Parashat Sh’lach 5784
My first experience of homophobia was very memorable. I was 24, and my then girlfriend and I were on a beach together near Cape Cod. We were lying on a blanket, cuddling and being affectionate the way couples do, when a man came storming up to our blanket. Towering over us, he instructed us to stop what we were doing and said strongly, motioning to the others around, “this is a family beach.” In the scheme of things, it’s pretty miraculous that nothing worse happened in that moment. Also pretty miraculous that it had taken me years to encounter homophobia in a direct way. I don’t take for granted for a moment the ways that previous generations, many of whom are in this room, fought for both of those miracles.
I share this story not because I still feel victimized or want you to feel sorry for me, but because it was the first moment that I had felt in my bones that there was something offensive, something not family-friendly, something that needs to stay hidden, about being queer. It changed the way I viewed the world, perhaps in a helpful sobering way, but also in a heartbreaking way. The world went from a place I could be openly myself to a place where I needed to hide a piece of who I was.
This week in our Parsha, Moshe sends a leader from each tribe to scout the land of Canaan, the land that G!d is about to give to the Israelites. Forty days later, the spies come back and report that the land does indeed flow with milk and honey. However, they feared greatly that the people were too strong, saying:
וַנְּהִ֤י בְעֵינֵ֙ינוּ֙ כַּֽחֲגָבִ֔ים וְכֵ֥ן הָיִ֖ינוּ בְּעֵינֵיהֶֽם
We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.
The Israelites were filled with anxiety, even wishing to go back to Egypt immediately.
When the man approached my girlfriend and I on the beach, we both cowered, nodding sheepishly, unsure what was the best way to respond at that moment, what would keep us safe. Similar to the spies, we felt like grasshoppers in his eyes and therefore our own.
After the fact, she, being in school at the time to be a drama therapist, led us in one of the most powerful exercises of my life. Finding a secluded area, we acted the scene out again. We took turns being the man approaching, said to each other, “stop, this is a family beach.” We took turns responding in the way that we wished we had. We yelled, we cried, we even got to a place of compassion for this man, who was clearly feeling threatened and uncomfortable within himself, and came through the experience feeling closer to each other and safe again in the world.
It seems like no mistake that later in this parsha, G!d commands the Israelite people to tie tzitzit, fringes, to the corners of their garments, saying:
וְהָיָ֣ה לָכֶם֮ לְצִיצִת֒ וּרְאִיתֶ֣ם אֹת֗וֹ וּזְכַרְתֶּם֙
That shall be your tzitzit, look at him/it and remember
Something I love about the commandment to wear Tzitzit, which we recite twice a day in the Shema, is that the object of this sentence is wonderfully unclear. When it says “that shall be your tzitzit, look at oto” it could mean it or him. A teacher of mine in rabbinical school, on the opening Shabbaton of my first year, shared this ambiguity, and added that perhaps when we look at the tzitzit we see something about “oto” aka God, wrapped and tangled in the world and in our lives, reminding us that we are connected. Perhaps the tzitzit acted as a sort of friendship bracelet for the Israelities, a reminder of their connection to the Divine in times of uncertainty and fear.
When we know we are safe in the world, when we know we are connected, we are able to be “right sized” in our own minds. Not all-powerful but not completely powerless. On this Pride Shabbat, may we be blessed to feel proud of ourselves in all of our identities, knowing that we can hold onto our literal tzitzit, or metaphorical tzitzit in the form of the Divine, our community, and ourselves, in times when, like the spies, our self-perception is not right sized.
