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An Unusual Profile in Courage: The Ma'apilim

On November 25th, 1936, Chaim Weizmann offered his testimony to the Peel Commission. Weizman explained that for the millions of Jews left in Europe, "the world is divided into places where they cannot live and places where they cannot enter."

It was in this context that Aliyah Bet was born. Initially, it was a matter of debate in Zionist movement. Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote an essay entitled "On Adventurism" in 1932 chastising the Jewish Agency for following the British imposed rules. But in 1937, the Peel Commission handed down a recommendation to limit immigration to 12,000 Jews per year. In response to this draconian recommendation, the underground Mossad L'Aliyah Bet was established, to support “illegal immigration”. Actually, that is what the British called it; for Jews, returning to the Holy Land was not immigration, but rather a return home, and certainly not illegal, no matter what the Mandatory authorities called it. An estimated 100,000 Jews managed to enter Mandatory Palestine during the War and immediately afterwards.

Those who made the trip took on immense risks. On February 24, 1942 the Struma, a ship sailing from Romania with 800 Jewish refugees, was torpedoed in the Black Sea by a Soviet submarine. There was only one survivor.

Even those refugees that managed to get to mandatory Palestine were often jailed. Some were imprisoned in Atlit or Cyprus, while in 1940, nearly 1600 refugees were sent to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean; they spent nearly 5 years there.

Aliyah Bet is a heroic chapter in Jewish history. But what is fascinating is the Hebrew word given for the illegal immigrants: "ma'apilim".

This word comes from our Torah reading. After the sin of the spies and the decree that the Jews would spend 40 years in the desert, there is a group that decides on their own to enter the Land of Israel. The word used by the Torah to describe what they did is Vaya'apilu, which is translated by various commentaries such as Saadia Gaon, Seforno and Shadal as stubbornness, arrogance, and impulsiveness.

So how did this pejorative term, Vaya'apilu, end up being used for the courageous refugees of the pre-State era?

Rav Elchanan Samet grapples with this question in his second series of Iyunim b'Parshiyot HaTorah. But part of the answer would seem to be obvious. While the ma'apilim are defying God's command, they had also overcome a character failing the generation of the desert had. The ma’apilim are the first group in this generation to show courage, and that represents a significant transformation.

And that courage will make a permanent difference as well. Samet quotes an inspirational passage in Rav Tzadok's Tzidkat HaZaddik (46). Rav Tzadok talks about the chutzpah of the ma’apilim. He explains that Chutzpah will eventually be important, as the Talmud says it will be necessary in the times of the Messiah. And when the Torah says about the attempt by the Ma’apilim to enter the land, "והיא לא תצלח", “this effort will not succeed”, it hints that on another occasion in the future, a stubborn attempt to enter the Land of Israel will be successful.

Rav Tzadok, who died in 1900, was anticipating heroism that would happen decades after his death. He predicted there would be a time when the Jewish people would reverse the meekness of the spies with acts of bravery. And on overcrowded ships that were barely seaworthy, the descendents of the wandering slaves in the desert proved themselves worthy of their own home in their own homeland. Finally, the ma’apilim came home.

Perhaps the greatest lesson of the Parsha is that one must faith in God, but also have faith in our own God-given abilities. One might think it is more difficult to have faith in God; but the lesson of the spies is that both types of faith go hand in hand, and without courage, faith will crumble.

Faith combined with courage gives us the ability to face all of our challenges. May we be fortunate enough to find both during these trying times.

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The Speak Up Nation

Thorstein Veblen was wrong.

The famed Sociologist, who coined the term “conspicuous consumption”, wrote an analysis of Jews and Zionism in 1919. The article, entitled “The Intellectual Pre-Eminence of Jews in Modern Europe”, argued that the creative achievements of the Jews were due largely to their marginal status. It was renegade Jews with one foot in both the Jewish and non-Jewish world who were creative. They were "hyphenated" with two identities, neither of which they truly belonged to. And it was this marginalization, of being rejected by the larger society and rejecting their own roots, that gave them the "skeptical animus" that fueled their intellectual achievements.

Veblan thought that exile and persecution is the foundation of Jewish creativity, and marginalization was the foundation of Jewish intellectual achievement. And because of this, Veblan predicted that the establishment of a Jewish State would lead to a decline in Jewish creativity. A Jewish State would be filled with complacent, unoriginal Jews; no more Jewish renegades.

History has proven Veblen to be very wrong. But his thesis is reasonable. Like the Jews, other minority ethnic diasporas have a history of overachieving. Certainly the challenges of persecution and displacement can feed innovation; and as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks notes, being cultural mediators brought out the creative best in Jews.

Veblen's mistake was in seeing exile as the single cause of Jewish creativity. But there are multiple other foundations of creativity, including one from our Parsha, which includes the verse:

וּמִ֨י יִתֵּ֜ן כָּל־עַ֤ם יְהוָה֙ נְבִיאִ֔ים

“May it be that all of God’s people were prophets!”

This is a statement Moshe makes in response to the words of Eldad and Meidad, who are prophesizing on their own, away from the tent at the center. According to Rashi, Eldad and Meidad were saying that “Moses will die and Joshua will bring Israel into the Land”. These renegade prophets were offering a message of chutzpah which challenged Moshe directly.

Yet Moshe refuses to interfere with Eldad and Meidad in any way. On the contrary, he makes it clear that everyone possible should be given the opportunity to experience revelation.

This is a revolutionary thought. Moshe is saying that outsiders can have a direct connection to God, and the rejected can still find inspiration. Leadership and insight doesn't belong to a select elite.

In a larger sense, this verse informs a culture that recognizes that the best ideas often come from outsiders. We want each individual to speak up and be heard; that is why we train our children to do so, starting with the Mah Nishtanah at the Pesach Seder. Anyone can come forward with their insight and inspiration.

Israel is a country where everyone speaks up, where everyone is a prophet; that can even be a headache at times. But it is the key to Israel’s creativity.

The magic of the start up nation is that everyone has an idea how to make things better; in the street you will get quick advice on how to carry your groceries and how to raise your children. But Israelis also have got better ideas for something other than unruly children, including cherry tomatoes, pillcams, mobileye, and Waze. Israeli innovations save lives every day, from ambucycles to emergency bandages and innovative therapeutics.

These innovations come from inventors who speak up even when others aren’t listening. One of Israel’s first major tech breakthroughs was drip irrigation. It was a system designed by Simcha Blass, who in the 1930’s saw an unusual tree, one that stood out in a field due to its unusual growth. He dug underneath the tree and found it was near a broken water pipe. Nearly 30 years later, with the advent of plastics, Simcha designed a drip irrigation system that yields more crops on only half the water. When he first showed this system to his colleagues, nobody listened. But he kept pushing forward, and eventually, in partnership with Kibbutz Hatzerim, brought this innovation to the world. Today drip irrigation is the best way to support farmers in semi-arid environments.

Israeli innovation is built on the ability to speak up. This has been part of our culture since this Parsha.

Next time you are in Israel (may it be soon!), and someone gives you unsolicited advice, don’t get annoyed; just remember that the start up nation began first as the speak up nation.