Sometimes (even though our Torah is a delightfully 70-faceted text, and our commentators are also delightfully diverse) I am running low on parsha email content. In these desperate moments, I have a very specific procedure.
Step 1: Open the Apple podcasts app.
Step 2: Wait to be inspired.
I cannot explain it other than Divine will, but every time I do this, I end up listening to exactly the right podcast to get me on the right track for writing.
That happened this week. I stumbled upon a podcast that featured social-science researcher Julia Galef speaking about the two frames with which we interpret information: scout mindset vs soldier mindset.
Galef describes the solider mindset as approaching situations with the sole intent of defending one’s own beliefs, shooting down any other conflicting information and seeing alternative approaches as the “enemy.” The soldier mindset tends to be based on emotions like defensiveness and tribalism.
The scout mindset, alternately, is driven by the desire to find the truth — to see what is real, no matter who or where it comes from. The scout mindset is based in curiosity, with a love of learning and solving puzzles. Scouts are grounded in their self worth, not basing it on how right or wrong they are about any particular topic.
If you can pick it up from the descriptors, we should all strive to be scouts. As Galef says in her own words, “[The Scout Mindset is] my term for the motivation to see things as they are and not as you wish they were, being or trying to be intellectually honest, objective, or fair minded, and curious about what’s actually true.”
That scout person is someone I’d like to be around!
Now why in the world am I bringing up soldiers and scouts? Great question — in this week’s parsha, we begin the book of Devarim, of Deuteronomy. Devarim takes place over the final 5 weeks of Moshe Rabbenu’s life. He’s recapping the events of the Torah from Avraham onward, with an important emphasis of a particularly eventful event that happened pretty recently in our narrative (but 38 years ago in the Torah timeline) — in parshat Shelach where we have the event of Chet HaMeraglim, the Sin of the Spies.
As a recap, as B’nei Yisrael approaches the land of Israel, some leaders become nervous about this new home of theirs. They ask Moshe if they can send some spies in to scout out the land and confirm that it’s an ארץ טובה - an Eretz Tova, a Good Land. In the first telling of the story, Moshe and G-d allow the spies to go into the land, but send them with specific instructions. One instruction sums up the rest - Moshe asks them to confirm if it’s a good or a bad land - using the words טוב and רע / Tov and Ra (Good vs Bad).
This word, “tov” for “good” is very powerful. To truly understand a biblical word, we can explore its other usages.
Cont’d…
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