Ya-chol nuchal lah!

"Shelach-l'cha anashim v'yaturu et eretz . . . " ("Send for yourself people to scout out the land  . . ") :  so begins our Torah portion this week, the portion I'll be reading Shabbat morning during a local synagogue's alternative chapel service.  In the parshah, twelve scouts are sent out from among the Israelite leadership to assess the situation in the land God has promised.  Upon their return, the report - realistically - is a mixed bag.  

"Yes, it's quite fertile and lush.  And check out these giant grapes!  But - the bad news - the people are also oversized - and well-prepared for battle."

Ten of the twelve scouts say that despite promises of success from God, they should abort the entire mission.  This just can't possibly end well, they predict.  Joshua and Caleb, who have been out on the same mission as the other scouts, foresee success:  "Yachol nuchal lah!" ("We can surely do it!")

This story is immensely personal this year.  Beginning back last Fall, when I decided I would seriously scout out the DC area for rabbinic possibilities, I heard a vast array of perspectives on the wisdom of making this move.

"There's so many rabbis here.  It's a saturated market."

"There's so many unemployed rabbis everywhere - could you go into another field?"

"The Jewish community here is growing - there are many possibilities if you're willing to be entrepreneurial."

"Maybe you could stay with hospital chaplaincy."

"There's always pulpits with rabbis retiring or leaving - you just have to keep asking around."

"So many other rabbis have tried to make it here and haven't been able to."

"It's hard to break into this community but it can be done.  It might take you a year."

According to my calculations, 83% of Moses' spies negatively assessed their odds of making it in this unknown land.  I'd say that my conversations yielded a more positive ratio of encouraging sentiments.  Yet the negative - the pessimistic - the worst case scenario - is what tends to hit you at your core, right?  Especially when you're already - privately - full of anxiety and self-doubt.  During the lowest moments comes the inevitable thought:  "Maybe they're right."

My anxiety comes in waves and gets sparked unpredictably.  I'll suddenly be full of regret and insecurity after a well-intentioned conversation I had with someone - "Why did I say that?  Was I too enthusiastic?  Did I come across as too emotional?  Could they have taken that one statement the wrong way?"  I'm randomly overwhelmed with doubt.  Having been living uneasily in the unknown for several months, I find I have increasing difficulty maintaining solid faith in myself and my judgement.  My life on sand, I have lost some emotional traction.

The ten pessimistic spies describe the people dwelling in the land they are to enter as giants.  There is a teaching that the spies perceived them as giants out of their own anxiety - in their fear and lack of faith they perceived their obstacles as supernaturally larger than life.

I want to be Joshua and Caleb.  But I sometimes feel myself slipping into the insecurity of the faithless.

Ultimately, I came to the decision that I could and would make this move.  I had faith that my passion for Jewish tradition and my gift for creatively conveying that passion would bring me together with some community that would appreciate and welcome my offerings.

There will always be those around us who want to share negative reports - scary reports - negative assessments and predictions of failure and doom.  This week's portion teaches us that embracing life is about setting aside the doomsaying and knowing that success is possible:  it may not end up looking exactly as planned or coming as quickly as desired.  But each of us needs to pursue what we know in our hearts to be our true goal.  Ya-chol nuchal lah.  Go after it.  Everything will be okay.