Shelach Lecha 5783 ~ June 16, 2023

We all have a need for superstitions in our lives. They are a manner of voicing our fears and our hopes.  We label them as superstitions so that we can then say, “Ah, it’s just a superstition,” instead of vocalizing it as a fear. When it is a fear, it is much more realistic and is coupled with imagined, unpleasant outcomes.

I remember being told to never walk under a ladder. Or, if you walk over someone lying on the floor, you have to walk back over them or else they won’t grow. And what if we broke a mirror? Stevie Wonder reminds us that it is an omen of bad luck for seven years. That is if we are “very superstitious.” But we have so many other fears in our lives, and many of them begin with insuring our own wellbeing or that of a loved one.

Many of us have our own ways of dealing with our fears.  We have created routines to overcome them. Some make sense. Just this past Wednesday I recited Tefilat Haderech, a prayer for travel, with members of our shul who are making their way on an Eastern European pilgrimage to visit where their families had lived, and to visit Auschwitz.  With another family I called to recite a prayer as they travel to Israel.

No, prayer is not a ritual related to superstition; it actually helps us to overcome our fears. For example, at night we recite the Shema. We are making a statement of our commitment to God, but also God’s commitment to us in return to ward off the evil eye and the fears we face at night.  In our evening prayers, we recite the Hashkivenu prayer asking God to watch over us and protect us through the night when our fears our most prominent.

This week’s haftorah provides us with that concept of protection. The story is about the second set of spies who enter the land during Joshua’s time, exploring Jericho’s weaknesses so that the Israelites can come in and capture it. It is in contrast to the narrative in the Torah reading about the lack of faith of the spies who Moses had originally sent into the land to see its goodness and how it could be conquered.

The reading from Joshua ends with an oath of protection for Rahab, who had provided a safe haven for the spies as they were sought out by the army of the king of Jericho. The promise of protection for Rahab was assured when they returned to the city with the Israelite army to conquer it and they instructed her to lower a crimson rope down by the window where she had lowered them on a rope to escape. That crimson rope would be her signal of her trust in them, and their God, that she would be protected. Without that crimson rope, the spies would have been freed from their oath, but when Joshua and the army of Israelites circled the walls of Jericho, they found that red crimson rope and the promise was kept.  The color crimson has thus been associated with protection. Most known in that regard, is the red bendl, which we superstitiously use to ward off the evil eye and to seek protection from our fears.

We can look at our fears and superstitions and simply be overwhelmed by them. We can also simply chuckle knowing that we have them. We can offer a prayer of some kind with a request that God watch over us and protect us, and we can use some kind of amulet to protect us and ward off the evil thoughts and spirits.

It seems to me that by accepting the fact that we have fears and superstitions, we need to find mechanisms or rituals that provide us with some form of comfort and hope that we will be protected.  In Rahab’s case it was the scarlet rope that she let dangle from her window.  By her own actions, the oath was kept and she remained safe. In that regard, it was her faith that God would be there to protect her; not in blind faith, but in true belief.

Shabbat Shalom.

Rabbi K