Pride Reflection: The Power Of A Generation
Parashat Shlach, Incubating In The Desert, And Moving Forward
Many people know that the Israelites “wandered in the desert for 40 years” before entering The Promised Land. But many people don’t know why. Were they lost? Procrastinating or distracted by all the fun things to do in the desert (watch tumbleweeds, etc.)? Where they tied up with wars and other business? Was the desert that big, that is took 40 years to cross from Egypt to Israel? Were they walking really slowly – I mean, they had a ton of people of all ages and heavy things to move? Was this the first instance of Jewish Standard time, ie, late? No, none of these reasons explain why the Israelites were in the desert for 40 years prior to entering the land. This week, in Parashat Shlach we learn why. They were waiting to grow up, and for their parents to die.
The story goes as follows: God tells Moses to send out an envoy of 12 spies (one from each tribe) to scout The Promised Land. Specifically, Moses asks them to:
“Go up there into the Negev and on into the hill country and see what kind of country it is. Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is the country in which they dwell good or bad? Are the towns they live in open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not? And take pains to bring back some of the fruit of the land.” (Numbers 13:17-20)
So, they go. They are there for 40 days, seeing the sites, picking the fruit, and observing the people. They come back and all but Caleb and Joshua are basically like, “We can’t go! The people there are strong and huge and we are scared and puny.” Those aren’t the exact words but it’s the general vibe.
God is furious. To refuse to enter The Promised Land for fear of some other worldly force (the current inhabitants) is to distrust God. The fear of the spies is a sign of their unfaithfulness and therefore unworthiness of this great inheritance. AND, the whole community buys into their fear and starts crying and complaining:
“All the Israelites railed against Moses and Aaron. ‘If only we had died in the land of Egypt,’ the whole community shouted at them, ‘or if only we might die in this wilderness!’” (Numbers 14:2-3)
Oh, I wish they hadn’t have said that. Next thing you know, God is like, “Oh, you want to die in this desert? Fine by me.” Here are the actual words:
“In this very wilderness shall your carcasses drop. Of all of you [men] who were recorded in your various lists from the age of twenty years up, you who have muttered against Me, not one shall enter the land in which I swore to settle you—save Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. Your children who, you said, would be carried off—these will I allow to enter; they shall know the land that you have rejected.
But your carcasses shall drop in this wilderness, while your children roam the wilderness for forty years, suffering for your faithlessness, until the last of your carcasses is down in the wilderness. You shall bear your punishment for forty years, corresponding to the number of days—forty days—that you scouted the land: a year for each day. Thus you shall know what it means to thwart Me.” (Numbers 14:29-34)
God punishes the adult Israelites by sentencing them to die in the desert. Why doesn’t God just strike them down in that moment? Because if all the adult Israelites are killed, there would be no more people. God’s entire project, of cultivating a holy nation since the time of Abraham and Sarah, would be for naught. Instead, God needs the next generation to arise – a fresh set of minds and hearts, this time, hopefully, with more courage and faith. And so, project desert incubation begins.
The 40 year sentence has two sides to it. First, the new generation has to arise. Literally, they have to be conceived, born, raised, and readied for the tasks ahead. Second, the older generation has to die. They cannot be there lest they hold their children back or carry their fear and into this new chapter of Israelite history. In essence, this 40 year period is a like a big, national timeout, or an extremely long wait in the hottest waiting room in the world. Or, as referenced above, a sort of gestational period of the next generation.
Importantly, this 40 year sentence rests on the assumption that this new generation will be different enough – that they won’t be carbon copies of their parents but will be able to see the world and their capacity in new ways. What an incredible thing about us humans, that we can assume great change can and will take place.
This story leads me to consider the immense power of a new generation, and because it is June and therefore Pride Month, I figured I’d take this moment to reflect on just how much can changed in my own lifetime so far. I sit here, 32 years old, 26 weeks pregnant, and married almost 6 years to the wife of my dreams. At my age, the generation before me didn’t have the luxury of the legal rights I now (try not to) take for granted – legal rights I didn’t personally fight for or even know I would one day benefit from. No one bats an eye when we talk about our pregnancy journey, my wife and I are legally married, and though we will have do some adoption paperwork (and I don’t underestimate the headache bureaucracy can induce), we don’t have to sue each other for paternity (as my dear friend had to with his partner in the 90s, when I was a child) or give our kids up to the state for adoption to utilize a loophole in making sure both parents can be considered legal parents in the eyes of the law (as another dear friend had to do, again, in the 90s). Of course, a few people have still asked “Who is the father” or made ignorant comments. But overall, my wife and I are embraced by our friends, family, colleagues, government, and greater communities without question. Yes, we live in the Bay Area and I am very well aware that not all states are California.
And then I think about the generation ahead of me. Last week I was talking to a parent of a high schooler who identifies as queer. The parent said that her child didn’t really “come out” so much as “fell out.” The parents asked their child one day if she might like boys or girls, and she pretty casually said, girls. That was that. No tears. No, “Mom, Dad, I need to tell you something.” When I was her age, I was up in the middle of the night – my heart rate elevated and cortisol pumping – trying to convince myself I didn’t like girls. And for sure if someone had asked me outright if I did like girls, it would not have been a casual question. When I was her age, I was watching Oprah interview trans folks as this exceedingly rare human phenomenon – “Imagine being a woman, trapped in a man’s body,” Oprah would say. There were no trans celebrities in the mainstream (at least, that I knew of).
It is my assessment that a lot has changed in the last 40 years in regards to all things LGBTQ+ (including that acronym itself). I’m not saying enough has changed or that all the changes have been 100% excellent. What I am saying is if we look at the lives of queer folks in 1983 (the early days of the AIDS epidemic) and we look at our world today, you can understand the sheer power of “the next generation.” You can understand more fully what might have happened in the desert for the Israelites, while they were waiting. Because of course they weren’t just waiting – they were evolving.
And yet, as Maggid Jhos Singer writes in his reflection on the evolutions within recent queer history and Pride Month, some terrible things remain:
“As my generation slowly ages out, my thoughts have been turning to what Pride might look like in the years to come. By me, one of SVARA’s greatest teachings is that we are in the midst of creating an unrecognizable future. So, on the one hand, LGBTQueer Jews are filling a fair percentage of seats at rabbinical schools (a good many who launched their studies at SVARA!!), and Queer rabbis are taking their places on pulpits, boards, and faculty positions across the country. While I’ve watched this transformation unfold, the current result is yielding something amazing and unrecognizable to the Jewish world of even 50 years ago. And on the other hand, for those of us who lived through the 70’s these last few years have been unfortunately far too recognizable—the malice and misinformation is back, the legal moves are being played, and queer folks, kids especially, are suffering.” (Like Yehoshua, We Were Salty And Sassy, by Jhos Singer, SVARA Fellow, June 9, 2023)
In other words, a new generation is not a panacea for all of our problems. There is no such thing as a totally blank slate for humanity and many, many troubles remain or return. So too for the Israelites. The new generation born in the desert was not perfect. But they were one step closer. They represented the process of continual growth which, in my estimation, would be needed in any Promised Land.
Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist, Eduardo Galeano, is known to have said something to this effect:
“Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I'll never reach it. So what's the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.”
Happy Pride everyone! No matter what lies ahead, let’s keep our eyes on the big queer utopian prize and keep moving forward. Generation by generation.
This is beautiful Meg. Thank you for your wisdom! (And, wishing you and your family good health in the exciting weeks and months ahead!)