We Can Only Gain When We No Longer Fear to Lose
Parshat Bamidbar, 5767 (by Rabbi David Lapin)
Anyone unwilling to make himself into an ownerless
desert, cannot master wisdom and Torah
- Bamidbar Rabbah 1:7
Heroic Courage
This week I was training leaders in one of the largest police Agencies in the United States. I found myself in the presence of an impressive group of medal-bearing courageous men and women who many times in their careers had placed their lives at risk to protect the communities they serve. Courage was not a challenge to them. It was a precondition of their work. Yet time and again during our conversations, these men and women asserted their reluctance to take a stand on a variety of troubling ethical issues within their agencies, for fear of career-limiting and possibly career-terminating, consequences. Courage means overcoming fear in the face of potential pain or loss. I realized working with these Commanding Officers, that we often display more courage in the face of physical pain, loss, and even death, than we do in the face of emotional pain, disapproval, rejection or loss of status. Strong, courageous, macho men will sometimes hesitate to call a girl for a date, for fear of rejection!
Moral Courage
It is harder to have the courage of your convictions than it is to risk your life in an heroic act. The courage of your convictions requires that you be willing to adopt a viewpoint that perhaps no one else does. To stand for a principle that no one else will stand for. To defend an individual or group of people who are the victims of popular, vicious attack. In doing so you may lose your friends, lose your status, even your job. In a society that values popularity as much as America does, having the courage of your convictions could entail enormous loss and much pain. Unlike one who risks their life to save a person, there is no heroism attached to one who displays moral courage to defend a principle or to oppose injustice. The Prophets of the Tanach were often maligned for their moral courage, and things have not changed much today.
How do you build moral courage? You build courage by detaching from the things you are afraid to lose. You can only act courageously in a life-threatening situation if you are at that time, not afraid to die. Attachment to life undermines courage and causes us to retreat in the face of danger. Of course, the drive for survival is any organism’s most basic instinct. But as in the case of all instincts, humankind, unlike animals, can choose to overrule its instincts in given situations and act from a position of values rather than of instinct. No matter how hungry we are, we can choose to hold ourselves back from eating food that is not ours or that is not kosher. In that same way we can choose to act courageously, temporarily severing our attachment to life as we risk life to do that which we believe is right.
Letting Go in Order to Hold on
Similarly, for moral courage we need to detach ourselves from status, from the need for social structure and popularity, from the desire for public approval and promotion within the system. Counter-intuitively, those willing to lose their jobs rather than compromise the essence of who they are, are more likely to rise to the top. Those willing to risk their popularity to stand for that in which they believe, are likely to be the more popular and respected individuals in the longer term.
I asked the commanders to whom I was consulting how they would feel having someone on a high risk SWAT Team initiative who is scared to die. Clearly the person scared to die puts not only themselves at risk, but the entire team. It is those who, without being reckless have overcome their attachment to survival, are most likely to survive. When you cling to security you risk failure. When you let go you invite success! It is a little like skiing: very difficult to enjoy if you are afraid to fall and feel insecure. It is only when you have settled with the fact that a fall is not the end of the world that you begin to ski!
Kedusha: Engaged Detachment
Detachment does not mean disengagement. Hashem Himself is intimately engaged in every molecule of our universe, but He is not in the least attached. That paradoxical synthesis of detachment and engagement is the core of Divine Kedusha (Sanctity) – or as Rashi defines it at the beginning of Parshat Kedoshim – “Perishut” which means exactly that: detachment. And as the Torah tells us we are to emulate Hashem’s model of detachment. His model is engaged detachment; not disengaged detachment.
We can enjoy a gourmet meal without being attached to food, successfully engage in business without being attached to money, and express joyful intimacy with our spouses without being attached to sex. Perishut does not mean disengagement. It only means detachment.[1] And, detachment is the condition for courage. When we are unattached to our status, our money, our popularity and our social structures, we can act with the courage of our convictions. We gain when we do not fear to lose.
Bamidbar – In the Desert
Receiving the Torah required higher degrees of detachment than anything else. Perishut was taken to a new level when for the three days prior to Kabbalat HaTorah (the receiving of the Torah), the people were asked to detach from their wives too. They were given the Mitzvah of Perrisha.
Now the Parsha’s (and the fourth book of the Torah’s) name takes on a new meaning: “Bamidbar” – in the desert. In the desert there is no status. There is no national security. Money has no value for there is nothing it can buy. Your value as an individual or as a nation when you live in a desert, can come only from within yourself and the reality of your relationship to Hashem. There is no other source of security. And that was the People of Israel’s preparation for receiving the Torah and for securing their own Land. Only people detached (although not necessarily disengaged) from the structures of society can stand for what they believe in with the courage of their convictions. Only people detached (but not disengaged) from the norms of society and its approvals, will fearlessly explore wisdom and courageously live its values even in times and places governed by unbounded senses of entitlement and demands for immediate gratification. For, “anyone unwilling to make himself into an ownerless desert, cannot master wisdom and Torah“. [2]
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