Dear J Members,

This week we read Parshat Devarim, and with it, Moses begins the last, longest speech of his life. Forty years of history, compressed into one final address to a generation standing at the edge of everything he had worked for.

Buried in that recap is a scene worth further conversation. Moses reminds the people of the spies, the twelve men sent to scout the land, ten of whom came back and said, in effect, it cannot be done. They reported that giants live there, the cities are fortified, and we are grasshoppers next to them. Only two, Caleb and Joshua, looked at the same land, the same giants, the same fortified cities, and said: we can do this.

Here is what strikes me every time I read it: none of the twelve lied about the facts. The giants and the walls were real. The spies were not wrong about what they saw. They were wrong about what it meant.

Ten men looked at a hard thing and concluded it was impossible. Two men looked at the same hard thing and concluded it was worth doing anyway. The difference was not the information; it was the story they chose to tell about it.

The story of the spies often comes to mind for me in the work we do here at the JCC and in the challenges we face. I would guess many in our community have similar challenges, regardless of the room they sit in, the board they serve on, or the business or family challenge in front of them right now. Almost nothing we take on as a community is easy.

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‍Building, growing, sustaining Jewish life in Dallas has never been the "Small hill" version of the job.

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There are always giants: cost, capacity, competing priorities, a world that feels less certain than it did a decade ago. Those things are real, and I am not going to be the one to tell you they are not.

But the Torah does not let the ten spies off the hook for seeing giants. It holds them accountable for what they did with that sight, for the fear they spread, for the story that turned a hard truth into a reason to stay put. Caleb's response was not blind optimism. He had seen the same giants. He simply refused to let the size of the obstacle write the ending before anyone had tried.

That's the muscle I want us to build together as a community: the ability to see clearly and still move forward. Not denial or naive positivity, just the discipline to look at something difficult and ask,

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"What would it take," instead of stating that, “We can’t."

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It is also, not coincidentally, the same discipline this moment in the Jewish calendar asks of us. Devarim is always read on the Shabbat before Tisha B'Av, the day we remember what happens when a community loses its nerve and, later, when it loses itself entirely. The rabbis draw a direct line from the sin of the spies to the destruction that followed centuries later. A people that talks itself out of the land it was promised is, in some sense, the same people that talk itself into believing it is not worth defending. The stakes of the story we tell ourselves are not small.

So, as we move through the next few weeks leading up to Tisha B'Av, I would ask you to notice the story you are telling yourself about whatever giant is currently standing in your way. Whether it is here at the J, in your business, or at your kitchen table.

The land does not get smaller because you called it impossible. It just stays unclaimed.

I look forward to seeing you at The J!

Shabbat Shalom.