Stand Right There

Shh...

Are you ok with being uncomfortable?

That was the question posed by my brother a number of months ago when he was regaling us with yet another tale of his deal getting acumen. You see, my brother Yirmi is the king of customer service. Car rentals, travel plans, restaurants, or anything that’s within the service industry, Yirmi knows exactly how to swing a deal because of poor service, personnel issues, or simply because it’s a day that ends in ‘y.’

I’ve always admired him for this ability because it feels so foreign to me. I’d always err on the side of causing my own hurt that pushing it on someone else, at least that’s how the story goes in my head. But I can’t shake his comment all those months ago. There’s wisdom there.

Of course it doesn’t always work and in certain situations, I might be more adept than he is at being uncomfortable but it struck me as a good practice to work on. So, i’ve been trying. Needing to have that hard conversation with a colleague? I tried not to fill in that gap of silence when I offered challenging feedback. Wanting to solve a problem of Cal’s because it was causing him angst? I took a step away instead.

Discomfort can be a goal. That discomfort must have been palpable in this week’s Torah narrative. As a group of spies returns to Moses to tell their tale of the land, ten of them share that while fruitful, the land is controlled by too powerful a people.

They’re too strong for us.

But there were two other spies who had a different story to tell. Caleb and Joshua overhear their fellow spies and can’t believe it. That’s what you gathered, they wonder. The response is fairly spartan. In Number 13:30, we hear Caleb’s retort:

וַיַּ֧הַס כָּלֵ֛ב אֶת־הָעָ֖ם אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה וַיֹּ֗אמֶר עָלֹ֤ה נַעֲלֶה֙ וְיָרַ֣שְׁנוּ אֹתָ֔הּ כִּֽי־יָכ֥וֹל נוּכַ֖ל לָֽהּ׃

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.”

Imagine the tension in the air. After all, the vast majority of the spies have just spun a tale of a people of giants that will crush this young nation. Wouldn’t it have been better just to go along with it? Instead, Caleb quiets the people and with his own giant sense of resolve, he says, “we got this.”

Notice how he doesn’t respond with counterarguments of why they can do it, just that they can do it. That choice of wording piqued the interest of the Piacezno Rebbe, Kalonymus Kalman Shapira in the summer of 1940 in Warsaw.

How could it be that the spies gave a report full of facts yet Caleb doesn’t attempt to contradict their facts but instead just says, we surely can rise up?

This is actually the type of faith for an Israelite. It’s not a faith that is only operative when the path is clear but specifically when it’s not clear and there’s actually no logical reason why we should succeed that a person should believe in their salvation. In fact, in these situations, a person shouldn’t strive for logic or natural rationales for success because if they don’t succeed, they’ll end up causing a defect in their faith. Rather, like the spies, they should admit that this is the truth. The people that dwell there are ferocious and strong and the cities are fortified…and nonetheless, we believe, for our faith is beyond nature and logic; we can do this.

I read this and immediately thought of discomfort. What happens when we’re faced with a situation that feels insurmountable? Do we marshal all the logic and facts we can to try to solve it? Perhaps! Sometimes we’ll succeed and sometimes we’ll fail. What I think the Esh Kodesh is asking us to do here in the legacy of Caleb and Joshua is to face that discomfort and embrace it.

That embrace comes in the form of faith. That faith comes in the form of being able to look at that precipitating even of discomfort, noting it as very real, and even still being able to say, I got this. That is the hush that Caleb brings about. The wisdom therein is that said discomfort is part and parcel of life.

In a recent study at the University of Chicago, scientists assessed people’s ability to withstand various forms of discomfort across a series of tasks in areas of personal growth. The results?

Across these areas of personal development, seeking discomfort as a signal of self-growth motivated engagement and increased perceived goal achievement relative to standard instructions.

In other words, the more uncomfortable we are, the more we grow. So maybe my brother Yirmi has been onto something all these years. He might tell you, in customer service, the more uncomfortable you can be, the better deal you might get. Our teacher Caleb might be telling us, the more uncomfortable we can be, the more we can grow and flourish. I’ll take either.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Weekend!