challenge we face when building communities and one that I think will be vital for this community and other Jewish communities to work at.

How we do it is complex and a full answer is beyond the scope of this d’var torah, but I want to end with one text that is one of the most powerful texts in our canon that colors this conversation and so much about what it means to be in community. It comes from Mishnah Middot, a section of the Oral Law that deals with arcane measurements and details relating to the temple. Here is what it says in 2:2

All who entered the Temple Mount entered by the right and went round [to the right] and went out by the left, save for one to whom something had happened, who entered and went round to the left. [He was asked]: “Why do you go round to the left?” [If he answered] “Because I am a mourner,” [they said to him], “May the God who dwells in this house comfort you.” [If he answered] “Because I am excommunicated” [they said]: “May the God who dwells in this house inspire them to draw you near again,” the words of Rabbi Meir. Rabbi Yose to him: you make it seem as if they treated him unjustly. Rather [they should say]: “May the God who dwells in this house inspire you to listen to the words of your colleagues so that they may draw you near again.”

We have no Temple anymore but we still have temples, synagogues, shuls, communities, or whatever you want to call them. In this grand game of life, we are constantly shifting between these two types of characters. Hopefully, the majority of the time, we’re walking to the right, going through our every day as normally as possible. But with certainty, we have moments when we’re going to the left. Maybe we’re in mourning, feelings on the outs, or in a particularly dark period. That’s when we need our fellow community members to check in, ask us how we’re doing, and offer us a listening ear (and advice, if solicited!)When we do that, we create communities that are built on love, mutual care, a willingness to grow, and recognition that there is enough for all of us.

We can finally build our own pyramids of success. You don’t have to take my word for it. Maybe I was too liberal, too young,  or too outspoken about issues that hit close to home. But John Wooden’s a good guy to listen to. Surely fueled by many things but prominently among them, this community can be enriched by focusing on competitive greatness and team spirit. 

For the former, when we bring our unique stories to the fore, we want to make our communities as great as they can be. That’s the individual gift we offer. But it’s not enough on its own. Fueled by a drive for a collective spirit, we contract a bit of ourselves to make room for others. In that space, just as God did when God created the world through a contraction of the self, worlds can be birthed.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Weekend!