In this week’s Torah portion, Sh’lach Lecha, our ancestors allow the intimidating reports from their spies sent into the land of Canaan to discourage them from fulfilling God’s instructions to enter the land and seize it. In fact, the Torah suggests that the Israelites, dismayed by the prospects of invasion, resolve to return to Egypt for safety.
In response, God condemns the Israelites to wander the desert for 40 years, until only Joshua and Caleb—the two spies who protest the Israelite complaints—remain to lead a new generation into Canaan.
One of the many lessons we may derive from the tale of our ancestors’ response to the report of the spies comes from the courage shown by Joshua and Caleb, who defiantly protest the reports of their fellow spies, as well as the panicked cries of their fellow Israelites to return to Egypt.
The Torah reveals that even as Moses and Aaron, “fell on their faces before the Israelites,” Joshua and Caleb stood tall, remonstrating the people for their rebelliousness and endeavoring to allay their fears. Their courage is shared by those countless individuals throughout human history—some of whom are remembered, many of whom are not—who refused to submit to the majority when the majority eschewed our civilization’s most precious values. Revolutionaries, abolitionists, suffragists, freedom riders, and others illustrate both the significance and the price of resolve in the face of a wayward majority.
And yet, history also remains replete with tales of those who stood in defiance against the majority not for the sake of our civilization’s most precious values, but for personal gain or devotion to a false ideal. Like the rebel Korach, whom we meet later in the Book of Numbers, their defiance is not so kindly remembered.
Our tradition demands not only the courage to stand against an oppressive majority, but also the wisdom to consider when the majority may be right.
—Rabbi Josh Knobel