The 26th of Sivan (Friday night/Saturday, June 24 and 25) commemorates the passing of our teacher, mentor, sage, Elie Wiesel, ztz”l. We miss him deeply. Yet the 92NY archive of his 128 recorded lectures, ranging from 1967-2014, provides us with an incomparable source of his teaching, commentaries, songs, and hope. He constantly mined the Torah, Talmud, and the Hasidic masters to display where a Jew—really, where anyone—should turn for wisdom, inspiration, and challenge.
From Elisha Wiesel: This Shabbat, my father's sixth Yahrzeit, we will read Parshat Shlach, my Bar Mitzvah parsha and a turning point in the Jewish people's desert journey from slavery to the land of Israel. Twelve spies are sent to scout out the future, each a leader among their tribes; ten bring back a fear that spreads throughout the nation.
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Twelve Jewish souls stood at the gates of the twenty-first century and looked ahead to tell us what awaits.
And as with the spies of old, ten of them spoke words of cynicism and darkness, tainting what they saw as they related it to the rest of us.
The first said: Defeat. I have seen the future, and there is no place for Judaism in this world. Ahead of us is a world of great scientific discovery and rational thought. Our belief system has no value there. There is no room for divinity. Everything we thought was wrong. Let us go forward, but disband as we do.
The second said: Retreat. I have seen the future, and it is too foreign for us to inhabit. There is no room for this world in our Judaism. We cannot coexist with this new world or accept its different ways of thinking. Assimilation is inevitable. We cannot move forward. To keep our traditions pure, we can only turn inward.
The third said: Despair. I have seen the future, and we repeat our mistakes, children starve, families are ripped apart, God and man seem to have abandoned us, there is no point in moving forward.
The fourth said: Irrelevance. I have seen the future, and we are but pawns on the tiniest of chessboards, our individual actions matter not, what is the point of anything we do?
The fifth said: Chaos. My colleagues speak as though they have seen the future, but they have only seen possible futures, the unknowability of the future is overwhelming. Let us stay in the present, where it is safer: imagination is too dangerous, the future too unpredictable.
The sixth said: Terror. I have seen the future and the wars we will have to fight, our innocents who will die. I do not have it within me to fight as fearlessly as will be required to win. I cannot. Nor should you.
The seventh said: Hatred. I have seen the future and the wars we will have to fight. I have seen what our enemy has done to us and I know what is expected of us to attain peace, to show mercy to our enemies when they are beaten, and after what we have suffered, I do not have it in me to show mercy. I cannot. Nor should you.
The eighth said: Indifference. I have seen the present and future suffering of so many people, not just our own, and it is too much for me. My heart is not big enough and I cannot save even a few, let alone them all, so of necessity I grow indifferent. And in so doing I lose my place in the world to come and so will you.
The ninth said: Avoidance. I have seen the future and the profound number of choices we will each have to make. These are difficult choices. It is easier not to make them. Stay back.
And the tenth said: Fatigue. I have the worst news of all. It’s boring. There is no grand crescendo in the next movement, just the continued and incessant drama that is human relations.
My father was the eleventh. He had something different to say.
My father said: Embrace modernity and the past. Thrive on the contradictions, the strength that you derive from Shabbat is no less real than the power that fuels the jet engine taking you across the globe. Embrace being a Jew along with being a full citizen of the world, we can strengthen the world while it strengthens us. We must neither shut out the outside world nor cease to be who we are!
My father said: You must keep hope despite the tragedies which surround us, and you must believe in the power of an individual to make a profound and lasting difference to others. You must be brave and go into the future even if you are terrified by the unknowable.
My father said: The Jewish people can and must fight for our survival, the State of Israel must be allowed to defend herself - never again will we be history’s victims! And as we do so we must be ready to pursue peace with our enemies, painful though it may be, when the moment shows itself.
My father said: We cannot turn our eyes from suffering. We cannot let our heart harden, whether it is a Jew or a non-Jew who suffers. And we cannot avoid making difficult choices. And most importantly, my father showed through his actions: It is in the small gestures of human relations that true beauty can be found, sometimes more than in the grand ones. In listening to someone’s story. In walking a guest in your home to the door. Do not be weary of interactions with your fellow man, immerse yourself in them.
And what of the twelfth Jew, the one who stands by my father and also sees a message of hope for our collective future?
Who is he or she?
Will it be you?
Good shabbos.