Parashat Shelach Lecha 2014 |
Parashat Shelach Lecha When I was a teenager, I always kept a battered copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations by my bed.· This might strike you as terribly odd, but it made perfect sense to me.· I couldn’t trust myself with novels – I would often become engrossed in them and would stay up all night reading.·Suddenly, the sun would rise, and I would have to face a full day of school on no sleep.· Not a good move, I realised.· So I contented myself with flicking through the pages of Bartlett’s until I drifted off, savouring occasional gems that touched my funny bone or which reflected my current world view. The fact that we had a copy of this book in the house was due to my mother, who knew a vast body of folk sayings, which I seem to have picked up by osmosis.· You know the kind of thing:· “A penny saved is a penny earned” and so on. ·But the phrase I remember hearing most often was, “Hindsight is always 20-20” (usually followed by a resigned sigh).· In practical terms, what that meant was that we were going to be stuck with the consequences of someone else’s bad decision – but we weren’t allowed to blame him or her for it.· In such a context, the phrase is harmless enough.· I have learned that it can even be a comfort, when I need to forgive myself for a lack of foresight. Yet perhaps because this phrase was repeated so often, the idea that one could be certain of the truth in retrospect insidiously wormed its way into my consciousness.· The idea that one’s perspective is inevitably coloured by personal experience and immediate circumstances had never really occurred to me.· It was only much later in life that I came to understand that retrospective vision is almost NEVER 20-20, and in fact is often in need of some pretty strong corrective lenses. The children of Most commentaries I have read on this incident focus on how legitimate God’s anger is at this point.· That the children of I find it interesting that Moses’ function here is to help God to regain perspective.· Curiously, he doesn’t try to get God to change his mind about the people at all.· What he does instead is remind God about the bigger picture, trading the filter of anger for something akin to a wide angle lens, as it were.· If anyone has perfect vision in this piece, it is Moses – but I would argue that it is 20-20 foresight, not hindsight.· He predicts how the nations would view the demise of It is an incredibly bold move – patently playing on what could be seen as God’s vanity.· He heaps on the epithets that are now so familiar to us from the Yom Kippur liturgy, calling on God to live up to the words, erech apayim v’rav chesed “slow to anger and abounding in love”.·· It is only then that God relents and says, Salachti Kidvarecha, “I have pardoned according to your word.” My point is this:· if God’s vision can be understood at times as in need of correction, al achat kamah v’chamah – how much the more so is ours!· We need to be aware that we inevitably see the world through a series of lenses:· through our needs, our wants -and yes, sometimes through our fear or anger.· None of us has 20-20 vision, not even in hindsight.· By acknowledging that with humility and grace, we make room for the possibility that someone else can help us to see better and more truly.· In this way, we can move forward in our lives and find the courage we need to meet the challenges that face us.· And who knows, it might help us to be more compassionate – not only to others, but also to ourselves. |