It's a familiar story: The Jews are wandering in the wilderness and Moses and the people decide to send spies into the Land of Israel to see what kind of a place it is they're heading toward. Of the 12 spies to go on this mission, 10 return horrified. The place is filled with giants! We don't stand a chance against them! The people, upon hearing this terrifying message, panic: "If only we had died in the land of Egypt! Or if only we might die in this wilderness! Why is the Lord taking us to that land to fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be carried off? It would be better for us to go back to Egypt!"
Given a choice between a difficult battle for freedom or an easy accommodation to slavery, the Jews chose slavery. Not much has changed in the past three thousand years: Given the choice between a difficult struggle to change our Nation's way of living, our greed, callousness, and bigotry, most Americans also choose the slavery of materialism, of convention, of conformity. No gain, maybe, but also no risk.
God, however, is furious. Once the people express their preference for slavery, God threatens to destroy them all instantly. A rejection of freedom is, after all, a rejection of God and of the challenge of implementing God's mitzvot. Only after a passionate argument with Moses does God finally back down and agree to forgive the people, and even then God exacts a strict penalty: They asked to die in the wilderness. Very well: they will die in the wilderness.
But later commentators have been troubled by Moses' logic. At first, the Midrash Ba-Midbar Rabbah tells us Moses tried arguing the merits of the people and their ancestors. But God won't hear it. So Moses shifts his argument, asking God, instead "When the Egyptians, from whose midst You brought up this people...hear the news... [they] will say it must be because the Lord was powerless."
Is it possible that God backed down because of what the Gentiles might think? Is that a moral basis for altering a decision? Is that divine?
Perhaps, though, we can learn from Moses' argument and from God's response after all.
The people who had been given freedom were on the brink of rejecting it. The nation that had been taught a sacred and a just way of living were about to choose slavery, hierarchy, and oppression. If God responded the way a Pharaoh would in the face of a slave rebellion, wouldn't that response vindicate Pharaoh and the values he represented?
What Moses was telling God was that the final lesson of freedom and responsibility could not be imposed by threats; that the methods of the Pharaohs of the world could only produce more Egypts - places of great wealth and stifling poverty, places which treated people like chattel and reduced the sacred to empty form.
Moses was right, and God knew it. The battle for freedom constantly threatens to collapse - both because of its enemies and because of its would-be advocates.
When we defend freedom by diminishing another's humanity, then Pharaoh wins.
When we defend freedom by labeling an intrinsically-evil "them" against an always-good "us" then Pharaoh wins.
When we impose habit and conformity in order to stifle the really important questions or to punish people for their differences, then we drive God from our midst.
God forgives us because of what the Egyptians will say. They would look at that punishment - however much it might have been earned - and feel vindicated in their narrowness, their bigotry, their willingness to squash debate, free inquiry, or differences. After all, if God does it, then why can't they?
Not only the Jews, but also God stood at a crossroad: To use the methods of Pharaoh is simply to become the new oppressor. God forgave us in order to forever transcend the use of coercion.
You cannot teach freedom by fiat. You cannot bring people to the Promised Land through force. There is no "them." There is only us, and we are journeying toward freedom. Care to come along?
Shabbat Shalom!