Parshat Devarim 2024 - Rubber and Glue
By Dan Cohen
One of the hardest things I’ve learned is to “own” my feelings. There is a concept in mental health therapy called a “projection.” It occurs when you “project” your feelings about yourself onto another person.
In kindergarten, the playground retort when someone said something mean to me or my friends, “I am rubber, you are glue. Everything you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.”
Here’s another approach to understanding projections. Imagine you have a flashlight. When you shine it on a wall, it shows a shape or picture on the wall. The shape isn’t actually on the wall; it's from the flashlight. When someone "projects," it's like shining their flashlight onto someone else.
They might feel something inside, like being scared or mad, but instead of realizing it’s their feeling, they think someone else is feeling that way. So if they’re angry, they might say, “Why are you mad at me?” even if the other person isn’t mad. They see their feelings in the other person, just like the picture on the wall from the flashlight.
This idea came to mind as we opened the fifth and final book of the Torah this week. Devarim, often called Mishne Torah, differs from the first four books in that it records Moshe's extended and final speech to the people. Commentators wax eloquently about Moshe’s prophecy and how this book documents a level of wisdom and Gd-connectedness we have not seen since.
Like any speech or conversation, what matters aren’t just the words someone chooses but the potential meanings behind them and the profound and potentially unconscious reasons why.
In Chapter 1, Verse 27, we read that after the spies returned with their dangerous and defamatory report, Moshe said to the people, “You murmured in your tents and said, "Because the Lord hates us, He took us out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand[s] of the Amorites to exterminate us."
Rav Hirsh often leverages individual words in the Torah to gain deeper understanding, and this week is no different. In exploring how Moshe retells and reexplores the spies' story, he focuses on two specific words and draws important lessons for us.
In Chapter 1, Verse 27, we read the word ReGeN, which is listed above as murmuring but can also mean incitement. The word's background is obscure but denotes an activity that incites and fuels quarrels. It can also mean a projection, which he calls mutual incitement.
Hirsch says the word HaReGeN signifies an agitator. This person appears to be fighting for his cause and upset about a wrong done to himself or, under the appearance of being indignant at the wrong done to another as though it were himself. He then incites others to join the fight. When we look around at public and political discourse these days, it is easy to find leaders seeking to harness outrage by claiming victimhood for themselves or borrowing the victimhood of others.
Hirsch finds the same rarely-used word elsewhere in Proverbs Chapter 16, Verse 28, where we read a similar use of ReGeN: "A perverse man incites quarrel, and a grumbler alienates the Lord.” Rashi reads this to mean that the grumbler alienates Gd from himself and assumes Gd is angry with him, but it belies our belief that we can never be alienated from Gd.
The idea that Moshe is trying to teach us about projections goes even further just a few verses later in the Parsha.
In Chapter 1, Verse 29, we read, “And I said to you: Do not be dismayed and do not fear them!” Here, he refers to the residents of the land of Canaan whom the spies feared and whose fear gripped the nation.
The word dismayed emerges from the letters spelling the root EReTZ. Hirsch points out that the word, defined in another translation as “broken,” can mean either a person’s feeling of fear or the fear that a person inspires in another. It means to be frightened and also to frighten. Why would Moshe choose to use this loaded word?
Hirsch points out that the word's root also means to “Gird oneself with all one’s strength.” When facing someone looking to inspire fear, we can oppose the individual and the projection of fear or dismay she is attempting to inspire in us. It is up to us how we respond when others are trying to sow fear and discord, much as some in the nation did when the spies returned with their awful report.
To be clear, I still struggle with projections. Sometimes, I am angry, but I choose to “stash” that anger in someone else, like another driver on the road. On the flip side, sometimes, a friend accuses me of a behavior he is exhibiting.
Moshe thought it essential to teach us this lesson in the first chapter of his extended goodbye speech. The Rebbe gave vital insight into why that might be.
His Chumash says, “Even when the Jewish people lost faith in Gd, to the extent they felt Gd hated them, Rashi teaches us that “He loved you.” The Be’er Mayiim Chaim adds that in this dangerous and challenging moment in the desert, the Jewish people hated Gd, so they imagined He hated them too.
As a kid, I remember my parents saying they would love me no matter what I did. As a spoiled brat, I even asked whether that love would apply even if I engaged in the worst behavior imaginable. Their answer was always yes, but with a caveat that they hoped I would make wise choices.
So where did that leave me, and by extension you, and every other individual when it comes to a Gd who has said the same thing to us? It means that no matter how low a person falls spiritually, even to the point of projecting his hatred of his circumstance onto a hatred of Gd, that person should know that Gd continues to love her.
At the same time, it means we must be firm, transparent, and strong in setting our boundaries and pushing back against incitement from others. Knowing that Gd is on our side makes it easier to say to others sowing dissent that their position isnt persuasive. In those moments, we can simply draw attention to the feeling that person is projecting onto us, stare at it together, and then hand it back, saying, “I think this is yours.”
