Indirect Responsibility
This week’s parshah, Bemidbar, focuses much of its
attention on the census of the Israelites and their organization into tribal
camps. While we know that the Israelites spend forty years in the wilderness
before they enter the Land of Israel, that comes later as a punishment for the
spies who bring back a falsely discouraging report; at this point in the story,
God and the Israelites fully expect that they will enter the Promised Land very
soon and face the native inhabitants of Canaan. Commenting on the overall scene,
Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno (Italy, 1480-1550) goes in a surprising direction:
“Take a census” (Num. 1:2), to arrange
them so they will enter the Land immediately, “Each man by his standard” (2:2)
without any battle; instead, the Nations will flee before the Israelites as in
fact some of them did… but on account of the Spies’ sin the Seven Nations [of
Canaan] continued to do evil for forty years, and it became necessary to
exterminate them.
The midrash on which Sforno bases his
comment (Lev. Rabbah 17.6) makes it clear that Joshua offered all the
inhabitants of the Land a choice to leave peacefully, make peace with the
Israelites, or fight – and a few nations took the peaceful options. We could
easily look at this as telling us that the nations chose extermination when they went to war with Israel, and wash our
hands of any responsibility for their fate. But Sforno reminds us that life is
not so simple: “On account of the Spies’
sin the Seven Nations [of Canaan] continued to do evil for forty years, and
it became necessary to exterminate them.” True, their evil led them to make an
unfortunate choice, and their destruction ensued; but were it not for the spies’ sin and the forty-year delay, we imagine they would have made different
choices.
We know from
our own experience that the longer we persist in negative behavior, the harder
it becomes to make good decisions in the future. Ideally, the Canaanite
nations, faced with a choice of orderly departure, peaceful coexistence, or
total war, would choose one of the first two options. Had the Israelites
entered the land immediately, Sforno tells us, they could have assumed control
of the land “without any battle” because the natives would have taken one of
the peaceful choices. Only their habituation into evil behavior habits over the
course of four decades led them to select war – and extinction – rather than
peace. And the forty-year delay was caused not by any action on the Canaanites’
part, but by the Israelites’ sin in accepting the spies’ deceitful report.
Ultimately, while the Seven Nations chose their own fate, for Sforno the
Israelites also bear at least indirect responsibility for the ensuing
bloodshed.
Volumes have
been written about the Israelites’ forty years in the desert as punishment for
the spies’ sin, and the consequences we bear for our actions. It is much harder
for us to consider the consequences others
must bear as a result of our mistakes. We are, quite naturally, more concerned
with our own story; the Torah may include various characters from other
Nations, but its central concern is with the story of the Israelites. The same
is true for each of us: unless we stop to look carefully at the implications,
we could easily move through life without much thought for our impact on other
people. Nevertheless, Sforno reminds us, at the end of the day we are accountable – however indirectly
– for the impact of our decisions.
Shabbat
Shalom,
Rabbi Abe
Friedman
