Shelach Lecha - Pride and Spies

Fear Perception and Imagination: Grasshoppers in Whose Eyes? (Parashat Shelach Lecha) By Jay Stanton 2008

These words offer a snapshot into human nature. When hearing that a task is difficult, how often do we respond to a challenge by convincing ourselves we are inadequate to the task ahead? This portion plays on universal tendencies to underestimate ourselves and let our worries overtake our reason. It is all too easy to see the courage of Caleb, and yet to identify with the concerns of the ten scouts.

We, as people, as Jews, and as members of the LGBTIGQQ community, are often afraid. We have good reason to be; in life, there are many threats. As queers and especially as Jewish queers, we know that some people wish to do us harm. This is the fear expressed in the scouts’ comment about being grasshoppers. How can we, such a small group of people, ever face a group of people bigger in size and numbers than we are? How can we have Caleb’s courage to go forward, despite the odds? The task of overtaking the land of Canaan, a sure thing that God promised the Israelites, suddenly becomes impossible when the scouts take a look at the people who inhabit the land. They, like many of us, fear failure. But more than fearing failure on their own part, they fear failure because of a lack of signs from God.

Shelach-Lecha, the Grasshoppers and the Giants by Rabbi Lisa A. Edwards

from the Women's Torah Commentary ed Rabbi Elyse Goldstein

Jay Stanton

The scouts go on to say that they “must have looked” like grasshoppers to the Anakites. This step in their logic seems based solely on projection–the kind of imagination that produces monsters under the bed. As humans, we are not blessed with the ability to read minds. We can anticipate, after much practice, the actions of people we know, but we cannot know exactly what is going through their heads. All the more so, we cannot know what goes through the heads of people with whom we have never interacted.

Presumptuous and counterproductive, assuming the thoughts of another is rarely fruitful. Instead, it tends to reduce the imaginer to a childlike state. Lawrence Kushner, in the book Five Cities of Refuge, recounts a teaching of the Kotzker Rebbe:

Menahem Mendl Morgenstern of Kotzk says that it’s all right to say you feel like a grasshopper in your own eyes–that means you’re alert–but when you start guessing what you look like to someone else, you’ve given them permission to define you, so you’re still a child. For this reason, Caleb, who refuses to let anyone else define him, is a man and, along with Joshua, was one of only two men of the wilderness generation to live to enter the Promised Land.

From the Five Books of Miriam by Ellen Frankel

Here’s How I Got Over My Queer Imposter Syndrome by Anna Levinson 2019

When I first realized I might like women as well as men, I was terrified — though not of the social stigma. At least in my small bubble of gay friends and classmates at my liberal college, I was privileged to feel safe. Instead, I found myself worrying about taking up undeserved space in the queer community — a community I deeply cared for, but didn’t yet feel like I belonged to. I knew I wasn’t straight, but didn’t know what I should, or could, call myself. What would my LGBTQ friends think if I assumed a label seemingly out of the blue? Would people think I was lying? I thought more about how close queer friends would receive my late-blooming news than any of my heterosexual friends or family. But as someone who had just started to explore my sexuality (and is still doing so), I couldn’t help but feel like an imposter...

Because I felt I was attracted to men more so than women, or at least in a different way, I told myself it wasn't valid to talk about my sexuality in the context of belonging to queer culture. Comments like those Grande and others received told me I wasn’t valid enough. This kind of identity policing brought on a sense of guilt and even a disbelief in my own feelings, especially when I first started the process of exploring my sexuality.

LGBTQ activist and educator Robyn Ochs tells Bustle that people have an “ongoing desire to write simple narratives” — that those with identities that are still evolving, or who don’t identify with labels at all, are met with anxiety because they don’t clearly fit into a neat category. Because they are not understood, they’re often pigeonholed into certain groups. Even for those who come out as bisexual, pansexual, or demisexual explicitly, Ochs says, their sexualities can be seen as impermanent. And because there’s already a lack of queer representation, celebrities who don’t fit into the mold of what queer people want are particularly critiqued. As Ochs says, “We put [celebrities] on a pedestal when they do that work, and tear them down when they don’t. We expect too much of each individual person.”...

But I wondered: At what point in my journey could I claim my queerness? When do you really feel like you fit in? Being made to believe that you’re an imposter can make these questions feel like weights, but the answer is simple: whenever you want.

“You’re the best judge of your own heart and body, how you respond and who you respond to,” Ochs says. “If people turned the energy they use for gatekeeping others’ identities towards holding space for all of us, we’d be so much better off.”

I’ve come to feel less alienated, less of an imposter, even though I still don’t really label myself. So, if you’re in a similar place, talk to others. Surround yourself with those who will affirm you. As long as you allow others to have their voice, you can start to develop your voice, too. The actual imposters will never feel imposter syndrome. So if you’re worried you don’t belong, just know that you do.

—-from A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Jay Stanton

The ten scouts are nervous, letting others define them; they have not yet trusted their own definitions for themselves. Caleb, in contrast, is strong and independent, letting no one else define him. Repeatedly asserting his stance on the subject at hand, he refuses to pass as someone he’s not.

What other people think about me is none of my business