Onto The Next

When the Path Doesn't Appear

I just passed my 10 year mark of being in the rabbinate which had me reflecting on those halcyon days of my last year in rabbinical school. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, my soon-to-be-rabbi friends and I dreamt large about all that we were going to accomplish as the world’s newest clergy. Then we all scattered and very quickly, reality set in.

It turns out, being a Rabbi is hard work! Who knew? Especially for those of us that ended up in more suburban communities, we quickly realized we weren’t in Pico-Robertson anymore.

Those early years were intensely challenging. The relationships I made with congregants and colleagues have lasted throughout the years. I feel incredibly grateful for the connections and yet, I can’t help but think back at how stuck things felt within these organizations. Systems didn’t seem to function, culture wasn’t always the most positive, and standards weren’t always up to snuff. It struck me as problematic that people had an aw-shucks attitude about the Jewish professional world, as if it were totally normal that the baseline expectation for the sector was

The path forward wasn’t always clear to me. Were all places like this? After finishing my second stint in the pulpit and realizing I needed a change, I was incredibly grateful to the team at Repair the World for bringing me on board to help steward Jewish education for the last couple of years. It was incredibly meaningful to be a part of something so impactful that helped clarify my own career path. That clarification process can be incredibly valuable but it doesn’t always happen so smoothly.

There’s a moment in this week’s Torah portion, Shlach, that I keep returning to precisely because it follows that not-so-smooth pathway. The spies come back from scouting the land with a report that is, by any reasonable measure, accurate. The cities are fortified and the inhabitants are powerful. Into that moment of collective deflation steps Caleb with a response that, on its surface, doesn’t actually argue with any of it.

The Esh Kodesh, Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman Shapiro, noticed this too. Here’s the text from Numbers 13:27-30:

We came to the land you sent us to; it does indeed flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However, the people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large; moreover, we saw the Anakites there. Amalekites dwell in the Negeb region; Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites inhabit the hill country; and Canaanites dwell by the Sea and along the Jordan.” Caleb hushed the people before Moses and said, “Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it.”

The Esh Kodesh zeroes in on the texture of this exchange:

‘We shall surely go up and inherit it, for we are able to overcome it’ — and let us understand: the spies actually spoke words of reason and logic ‘except that the people are powerful’ and ‘the cities are fortified’ etc. So why did Caleb not argue with them to refute their reasoning and logical arguments? He simply said, ‘We shall surely go up.’

What strikes me about this framing is the Piacezno Rebbe’s insistence that the spies aren’t wrong, exactly. They’re not lying or even being cowardly; they’re being rational. They looked at the situation clearly and reported what they saw. Caleb’s genius isn’t that he out-argues them. It’s that he refuses to play on that field at all.

The Esh Kodesh then makes a broader claim about what that refusal actually represents:

‘But this is how the faith of a Jewish person must be: not only in a moment when he sees an opening and a path toward his salvation… should he believe in God that God will save him and strengthen himself. Rather, even in a moment when he sees, God forbid, no opening whatsoever according to reason or through natural means toward his salvation, he must still believe in God that God will save him, and strengthen himself in his faith and trust.

In fact, in such a moment, it is better that he not stubbornly search for some rational explanation or natural opening because since on the surface none can be found, this could, God forbid, cause his faith to become damaged. And a damage to his faith and trust in God can hold back his salvation.

Rather, he must say: It is all true, that the people dwelling there are strong, that the cities are fortified, etc…and yet, I believe in God, Who is beyond all limit and nature, that God will save us. “We shall surely go up and inherit it” — without logic, without reasoning, through faith and trust alone. And such faith and trust in God draws our salvation near.

There’s something almost counterintuitive here that I find genuinely challenging. We’re trained, especially in professional and organizational life, to diagnose problems carefully, to weigh the evidence, and to find the rational path forward. And that’s often good and necessary. But the Esh Kodesh is suggesting that there are moments when the relentless search for a logical opening actually works against you. When the surface yields nothing and you keep looking for a crack, and the only thing you succeed in doing is convincing yourself there isn’t one.

The move Caleb makes and that the Esh Kodesh is celebrating is a different kind of sight. He sees the fortified cities and hears the report, and he chooses to locate his confidence somewhere the spies’ logic simply can’t reach.

We get into these moments in life when, no matter how hard we try and no matter how insistent we are, we can’t reason our way out of it. It is in those moments in particular when we have to believe that we’ll get through it. Maybe for you, it’s grounded in a larger theological belief or perhaps it’s because you believe in your own resilience and perseverance. Whatever the reason though, that is essential faith.

I wish I could go back and tell baby Rabbi Adir that message but I try to carry it now because the human spirit is stronger than we give it credit for. I am incredibly grateful to those on the path who helped show me that strength.

And now I am happy to help others illuminate their path. After two years at Repair the World, I am beginning in a new role at an organization called Leading Edge as their new Vice President of Jewish Learning. Leading Edge is (and I am biased) a really cool organization. We help Jewish organizations improve their talent and culture so that they can better achieve their missions. In other words, we’re working to level up that meh expectation that so many people have of the Jewish nonprofit sector.

It feels moving to be on a team helping those new Jewish professionals and others already in the field come into spaces that feel healthy, impactful, and operating at a high level of efficiency. I do this not because it’s rational or logical but because I believe we have the collective strength to get it done, just like Caleb before us.

Have a lovely Tuesday and great rest of the week!