Anyone unwilling to make himself into an ownerless
desert, cannot master wisdom and Torah
- Bamidbar Rabbah 1:
Heroic Courage
This week, while training leaders in one of the largest police agencies in the United States, I found myself in the presence of an impressive group of courageous medal-bearing men and women who had placed their lives at risk to protect the communities they serve many times in their careers. Courage was not a challenge to them; rather it was a precondition of their work. Yet time and again during our discussions, these men and women identified and verbalized a personal 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 implies overcoming the fear of potential pain or loss. While working with these Commanding Officers, I realized that often we 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. This translates into strong, courageous, macho men sometimes hesitating to call a girl for a date for fear of rejection!
Moral Courage
It seems harder to have the courage of one's convictions than it is to risk one's life in a heroic act. The courage of one's convictions requires that one is willing to adopt a viewpoint that perhaps no one else holds, 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, one may lose one's friends, lose one's status, or even lose one's job. In a society that values popularity as much as America, having the courage of one's convictions could entail enormous loss and much pain. Unlike one who risks his 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, a situation that has not changed much today.
How does one build moral courage? One builds courage by detaching from the things you are afraid to lose. One can only act courageously in a life-threatening situation if one is not afraid to die at that time. 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 human instincts, unlike that of animals, we can choose to overrule our instinct 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 itself to do that which we believe is right.
Letting Go in Order to Hold on
Similarly, to achieve 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.
In the course of my consulting with these commanders, I asked them how they would feel having someone on a high risk SWAT Team initiative who is scared to die. Clearly this person puts not only themselves at risk, but also the entire team. Those who have overcome their attachment to survival without being reckless, are most likely to survive. When one clings to security, one risks failure. When one lets go, one invites success! It is a little like skiing: very difficult to enjoy if one is afraid to fall and feel insecure. It is only when one has settled with the fact that a fall is not the end of the world, that one begins 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. 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 imply disengagement, but only detachment[1]. And detachment is the pre-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 Perisha detachment from a physical connection to their wives. They could not enter the rarified atmosphere of Kabbalat Torah while experiencing attachment to the sexual pleasures of intimacy.
Now the Parsha's name, and that of the fourth book of the Torah, takes on a new significance: "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. When one lives in a desert, one's value as an individual or as a nation can come only from within oneself and the reality of one's 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 those who are 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 an unbound sense of entitlement and a continuing demand for immediate gratification: "Anyone unwilling to make himself into an ownerless desert, cannot master wisdom and Torah"[2].
Notes:
[1] See Chovat HaLevavot, Sha'ar Perishut Chapter2. And Mesilat Yesharim Chapter26
[2] Bamidbar Rabbah 1:7
