Parashat Sh’lach
Sermon Parashat Sh’lach June 12, 2026 28 Sivan 5786
Aimee Hutton, Cantorial Soloist Temple Sinai South Burlington, VT
Two Jews, Three Opinions
Can I have a show of hands, how many people have used the phrase: “Two Jews, Three Opinions?” How about the story of the Jew shipwrecked alone on an island and, when rescued years later, he had built two synagogues–one to pray in and the other he would never set foot in?
We are a culture with strong opinions and we aren’t afraid to voice them. I was reminded of this recently when scrolling through Instagram, like one does, and watching a video. Amidst all the cute dog and kid videos and the political ones that the various algorithms show me, there was a video by Dileep Karpur. He is an Indian man who posts videos about Indian culture and economic development. He was talking about how the Jewish population is very small–just 0.2% of the world’s population but 22% of all Nobel prize winners have been Jewish. In that video he points out that while Indians hold a cultural value of hard work and many are naturally intelligent just like Jews, they have a cultural value of obedience. Indian children, Mr. Karpur goes on to say, are taught not to question the teacher or their parents while Jewish children very much are taught to argue and question while learning about the Talmud. His point was that the Jewish cultural value of intellectual debate has allowed Jews to flourish academically by thinking outside the box and questioning even the most respected experts and longstanding beliefs.
Also, in that video, he talked about how South Korea realized this as well a while ago and has, for the better part of a decade, been using the Talmud as a teaching tool. It is not that they’re teaching Judaism as a religion but using it to explain to children how respectful debate can be constructive and how people can refine their opinions and beliefs through debate. We also know that the Talmud preserves arguments that don’t end up prevailing and that there is value in that dissent.
When we met a few weeks ago as the teaching staff of the Hebrew School here, someone brought up something related to this and I got really excited and had to share what I had just learned from this random Instagram video. Rabbi David had already heard about the Korean obsession with the Talmud and if you Google Korea and Talmud, you can find all sorts of articles about it. But we started talking about ways that we can support the children in the Hebrew School with those debates.
Encouraging children to debate experts and authority, though of course, when you are a teacher, gets tricky. I don’t exactly want my students to debate me on whether or not someone should wash their hands if they have just sneezed into those hands but I’m happy to have them debate whether or not Joseph should have forgiven his brothers or to explore the Jewish value of tzedakah by discussing how to distribute treats fairly amongst a group who may value those various treats differently. The line that teachers and parents and, well, society in general has to walk delineates the difference between non-negotiable rules and stuff that people can have an opinion about. But who gets to say what a non-negotiable rule is for Jews? We don’t have a pope in Judaism and even popes change what their predecessors have decreed on occasion. Values and opinions can change over time, especially millenia, and being able to parse out arguments and debates and figure out what makes sense to you is incredibly valuable.
All of this — the arguing, the two synagogues, the three opinions — it isn't just a charming cultural quirk. This week's parsha reminds us that it may actually be a matter of survival. Because when the Israelites stopped asking questions and started listening to the loudest, most fearful voices, the consequences were severe.
This week’s Parsha focuses on the twelve spies that Moses sends into the promised land to scout. Ten of the men come back with fantastical stories about the prowess of these giant-like people and how impossible it would be to conquer the land. The fear that these men then bestow upon the rest of the Israelites is real and the Torah says that some even suggested returning to Egypt and slavery. That slavery would be better than having to fight giants. Sometimes, it’s the devil you know….
Caleb and Joshua, on the other hand, assured the Israelites that the land was wonderful and that God would support them in the endeavor and that they would be victorious. However, the majority of the people believed the ten men who had filled them with fear and panic to the extent that they wanted to pelt Caleb and Joshua with stones.
In the end, God with the help of Moses and Aaron, calms the Israelites down but they must wait another forty years in the desert as punishment for the sin of not believing in God’s almighty power. While waiting, God gives them laws to follow in what will become Israel and says “There shall be one law for you and for the resident stranger; it shall be a law for all time throughout the ages. You and the stranger shall be alike before the LORD.”
Rabbi Asher Lopatin in an article on My Jewish Learning dot com says that treating the foreigner and the convert the same as a native-born Jew or Israelite would be a protection against the homogenous thinking that we saw in the ten spies and that we should see this aspect of the parsha as a warning against the danger of groupthink. We certainly don’t see a lot of examples of a large group of Jews all agreeing on something these days! I guess we really took that warning to heart!
I think it helps that modern Jews have not all had the same type of life experiences as each other. All of the Israelites in this parsha were born into slavery and had been limited in their experiences. We have freedom to live the lives we want (for the most part) and modern technology that allows us to hear about, experience through travel, and learn from other cultures and this has given us the ability to appreciate the diversity of thought around us. The Israelites, unfortunately, didn't have that luxury — and the parsha shows us exactly what can happen when an entire people share the same fears, the same trauma, and no outside voices to challenge them.
After all this drama in the parsha — the spies, the panic, the stones, the forty years — God's response includes a quiet instruction to welcome the stranger and treat them as your own. Maybe that's the real lesson. The antidote to groupthink isn't just debate among ourselves. It's actively making room for the voice that doesn't sound like ours. We teach our children to debate because history shows us what happens when we don't. We need to raise Calebs and Joshuas — people who can look at the same facts and choose courage over panic and can think for themselves.
When I fill in for Rabbi David, I like to challenge myself to match a song to the theme of the d’var. Sometimes it’s obvious, and sometimes, it isn’t. As we close tonight, we will be singing “Flowers are Red” by Harry Chapin. If you don’t know this song, it’s a song about a child whose first teacher doesn’t encourage him to think for himself and doesn’t embrace debate. Even when the child does later have a teacher happy to see things in a non-conformist way, his natural creativity has already been stifled. Wendy and I were talking about whether I really wanted to end the service on such a sad note and I did question it. But I have always heard a version where Harry Chapin sings the more hopeful chorus as the ending. And that’s where I’d like to leave you tonight–that we can and should encourage creativity and embrace our tradition of intellectual debate even when it's hard to sit with opinions that challenge or unsettle us.
Shabbat shalom.
